Social media platforms are evolving very quickly into the foundation linking all activity on the internet. Speedy growth of this new digital infrastructure has resulted in two factors that clearly illustrate the growing power of linking your sales efforts to social networks. 1. Social media users are embracing both giving and receiving recommendations from their online connections (92% of moms pass deals/shopping info on to others); 2. Studies show that much of that social media activity involves shopping. In fact, this year alone the sales of physical goods through social networks will grow by 93%.
You may have a strong social media presence already, but there is a small, often overlooked part of social sharing that can potentially boost your sales and marketing efforts significantly. Incorporating easy to find, easy to use social sharing buttons on your email marketing efforts. Ensuring that your email marketing campaigns close the loop on social media by making it easy for recipients to quickly/easily pass on information is vital to your campaign’s success. How important is it? It could expand your reach by 158%.
Yes – you read that correctly. Social sharing on email marketing has been proven to more than double your campaign’s reach.
How do I social share an email campaign?
It is simple really. Ensuring that you include the proper “share” buttons in easily seen spots on your marketing campaign is all you need to do. Most email marketing services (ie, Mailchimp, Constant Contact, etc) make this very easy. But it is important to note the difference between sharing campaigns via your own social media profiles and building in the option for your readers to share your campaign amongst their own social networks.
According to research from GetResponse, the click through rate for Facebook and Twitter is relatively equal with both social media platforms delivering a 6.2% click through rate for messages shared within users social networks. This means that if someone on your email list opens your latest email campaign “10% coupon off all Widgets!” and decides to share it with their Facebook or Twitter followers, 6.2% of them will be curious enough to click through and learn about your Widgets coupon. Compare that to the average email marketing campaign to a set list of people which will typically only see a 2.4% click through rate and you can see the added power of people receiving information from friends versus brands.
Although all of the major social media platforms can expand your reach, GetResponse also found that the balance that most email marketers have struck is adding just 3 different social share buttons on a campaign. If you are going to go for the top click through rates that would mean including buttons for shares on LinkedIn, Facebook and Twitter. You’ve taken so much time to put together a clear concise message for your email list, why not give that same marketing message a major boost by letting your subscribers forward that information easily to their friends?