How email and social media can work together

For many public sector comms teams, email and social media sit in two different buckets – two channels, two strategies, two sets of messages.

But the truth is, treating them separately is holding your comms back. 

Used together, email and social media don’t just work better together; they amplify each other, build trust faster, and help you reach people where they are, on the channels they choose. 

Let’s break down why.

Social media plays a huge role in our daily lives. 87% of UK adults use social media every day, and on average, spend 1h 37minutes per day on it.

It’s safe to say that it has become the digital town square where communities gather, to share thoughts and shape ideas. Relationships are constantly being formed between people and organisations, making it more than just a broadcasting tool for the public sector, but a listening and two-way engagement channel.

According to The Alan Turing Institute, 94% of the UK have reported encountering misinformation on social media. As a huge source of inaccurate information and with 52% of UK adults now seeing social media as a news source, it’s essential that public sector organisations have an online presence to manage narratives and be the source of truth.

While the public is increasingly aware of fake news, email carries a sense of legitimacy, making it a powerful tool for communicating with clarity and authority. 

Not everyone follows their local NHS or council on social media, or checks government websites daily, but 93% check their emails daily, giving you a reliable route to reach the people who need information most.

Email offers the space to deliver more information and clarify in a direct, measurable and accessible way, which is why it remains a key channel in your comms toolbox.

It’s also one of the strongest channels for driving behaviour change. In combination with the COM-B model, communicators can take their audience on a journey, educating, influencing, and guiding them towards positive lifestyle changes. These changes benefit not only individuals but also the wider economy, as on average, preventing a health condition is far cheaper than treating one once it arises, for example. 

One of the major struggles for public sector organisations at the moment is building, and maintaining trust. And social media and emails play a huge role in that. 

All the best relationships begin with listening and understanding. Simply listening to your communities, just isn’t enough anymore – you need to actively hear and understand what matters to them, what concerns them, and what they value.

Listening

There are three ways to listen effectively:

1. Direct – Surveys, and social comments allow you to hear feedback straight from the community.
2. Indirect – Social listening captures broader sentiment, helping you understand raw opinions and emotions on key topics.
3. Inferred – Patterns in service requests or recurring enquiries reveal what matters to the public, even if they don’t explicitly say it. This can be captured by working in alignment with your customer service teams.

Orlo’s Voice of the Community solution helps public sector organisations listen to all three types of feedback all in one place.

Understanding

Once you have this insight, the next step is understanding. Advanced Insights tools can help you monitor sentiment, emotions, and the drivers of trust or distrust. You can track the impact of changes over time and respond in real-time to emerging concerns, such as reactions to policy updates or service changes.

However, this information and data is only valuable if you act on it. This can mean adjusting policy, redesigning services, or refining the content and messaging of your email campaigns to reflect community sentiment.

Acting

A simple but powerful approach is to close the loop. Show your community that their feedback has been heard and used to shape decisions. Whether done individually or at scale, this transparency reinforces trust, encourages ongoing engagement, and makes your community feel valued.

Social media gives you the listening and awareness; email provides the space to explain, guide, and act. If something resonates on social, it can be expanded in a newsletter. If confusion or concern emerges online, an email can clarify. If engagement spikes on a topic, it can shape future content.

In essence, the two channels create a cycle of listening, understanding, and acting, reinforcing trust while amplifying reach and impact.

One of the major struggles for public sector organisations at the moment is building, and maintaining trust. And social media and emails play a huge role in that. 

All the best relationships begin with listening and understanding. Simply listening to your communities, just isn’t enough anymore – you need to actively hear and understand what matters to them, what concerns them, and what they value.

Listening

There are three ways to listen effectively:

1. Direct – Surveys, and social comments allow you to hear feedback straight from the community.
2. Indirect – Social listening captures broader sentiment, helping you understand raw opinions and emotions on key topics.
3. Inferred – Patterns in service requests or recurring enquiries reveal what matters to the public, even if they don’t explicitly say it. This can be captured by working in alignment with your customer service teams.

Orlo’s Voice of the Community module helps public sector organisations listen to all three types of feedback all in one place.

Understanding

Once you have this insight, the next step is understanding. Advanced Insights tools can help you monitor sentiment, emotions, and the drivers of trust or distrust. You can track the impact of changes over time and respond in real-time to emerging concerns, such as reactions to policy updates or service changes.

However, this information and data is only valuable if you act on it. This can mean adjusting policy, redesigning services, or refining the content and messaging of your email campaigns to reflect community sentiment.

Acting

A simple but powerful approach is to close the loop. Show your community that their feedback has been heard and used to shape decisions. Whether done individually or at scale, this transparency reinforces trust, encourages ongoing engagement, and makes your community feel valued.

Social media gives you the listening and awareness; email provides the space to explain, guide, and act. If something resonates on social, it can be expanded in a newsletter. If confusion or concern emerges online, an email can clarify. If engagement spikes on a topic, it can shape future content.

In essence, the two channels create a cycle of listening, understanding, and acting, reinforcing trust while amplifying reach and impact.

Once you’ve built a foundation of trust through listening, understanding, and acting, the next step is to maximise the impact of your communications. This is where the combination of social media and email truly shines.

Research shows that integrated campaigns consistently outperform non-integrated campaigns. For example, HMRC recently found that integrated, multi-channel campaigns drove significantly higher action than non integrated campaigns. They used social media as a way to nudge people into action via more formal channels such as email and saw a 75% action rate – much higher than if they’d used each channel in silo.

Your audience doesn’t think in channels, so why should you? Instead, why not think in stories, experiences, and outcomes? By delivering a consistent message across both email and social, you reinforce your messaging and build credibility.

Whether you want to re-engage people who didn’t open an email, share short snippets or visuals to reinforce campaign messaging, social media acts as an alternative channel to amplify email campaigns.

More importantly, social media helps you reach entirely new audiences and communities who are often harder to engage through traditional channels. Younger audiences, transient communities, and underrepresented groups often respond far better to social content. Once you’ve got them hooked, you can encourage them to subscribe to emails and newsletters, bringing audiences deeper into the communication journey.

This multi-channel approach doesn’t just increase reach, it builds stronger, more consistent relationships with your community. When residents see the same trusted story in their inbox and on their feed, it reinforces legitimacy, clarity, and trust, which is particularly important in times of misinformation or public concern.

As mentioned above, behaviour change is a key objective for most public sector organisations.

A great example of this in practice is the national government initiative ‘Swap to Stop’ – a scheme adopted by Wolverhampton Council and Bristol City Council, which encourages adult smokers to quit by switching to reusable vapes. 

Through a hyperlocal strategy developed with local volunteer Health Champions, Bristol’s comms teams created social media assets and adverts that led to 6% (approx. 3,000 people) of smokers in the city signing up during the three-month campaign.

Beyond reducing the £427 million annual cost of smoking to the city, the team now has a bank of email addresses to deliver more targeted messaging for future campaigns.

For public sector comms teams, budgets are tight, and resources are stretched. Combining social and email means you’re making your existing content work harder for you, whilst multiplying the impact of both.

So, the next time you plan an email campaign, take a moment to think about how social media can amplify it. A few simple steps can make a big difference:

• Identify two or three ways social media can support your campaign. This could be short posts that highlight key points, visuals or reels that tease the email content, or links encouraging sign-ups for more information.
• Monitor the impact across both channels. Track reach, clicks, opens, engagement, and newsletter sign-ups to understand what resonates with your audience.
• Close the loop by responding to community feedback, sharing updates, and adapting messaging in future campaigns.

By integrating social and email in this way, you’re not just broadcasting, you’re building trust, reinforcing behaviour change, and creating meaningful engagement – which is key at a time when trust is increasingly fragile.

To have a chat on how to up your social media game, get in touch. Or, for expert advice on email communications, our partner e-shot have all the answers!