Even if you're not in the business of email marketing, you've probably heard the prediction that social media will eventually replace the need for email marketing. I beg to differ. While there's no doubt that social media has fundamentally changed the marketing landscape, email remains a powerful way to send and share information; there's a reason why companies such as Groupon, Daily Candy and Gilt Groupe rely on email to deliver their can't-miss deals and information.
To be sure, these brands also are avid users of social media, and they do a great job making sure their emails and offers are easily share-able on social networks. Social media is a partner, not a threat, to email marketing because together they strengthen your message, and provide new channels for getting in front of both new and potential customers.
Unfortunately, many businesses – especially smaller ones – simply do not have the time to figure out how to integrate social media and email marketing in an effective and measurable way. If you're crunched for time and want to get the most bang for your efforts, here are five easy ways to make your emails more social.
1. Include live "follow" buttons to your social media profiles in your email. Yes, perhaps I'm preaching to the choir, but you'd be surprised at how many companies still don't have them. A little HTML knowledge is all you need to accomplish this, and there are lots of different (and free) graphical buttons online for you to choose from.
2. Make sure your email service provider offers hosted versions of your emails. This is simply the email you've created hosted on a Web page, so that it can be accessed by anyone (e.g., someone who clicked on a link that was shared on a social network). Your email service provider should offer an easy way to insert a link that has been automagically created anywhere in your email.
3. Embed social sharing icons in your emails. These are different from the buttons I recommend in No. 1; these icons allow your recipients to post a link to the hosted version of your email on their social networks. Some email service providers provide tracking and reporting on how many people posted your email to their networks, which is valuable information about your email's overall effectiveness and relevance.
4. Make it as easy as possible for current subscribers to share your email by adding both "forward to a friend" and "sign up for emails" links in the email body. The "forward to a friend" link allows them to do exactly that; the "sign up for emails" link should lead to a landing page where their friend can simply type in his/her email address and automatically be added to your subscriber list.
5. Add an email sign-up form on your Facebook page. This is a fantastic way to let your Facebook fans know that you have an email newsletter they shouldn't miss. Simply create a separate tab on your page so that visitors will know exactly where they can sign up for more information. Include a reason or two why they should sign up, such as recent "email only" offers or promotions.
So, there you have it. You've got no excuses now!
Janine Popick is the CEO and founder of VerticalResponse, a provider of email marketing, social media, online survey and direct mail marketing solutions.
Good tips. Another that I'd add would be to look at your email content and then use that to schedule social media updates for the rest of the month. My company's software, http://www.arkli.com/ lets you do this easily - you can import email messages from the most popular email vendors, and then schedule social media updates related to the content of your email.
Mike
You have got to make your content easy for others to share, and this includes your e-mails! Maybe only 10% of your subscribers bother to Tweet or post a link to Facebook, but you don't know how many then see your name and brand. People want to share interesting content, so let them!
OK, but not too interesting. This stuff is all over. What I would like you to do is dig into your own data on email usage (you being a major source of that) and tell me about what you find. I'm way more interested in your data than in your perceptions.
Hi Guy – I appreciate your constructive feedback. That's something I'm definitely planning to do in upcoming articles/posts. Stay tuned.
Hi Janine,
Good tips! Question I have is what happens when a person in the social network that was for which the email was shared clicks on the "unsubscribe" link? Won't that unsubscribe the person who shared the email?
Hi Andrew – Thanks! To answer your question, the hosted online version of your email doesn't have an "unsubscribe" link. So if you've shared the hosted version with your networks, your followers won't be able to unsubscribe you.
janine - I have not even got past your step one! Just spent an hour trying to do this before launching in to step 2. Instructions seem to be targeted to people with public email hosts like gmail and yahoo. The company that hosts my email is just a hosting company and I pull in emails through Mail for Mac, tried looking for an option in signatures...anyway do you have someone who can help me? There goes another hour!
Hi Catriona – I'm sorry you're having problems. My advice was geared more toward companies who are sending the same email to a list of customers (like a newsletter, company update or promotional sale), versus individual email communications.
If you're interested in sending email newsletters to your customers, you may want to check out my company, VerticalResponse. We have hundreds of email templates for you to choose from and with a little HTML coding you can set up the FB/Twitter icons in the email, and then link them to your FB/Twitter pages.
You mention adding a tab to your facebook page for users to sign up for your email newsletter. Can you walk through the steps for how to do this?
Hi Kim – Check out this discussion in the VerticalResponse Marketing Lounge; there are a few ways to do it: http://lounge.verticalresponse.com/forum/topics/how-to-add-an-optin-form-since
Great tips. Email marketing can make quite positive things in business.