4 Simple Steps for Integrating Social Media with Email

According to MarketingProfs, “email is thriving, not perishing, in our social media-loving age.” In fact, publishers can take advantage of social media to easily extend the reach of email and boost click-through rates.

The CTR of an average email is 2.4%, but add social icons and the CTR jumps to 6.2% — a 158% increase! How can you integrate social media into your email campaigns? It’s simple.

Encourage subscribers to share the email
Most email service providers produce a web-based version of your message automatically when you send. Typically, you can get to this via a “view as web page” or similar link in your email. Take advantage of this live content by enabling your subscribers to share your email on their social networks. Simply provide clear social sharing calls to action in your message to encourage users to share the link.

Offer the opportunity to share the content
If your email content links to multiple blog posts or pages, incorporate smaller article-specific social sharing links. Subscribers can easily choose to share a single article with their network if the entire message isn’t relevant. It’s important to walk a very fine line though — multiple social links with multiple purposes on a page can be very confusing to the user. Protect your user experience by using graphic size, priority and proximity to your content to clearly identify what the user will be sharing.

Make it easy to follow along
Encourage your audience to connect with your brand in the social landscape by providing clear links to your own social pages. The links will ultimately grow your following across social platforms and also provide another, potentially more casual, medium with which to reach out to your audience later.

Feeds and updates
Including a recent post or series of tweets in your message is an excellent way to remain timely while also encouraging your audience to engage with your social accounts. A simple “retweet this” or “join the conversation” can be all it takes to engage your subscribers and build new, meaningful connections beyond your email.

[line]

This post originally appeared on the AdStation blog.

[share title=”Share This Post” facebook=”true” twitter=”true” google_plus=”true” linkedin=”true” pinterest=”true” reddit=”true” email=”true”]