This post is part of my notes from the Online Marketing Summit I attended in June 2009 in Cleveland, OH.
Whit Lanier, Silverpop
Message and brand is defined by the market and marketing. It’s not completely in the marketers hands anymore. Can have instant, 24×7 insight to your business through using social media sites for marketing research. Place links in emails (e.g. newsletters) so readers can share on social networks. “Social email is the new viral.”
Best practices for great social email campaigns
- Build trust and engage with your customers
- Know what motivates your customers
- Keep the message simple
- State the value
- Make sharing options visible and easy
Make sure the email is shareworthy.
B2C: Great offers, new season / product announcements, etc
B2B: relevant articles, event / webinar notifications, news / press releases
What’s not shareworthy: long newsletters, negative news, highly personalized emails, transactional emails, etc
From their social email analysis:
- Branding in the subject line significantly increased sharing activity, opens, and click through of content
- Offer in subject line marginally increases sharing activity and opens
- B2B see a 57% higher rate of sharing compared to B2C
- 28% of all content shared went to Facebook
Putting it to use:
- Focus on shareworthiness
- Make it easy to share
- Monitor social buzz and engage
- Reward influences
- Test everything
