If you haven’t integrated social media into your e-mails and vice versa, you’re missing out. Give your subscribers the ability to share email content with their followers, and you stand to potentially grow your mailing list, increase ROI, raise brand awareness, and reach new markets and subscribers.

In fact, a Marketing Sherpa study found that 42% of daily social media users check their email four times a day or more, compared to just 27% of non-social media users.

Going “social” in email can be as easy as adding buttons into your template to invite subscribers to join or “Follow” on social sites.

Sailthru makes it easy to allow subscribers to share content as well. Use the public_share or social_share functions in your campaign with options to “Like” or “Share”.

Public_share posts the entire newsletter, while social_share allows users to post or like a specific article:
<a href=“{ {public_share('fblike')}}”>Like this on Facebook</a>
<a href=“{{social_share('fbshare', 'http://blog.sailthru.com/specific_article/')}}”>Share on Facebook</a>

Or, encourage your readers to forward your newsletter to a friend by including an easy e-mail forward button. Just drop in Sailthru’s zephyr syntax {forward_url} to your campaign, and create a template named “forward”.

Share your campaign on social sites by posting a link to the Web-based version of your e-newsletter. And remember to include {view_url} in your template so readers can click to view it online, too.

Let users sign up for your email list on your Facebook page via a signup box and use Twitter to redirect users to a signup webpage, which can be easily hosted on Sailthru.

Finally, create a Facebook wall post that encourages fans to opt-in to your email list. Consider an email promotion to only your most engaged users to boost their awareness of your Facebook page. Offer incentives such as discounts or advance notice of sales for subscribers who choose to follow your social media page. Offer rewards or discounts for those who opt-in to your campaign via a form on your page or blog.

Remember that quality content is the key to engaging your readers. Readers will be inspired to share content for a few reasons. Incentives such as contest winnings or discounts are motivation. Sharing items of value or significant savings opportunities provide the subscriber with feelings of validation in their social circle. But the most influential reason to post is quality content. Sharing dynamic content helps subscribers feel they are contributing to their social circle and can also integrate them with others. So be creative, relevant, and engaging across all platforms. Social media is based on sharing, not advertising.

Here’s a snippet from the interview:

DMN: Talk about what you did for one of your clients, Business Insider [an online business publication covering technology, media and investing that had suffered a drop-off in email subscriptions over time].

Capel: [Since employing our technology], their click-through rate on articles in the newsletter have increased 60%, email open rates have increased 15%, and we’ve reduced the setup time for their emails by 95%. They send multiple emails throughout each day, and we have fully automated that process for them. The average lifespan of Business Insider subscribers has significantly increased.

You can read the full interview here.

So what, in a nutshell is the “pull” model?

The “push” model is to marketing what drift netting is to fishing. While the “pull” model is targeted and specific, much like a baited hook (sans barb). Brass Knuckles Media has a really good post explaining the differences between the two here.

Are you using a drift net or a tackle box?

Sailthru clients have a tackle box full of tools to ensure they can engage people with relevant content at the right time. Any angler will tell you that you must have the right lure (relevance), use the right action (engagement) and get to the lake at the right time if you want any bites.

How many times have you heard that question? As a child, and as an adult, that’s a question we all ask or get asked on many occasions. What about as email marketers? Have you been listening, or talking?

Email and all the other social media channels are interactive and designed to be bidirectional. If you forget this, you are missing out on half the power of integrated online marketing.

This past week we lost someone who passionately believed in the importance of the conversation in email marketing. His name was Trey Pennington and he boiled it down to three simple desires people have that brands must be sensitive to:

1) Everyone wants to be heard.
2) Everyone wants to be understood.
3) Everyone wants his or her life to count.

It sounds pretty simple, but the hard part comes in when you ask yourself what your marketing is doing to make the above happen. What are you doing with your email marketing to demonstrate to people that you are hearing them, understanding them and demonstrating how much you value them?

If it were up to me, every email marketer would have the above three points posted to their office wall. It would remind them that relevancy and engagement are things that are derived from pulling people into a conversation and not from pushing out sell lines and spec sheets.

Leverage the strength of each social channel to provide your customers with choices of how they can make themselves heard by you. Encourage them to participate and always make it clear that their opinions matter to you!

Sailthru provides technology that allows you to provide relevant content based on your subscribers interactions with your content. If you combine this technology with a commitment to listen and interact with your customers, you are head and shoulders above most of your competition.

Always remember:

• Comments on your blog, Twitter, Facebook or any other channel deserve a same day response.

• Have a reply address which is monitored and respond within 24 hours.

• Weave those interactions into your ongoing company narrative and acknowledge the value of same constantly.

Ask people to tell you their stories and then share their comments and suggestions. Better yet, use those interactions to improve how you produce and market your business – that’s the best way to show people how much you value them.

One of the queries people like to do most is geolocation. Check out our last post for more info on how to query by location. Not only can you look at snapshot reports to find out where your users are checking your emails, you can also use the query builder to create smart lists that will push new users in as they sign up and meet the criteria you’ve set for the list.

We’re constantly working to build out our query builder to give you even more access to your data. A super cool feature we recently added is the ability to query by X “or” Y. For example, if you want to see all your users in either X, Y or Z zipcodes, you would set your criteria to “zipcode is,” and your zips to whatever you’d like them to be, like so: “10012 | 10011 | 10010.” You can apply this “or” logic to your own variables or to the ones we set, and the number of “ors” you can use is unlimited.

Have fun!

Regardless of the channel, those who forget people are the heart of the matter, fail.

Here are five multi-channel marketing truths that apply to all social channels including email marketing:

Communities drive the web
Communities and their desire to communicate gave birth to the web and continue to nurture its exponential growth. Provide a solid foundation with good content and then build on that foundation by providing people the tools (comments, reviews, forums and so on) to share and interact with each other around that content.

Know the people, then the technology
Knowing technology and what it can and can’t do is very important, but knowing your subscribers and what they do and don’t want is even more important. No matter what the channel is, you are still trying to engage a person using it.

Don’t tell me what you can do! Show me what I can do!
I think what people do with your product is a lot more powerful for marketing today than what your product can do – no matter how many special things it does. What’s really engaging is to show me people using the products, share their stories or revues on your website, in your email marketing and via other channels such as Facebook.

Respect my inbox
People opted into your email marketing list to get value and that value comes from your content. If you value your subscribers then respect their inbox and only send content they will value.

Listen
All social media including email (because when two humans interact it’s social) works two ways. If all you are doing is talking and you are not listening, then you are only taking advantage of half the power social media has to offer. Make sure you monitor social and interact and always have an actively monitored “reply” address for your email newsletter.

To relate and effectively interact with people, you have to know what they want. That’s why Sailthru developed solutions such as Horizon. Horizon gathers data on your users’ individual interests, based on activity on your website, mobile device and tablet, all tied to each user’s email address.

Here are five simple things you should be doing to integrate your email marketing and social media:

1 – Make your content something people will want to share. Give them ideas and inspiration that provide real value, and your readers will want to share with others.

2 – Place your social share buttons/links in your newsletter and site with each piece of content you are trying to get people to share. Right after the content seems to be the intuitive place for the links, but you can have them at the top too if it doesn’t impede your design.

3 – Use Twitter and Facebook to pre-promote your newsletter up to a week before it goes out. Tweet topic teasers and even post a short excerpt to Facebook from the upcoming newsletter.

4 – When the newsletter is deployed, tweet some subject lines/topics from it. You can tweet a link to the web version of the newsletter inviting non-subscribers to try it out.

5 – Invite people via social to participate! Ask people to post topic suggestions for your blog and newsletter to your Facebook page.

Again, social media and email marketing integration doesn’t have to be complicated. One thing I really like about integrating social media and email marketing is that anyone can start small and work their way up to the level of integration best suited to their customers. Of course, there is a balance here, first serving your subscribers and second managing your resources optimally. Hopefully the five tips above will help you find the balance you need right now with your email marketing.

Be very patient with people when you seek out content in your organization. Don’t expect generating content to be a priority for them. Content is gold, so don’t be afraid to ask management to support your efforts by offering incentives for contributors (coupons, random draws or whatever works). With or without that support, always be enthusiastic, encouraging and never take any credit if you can give it away to someone else.

Product Specialists

Obviously no one knows the products you offer better than these folks. Ask what features they currently love, why they love them, how best to use them and what future plans they have (make sure you clear that kind of stuff before you share it).

Account Managers

These folks know the most asked presales and integration questions. They also likely have very good answers to share. Ask them what objections come up most and how they overcome them.

Customer Service

They hear it all – the good and the bad. I’m sure if you approach them right, they likely have some valuable information they’d like to get out there front and center. Help them be proactive by disseminating important information to customers.

Technical Support

Technical support people know the questions and the problems which come up most. They also know where to find the answers. Find out what those questions are and where customers can get the answers – tech support people are very good at knowing where to find answers.

Customers

Use online surveys, your blog, Facebook, newsletter and Twitter to engage your customers and find out what the want to know about. Not just what they want to know about, but what they want to share. More importantly, listen and find out what they are talking about then add value to that conversation as a participant.

In general…
When you approach others for this kind of information, keep it simple. Don’t ask for novels, ask for point form and links – you can do the ‘wordsmithing’ later. Make it easy and painless to contribute and you’ll get a lot more participation.

Even so, not all the content in your email marketing newsletters will get the love you think it deserves. That doesn’t necessarily mean it wasn’t worth the effort and you should give up on it. If you try some different presentations, you might be able to breathe new life into old content as long as it’s still relevant to the reader.

Just think of those displays in retail. It’s amazing how effective placing a product on one of those end-caps or (as much as I hate it) the middle of the isle can be for sales. Not to mention what I call the “Hall of Tortured Parents.” You know, the shelves and shelves of candy and other junk displayed just at the right time so your kid can hound you while you wait at check out.

So, here are five ideas that might help you get the love your email marketing content deserves:
 

• Create a section in the layout titled “Editor’s Picks” or “Have you Read?” and include a few posts with blurbs and links.

• Feature some content from one category/subject in each newsletter. Rotate the category each month.

• Depending on the frequency of your sends, you could do a monthly or quarterly “recommended reading” section repackaging past posts.

• Mark Brownlow at Email Marketing Reports suggests you consider featuring a “Did you Miss This?” section spotlighting and linking to your previous newsletter. Mark wisely councils you to be careful of “stale” or dated content when doing this.

• Put a “Related Posts” link in your newsletter for each content piece.

It’s not always rocket science  in email marketing. Sometimes, you just need a little creative thought and presentation to get your content loved.

I don’t have to tell you about how volunteering to help others can be a team building exercise, but there are other benefits that perhaps you’ve not thought of.

I really believe that to succeed in today’s social reality, companies must share a little of themselves. A good way to share insight into the corporate culture is to promote a cause. And not just promote it, but actively support it and share with others what you are doing. That support may be in time or resources and of course, financial, but it has to be sincere support. Sharing what you do to help others provides insight into your culture, puts faces with your brand and helps build relationships.

It’s something you should put a bit of thought into. Find a cause which fits your culture and that means consulting your staff. In fact, that’s the best place to start because chances are a few of your people are already involved in some worthwhile charities and supporting one which has a personal connection to a team member, can really increase enthusiasm all around.

I often say that you shouldn’t just talk about what your product can do, but about what people are doing with it – how does it add value to their day? Well, what about the corporation? How do you add value to your day and those around you? How are you making this world a better place? If you are, don’t you think that’s worth a little conversation?

You can use your blog, Twitter, LinkedIn and Facebook to update people on the charity of your choice and tell people how you are helping out and how they can too. You might offer that charity a spot in your newsletter to inform subscribers about what they do. Certainly, you’ll want to have regular updates on your blog about what you are doing to help.

Of course, doing good work is not something new to marketing. It’s certainly nice to know that you can do some good in this world while still doing your job. Just don’t be too shy about talking about it now that you have social media to do it with. In my opinion, as long as you put the emphasis on the cause and avoid shameless self promotion, it’s a great conversation starter!