Getting Social with Sailthru
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.