Social email: An emerging methodology to reach beyond mailing lists.
"Social email." Huh? It's actually just what it sounds like -- the melding of email with social media sharing capabilities to expand a message's reach beyond the list, enabling recipients to help you find more of the right audience.
The headline was intriguing: Social email campaigns to increase 400% in 2009.
My first thought upon reading that headline?
"Interesting. Um, just what the hell is social email?"
This press release from Exact Target offers some details:
ExactTarget, a leading provider of on-demand email and one-to-one marketing solutions, launched its Social Forward solution, giving marketers the industry’s first flexible metrics-driven email social sharing solution.
[...]
“For the first time, email marketers have a solution that enables and tracks social sharing and is flexible enough to support multiple strategies,” said Chip House, ExactTarget’s vice president of marketing. “Whether it’s enabling sharing a coupon offer to Facebook or sharing product news to more than 40 social networks, ExactTarget’s Social Forward solution provides marketers the technology they need to leverage the true power of one-to-one marketing.”
In short, social email is the process of adding features that make it easy for recipients to share a message with others using social networks. It may also encompass enabling connections with a company via its social presence on a variety of platforms. Adding "social sharing" features helps a company's best fans find new fans outside the mailing list.
Silverpop put together a nice overview of social email with case studies and an important slide about what kinds of email messages (coupons, sale announcements, etc.) work best for triggering social sharing:
View more presentations from Silverpop .
Papa John's has had success integrating email marketing with its social platforms:
The company has also used a Facebook fan page to grab addresses. It has 293,000 fans. Some 130,000 of those came in the initial 24-hour period after launch, and 75% handed over an email locale, as there was an offer for a free pizza.
Papa John's has worked social email both ways. The company uses email to build its social presence, and uses its social presence to add people to its email list. The two communication vehicles build off of and support each other.
We are in the early days of this integration between email and social media, but it makes total sense. By integrating social media aspects into your email campaigns, you can:
- Help your most engaged recipients spread your message to other highly relevant people you would have otherwise missed.
- Garner independent endorsements for your business by encouraging your fans to share your message on social networks.
- Lengthen your engagement with recipients by allowing them to easily connect with your company on the social platforms it participates in.
- Create a new way to expand your email list by offering incentives for people to share their email addresses with your company through social networks.
Sounds like solid strategy to me. Are you having success with this new methodology yet?