How Email and Paid Media Become a Performance Multiplier When They Work Together

By Sam Holmes, Marketing Director at Force24

Around a year ago, I wrote about the often-overlooked relationship between email and paid media, and how, when combined, they could quietly transform your retargeting efforts.

At the time of writing, we saw most marketers treating these two channels as separate. Email belonged to CRM and retention whilst paid media was for acquisition and reach. But my opinion at the time is that they are more powerful together than apart. 

Twelve months on, the landscape looks a little different. Privacy rules have tightened, budgets have been squeezed, and marketers have had to get smarter with the data and tools they already have. The reason I’m writing a part 2 e is because those same shifts have made the email-and-paid-media partnership even more valuable.

To be clear, we’re not just talking about combining the two – it’s about embedding them and having them run as a synched dovetail where one learns the other and vice versa. Making them work together automatically, predictably, and continuously, so your brand shows up in the right place at the right moment across both channels.

 

If one of the below sounds familiar, this article will be worth 5 minutes of your time…

• You’re an in-house marketer trying to make paid media a consistent presence rather than a sporadic campaign tactic.
• You’re an agency marketer or paid media strategist aiming to provide even more value from the paid budgets you manage for your clients.
• You already know your audience. It is relatively small, well defined, and simply needs more touchpoints and nurturing to stay engaged, in more of an ABM-style
• You have modest budgets that always need to stretch further, so every impression and every email must count.
• You are tired of disjointed journeys where your email and ad messaging tell two different stories.
• You want to build a system that connects channels, saves time, and keeps your brand visible without constant manual effort.

If any of that sounds like your world, please read on. I’m also going to share some transparent results of how this has worked for our own marketing strategy at Force24.

 

One year on: what has changed?

In just a year, the fundamentals haven’t changed too much. We’re still trying to get the right message across and the spaces we do that in are just as crowded. But there are some landscape factors worth noting first. Since writing the first article, three big shifts have stood out.

1. The rise of privacy and the fall of cookies
   With third-party data sources drying up, your own data has become the most reliable asset. For me, that makes email the beating heart of your marketing strategy, and paid media the amplifier.
2. AI and automation even more the norm
   What once felt experimental is now expected. Whether it’s predictive audiences in Meta, lookalike segments in Google Ads, or intent detection in your automation platform, technology is quietly doing more of the heavy lifting. The role of marketers has shifted from manual execution to smart orchestration.
3. The demand for measurable impact
   With budgets becoming a record-breaking tight in 2025, every channel has to prove its worth – especially paid which has seen yearly ad cost rises, again. Email and paid media have always had strong, easy-to-attribute metrics individually, but when you connect them, you start to see the bigger picture: the full journey from first impression to purchase and beyond.

Our own pilot programme

In the last article, I shared how the marketing team at Force24 were testing the combination of email and paid ads across three audience groups: early-stage, mid-funnel, and high-intent. The short story is it was starting to work very well. CTRs lifted, engagement deepened, and leads moved faster through the funnel, all with the same budget as before. 

This is now baked into everyday activity.

Instead of three broad segments, we began working with micro-audiences. For example:

• Prospects who engaged with two emails but never clicked a link.
• Contacts who visited a specific service page but did not enquire.
• Contacts who had not opened in six months but re-engaged via a triggered campaign.
• Contacts with identified sectors who were suitable for industry-relevant messaging.

Each of these segments had a paid ad sequence running in the background automatically, with automated matched audiences meaning no manual list uploads. Our email/first party data fed the ad platforms directly through integrations, and both channels responded to customer behaviour.

This means consistency, aligned messaging, and the data between the two channels constantly refined itself. This is where the “power duo” becomes a system.

How we’re using this at Force24

Firstly, here’s quick explainer of how our audiences are managed. As a high-value, high-consideration supplier, our buying cycle lasts for months and requires deep nurture like most B2B services. For this reason, we split our ongoing campaign workflows into three stages – awareness, consideration and conversion. Audience members flow between these based on behaviours spotted, which leads to decisions made on where we believe they are in their own research or buying journey. For each stage, messaging changes and escalates accordingly.

For conversion campaigns, we now sync marketing lists automatically based on lead scoring within Force24. Contacts showing a defined level of intent are automatically added to paid ad audiences, ensuring our warmest prospects see relevant reminders across social and display channels while our email journeys continue running in the background.

For awareness campaigns, we use a different approach. By leveraging LinkedIn and Meta profile IDs, we can target specific segments of the market we already know fit our ICP, even before they engage with our content. The aim here is not to sell, but to stay visible and build familiarity.

Comparing a like-for-like 3 month period from last time around and more recently, both with a c£2,000 test budget, here are the results we’ve seen:

 

It’s still evolving, but the results so far have shown us that the effort is worth it. Note the key results below:

1. 48% increase in clicks with the same budget
2. CTRs for each audience group matched or bettered
3. Cost per click reduced for each audience

 

Why it deserves your time in 2026

 

First-party data is your competitive edge
Paid media has always been great for reach, but with limited tracking data, it is losing precision. Email, on the other hand, is built on consent and known identities. When you link the two, you feed high-quality data into your ad platforms, improving targeting accuracy and reducing wasted spend.

Message frequency becomes natural, not forced
Instead of bombarding people with endless emails or chasing them with identical ads, you can distribute your message more evenly. Someone might open your email on Monday, ignore the next one on Wednesday, then see a gentle reminder in their feed on Friday. That is not pushy marketing. It is good timing.

You spot intent earlier
When your data is connected, behavioural signals stand out. A customer clicking your email and visiting your pricing page is a stronger signal than an anonymous website visit. By feeding these intent cues into your ad platform, you automatically prioritise spend on audiences who are genuinely warming up.

It is cost-efficient
The more precise your targeting, the less you spend on wasted impressions. Your ads reach people who already know you, are more likely to convert, and often need just one more touchpoint to tip the balance.

It scales effortlessly
Once the integration is in place, the system works quietly in the background, expanding or contracting based on the data you collect. You can launch new journeys, audiences, or campaigns without reinventing the wheel each time.

 

Already on this path? Try this next

If you have already started blending email and paid media, here is what comes next.

Automate your data flow
Stop exporting CSVs. Connect your automation platform directly to your ad accounts so data updates itself. That is when you start to see real-time impact.

Go beyond basic retargeting
Move past the “visited page X” logic and start using engagement behaviour. Think “opened three emails but did not convert”, or “clicked the case study link but has not returned”.

Test your creative continuity
Do your email visuals, ad creative, and messaging feel like the same conversation? Consistency builds trust, and that trust drives conversions.

Align your measurement
Create a combined dashboard or reporting layer that measures both channels as part of one journey. That is how you start to attribute influence properly and spot the incremental gains.

Layer in other channels when you are ready
Once email and paid are in sync, adding SMS or social messaging becomes much easier. The logic is already in place; it is just about extending the conversation.

 

A Final Thought

This is not about complexity for its complexity’s sake. It is about relevance, using automation to create experiences that feel effective for the customer and more effortless for the marketer. The new wave of this approach across channels will be even more dynamic. We’re already seeing AI-powered tools (which aren’t!) automatically select which creative to show based on behaviours, and predictive decisioning helping to identify which customers are most likely to churn or buy again. I think hyper-personalised ads that change based on email engagement will now become standard practice.

You probably already have everything you need to start. Your data, your email platform, your ad accounts. All you need is a few thoughtful integrations to get going. If you’re using an automation platform, your account manager should be able to piece this together for you. If not, feel free to reach out for my help at sam.holmes@force24.co.uk.