Social sharing is a tactic that allows email recipients to share email content on popular social networks and other social media sites. You've likely seen examples of this in the "forward to a friend" feature in an email or the placement of social network icons (from Twitter or Facebook, for example) in email messages that allow recipients to share email content with their online networks.

Research shows that social sharing extends the reach of email content to new markets. It does this by combining the targeting of email marketing with the reach of social media marketing to promote list growth – all at a low cost.

Email marketing extended through social sharing can provide several significant benefits to marketers needing to do more with less.

• Social sharing encourages engagement. Email messages that are forwarded by trusted colleagues or friends are more apt to be read and believed. And this engagement helps build your brand and online reputation.


• Social sharing expands the reach of your email list. Friends and colleagues of your opt-in subscribers get exposed to your message – and some of those people will decide to opt-in to your email list as well. 


• Social sharing increases relevance. Your email subscribers likely only share your message with other interested parties and ultimately that increased relevance translates to greater conversions and ROI.

By combining email marketing with social sharing, you can also greatly increase the speed by which you grow your email opt-in list.

According to a host of sources available in the public domain, the average email list churn rate is about 30 percent, annually. So if you have an email list of 100,000, a cool 30,000 of those names will likely fall by the wayside in 2010. Not only do you need to maintain your email opt-in list to account for this 30% churn, but you also need to keep increasing the size of your opt-in list, on top of it. Social sharing can help get you there.

With some simple links and icons, marketers can put social sharing combined with email marketing into action to drive engagement, opt-ins, and relevance – which ultimately and most importantly drives higher and more frequent conversions and improved ROI.

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About the Author

Shannon Titus is the senior marketing programs manager at Lyris. She is responsible for creating compelling email marketing communications and programs to share with Lyris customers and prospects.

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