Interesting

2011: The Year of the Social Email Inbox Earlier this year Ben & Jerry's abandoned its email marketing initiatives to focus exclusively on social media advertising. It was among the first large brands to make that leap – but given social media’s rapid growth and acceptance among consumers, hardly like to be the last. Still, though, the company is in the minority right now. For the most part, marketers have come to accept that social media and email marketing can and should be complementary operations. What the Studies Show According to eConsultancy's and email service provider, Adestra's fourth annual Email Marketing Industry Census, most marketers are using social media to enhance their email campaigns rather than replace them. The report found that more than a third of companies (37%) are using email to encourage the sharing of content on social networks, and just under a third of companies (31%) say they are planning to do this. A fifth of companies (21%) are using email to promote customer ratings and reviews, while a further 26% have plans to do this. Other studies also point to this strategy’s efficacy. More than half (54%) of respondents to a June 2010 survey of North American email and online marketers by email marketing firm Lyris found that their marketing results were at least somewhat better after integrating social and email. (viaeMarketer). A majority of respondents were also using social media marketing to help build their opt-in email lists, and 21% said social media drove the greatest opt-in rates, after website registration forms and email marketing itself. Another survey, by Get Response, found that email marketing messages with a social sharing option generate 30% higher click through rates than emails without these features. The conclusion that email and social media work best together, tentatively arrived at this year as marketers finally decided that social media was indeed here to stay, is likely to become a driving force behind many online marketing tactics in 2011 – especially as Facebook rolls out its email platform, Facebook Messages. "The Future of Email is Social" Email marketers have already realized that their future is social, Jake Wengroff, global director of Frost & Sullivan’s Corporate Communications, tells MarketingVOX. "While the email opt-in was the holy grail of the permission-based marketing revolution spawned 14 years ago, those same marketers need to retool in a world in which 500 million Facebook users refuse to receive sponsored messages." How to do so, though? Certainly marketers are getting boosts from email vendors rolling out social tools as well as the ISPs themselves. Many are tinkering with their email inboxes to make them more social, StrongMail says in a recent report "The New Rules of Email Deliverability: 2011 and Beyond." For instance, now when Yahoo users are taken to the "What's New" tab at login they are welcomed by a status box for posting messages to Twitter, Facebook and Yahoo, followed by recent messages from their contacts. There is also a list of contracts in the left sidebar that can be clicked to start an instant message. But combining these two separate mediums takes a certain amount of finesse. Some tips include: Remember even if it is the same customer they have different expectations from email and social media, Thomas Harpointner, AIS Media's CEO, tells MarketingVOX. "Customers are looking for different experiences from social media marketing and email marketing. Email is a great way to blast out a short message indicating a sale, or offering a coupon, or offering a chance to sign up for something. They are very effective when they have a specific purpose in mind." Social media, by contrast, is more innovative, flexible and companies can experiment more, he says. In short, "companies should not repurpose the same message in email and social media – consumers will get bored and unsubscribe." That said, it can be a mistake to keep email marketing solely in a siloed environment, according to CoTweet and ExactTarget, in a report, The Collaborative Future.  In some cases, content can be shared – albeit usually in different forms. In its report it offers several suggestions tips to integrate these channels. 1. Promote Facebook games, applications, and competitions in email and on Twitter. 2. Feature winners of Facebook competitions in your email newsletter. 3. Tweet about exclusive content that’s only available to email subscribers. 4. Promote exclusive deals on Facebook and Twitter, but make it only available to email subscribers. 5. Post links to web versions of your best emails on Facebook and Twitter. 6. Include Like and Follow buttons in email newsletters and promotions. 7. Include links to your Twitter and Facebook pages in email newsletters. 8. Collect email addresses at the point of conversion for consumers who link to your site from Facebook and Twitter. 9. Create an email segment containing Twitter Followers and provide them with additional “insider information” through email. 10. Include questions posted on Twitter and Facebook in your emails, and then answer them. 11. Encourage email subscribers to post questions on Facebook and/or Twitter. 12. Host videos on your Facebook page. Include links in your emails and post links on Twitter. Other ways to leverage a complementary Facebook page or Twitter account include: 13. Offering share to social tools. A Silverpop study found that on average, an email will collect an additional 1% of views when shared on networks, a number Silverpop expects will grow as social sharing moves into the mainstream. Also, shared email has a powerful "multiplier effect." Using conservative numbers, the Silverpop model estimates a posted email message has an average increase in reach of 24.3% (based on original emails delivered), but it also expects this figure to increase exponentially when sharing becomes mainstream. 14. Allowing customers to embed content in their own blogs or Facebook pages. This, in fact, has shown to generate a 20% conversion rate, according to StrongMail. That is nearly 7 times as effective as Facebook, at 3%, and ten times better than Twitter's conversion metric of 0.35%. Get Ready to Repeat Everything for the Mobile Environment Finally, whatever lessons you’ve learned as you combined social and online strategies – because they will be repeated again in the mobile environment, Jason Morley at Stanton Public Relations & Marketing, tells MarketingVOX. In 2010 “we saw a shift from a multitude of online strategies to social media strategies. This year there will be similar trends that parallel the same issues – but in this case, it’s likely going to be shifts between social media strategies and mobile device marketing.” Indeed, email marketers have done well linking to social media channels like Facebook – but very few have provided links to or highlighted a mobile app, a Galloway/L2 study found. To prepare for yet another shift in channel, Morley advises that: Messaging needs to be unified and brand needs to be consistent, which means marketers need to build upward – starting with simplicity and customizing details to suit the medium. The initial message should be able to suit marketing efforts of all types, whether that is email marketing, social media, or mobile device advertising. Then, think ahead in terms of versatility. “Even a campaign that is relatively static may morph based on changing audience preferences. So going into the year with a highly focused marketing effort through one method — i.e. a banner advertising and direct email program — may seem okay for now, but some brainstorming should be done about how the campaign could be adjusted to include video and audio components is critical.”