Melon Corporate Blog

Email and social media: joining the dots

Posted on Jan 25, 2010

You’ve no doubt already dabbled with social media. But have your efforts been well integrated into existing marketing strategies?

One simple way to achieve this is to include “tweet this” or other social media links in your emails and articles. The skeptic will wonder if this has any real advantage over the “send to a friend” option that we’re all familiar with. Here’s some food for thought:

- Email recipients are several times more likely to share through social media. In a recent Silverpop study, social sharing rates reached 0.5% compared to 0.1% for sending to a friend.
- The effect doesn’t end there, because your message has higher viral potential. When people use send to a friend functionality they rarely enter more than a few emails. In comparison, social media networks will reach a larger and more diverse audience, who will in turn pass it on to their networks.

Of course, the viral effect is notoriously difficult to achieve. To assess whether this strategy is right for your newsletter or campaign, businesses should ask themselves three simple questions:

1. Is the content worth sharing?

The recipient needs to feel that there’s something in it for them before they hit that share button. You could offer them a reward or incentive - share and win an iPhone! However, more often than not sharers are motivated by intangible benefits.

This could be the positive feeling received when sharing something genuinely useful or interesting. Social media also forms the “public face” of many individuals and businesses, and sharing particular types of content can validate their identity and expertise. Consider who your audience is and what kind of image they wish to present when creating content.

2. Which platforms will I get the most benefit from?

On average, social sharing emails included links to 4.5 different networks. Facebook, MySpace and Twitter were the most commonly used. Understanding the demographics of different networks is a good starting point, but it’s even more important to know your own customer well.

If you don’t have time for a survey, pick out a sample of your client base and search for them on different networks. Invest your energy into the most commonly used platform.

3. Am I active on social media?

Integrating social media into your email newsletter is a fantastic opportunity to open new channels of communication with existing customers. It signals to them that you’re ready to have a conversation. This can be problematic when they search you up and discover that your last tweet was 7 months ago! Ensure you maintain an active presence on the relevant social networks to make the most of these tools.

Adding the links are a simple process, but optimising your content involves some research, trial and error. Don’t be too deterred by the challenges; despite being a relatively new phenomenon, social media links in emails are already showing more potential than the traditional “forward to a friend” method.

Melon Corporate Blog

Email and social media: joining the dots

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