More and more often, we see social networking links in commercial emails these days, like “Follow us on twitter”, “Join us on Facebook” or “Share with friends: Diggit”. Study shows that in 2008, 13% of marketers leveraged social networks in their email marketing strategy. In 2009, that number will grow to 46%. While the plain “Forward to a friend” links in email newsletters are getting less and less clicks… is social media the next step?

Email goes social is a trend right now. Since many ESP (Email Service Provider) are selling these related add-on features, they are promoting it eagerly. Should we start thinking about this new trend? From “Email Marketing” to “Social Media Marketing”, it’s quite different, we need planning. Don’t rush it.

The following information is a summary on this topic and it will give you a brief idea on “Social Email” transformation.

1. Links to Social Networking Pages
If a brand or campaign has already participated in some type of social media, remember to include its social presence in email newsletters. By doing so, we encourage and make an easy transition for our subscribers to become fans or followers in our social group.

For Example:

Toronto Symphony Orchestra adds social networking links in their E-Mail Club newsletters

Recently, I even received a very aggressive e-blast from Roots. It looks like a “Social Networking” invitation. By this email, Roots is making a big effort on converting their existing email subscribers to social media fans.

2. Share Newsletters in Social Networks
Another kind of “going social” is adding social sharing links in email newsletters. Those links allow recipients to create a post (about that newsletter) on recipients’ social networking pages. Some ESP (Email Service Provider) already started these share-to-social features and also have ability to provide detailed “sharing report” to evaluate their marketing campaign.

We can still code these links ourselves without ESP. Here is a test page I made with 3 most popular social share links. Try it.

Samples of shared posts on Social Networks:

A Shared Post on Diggit

A Shared Post on Facebook

This kind of social sharing is done within recipients’ social networks. Although, the social media involvement is not from the original email sender, but once the article is posted onto a social network, it goes social. That post will then start getting “comments”, “diggs”, “share”, “like” or “retweet”. One question you might ask here: What social sharing media is the more effective one? It will all depend on your marketing campaign, what result you want to achieve? what’s your target group and their social media behavior?

Creating a link is the easy part, but motivating our recipients to share… that needs work and lots of testing. Basically, we need to make sure the material is share-worthy. It must be interesting, relevant and helpful. If it’s about a contest, the contest should be still valid within 15 days. (Research shows that sharing activities usually die down after 15 days.) Another thing we need to be careful is that a newsletter with too much personalized content and private information is not suitable for sharing.

References:

Marketing and Stradegy:
Expanding Email Reach Via Social Networks
Social Networking and E-mail Marketing Converge
The Rise of Social Ties in Email Campaigns
How to Make Your Email Campaigns More Social

Design and Codes:
10 examples of e-newsletter footers and headers with social links
How to Create Links for Social Networking Sites
Using Ruby to generate Social Bookmarks for your Web Pages