When you’re already running a website that off ers a product or service, it may sometimes feel superfluous to also have to keep track of all the social media websites connected to it. Yet these sites are an essential component of a successful business, because like it or not, social is here to stay.
When it comes to these emails, think about how your social sites provide value to your community. The folks over at Crazy Egg said it best: “In social media, focus on relationship first, sales last.” Push the hard sell to the side and prioritize building a relationship by stressing it in your invitation, and you’ll have more people clicking through for follows and likes. Alongside this, make sure that, as VerticalResponse suggests, your email is informative, easy to read, and short.
3 Best Practices
- Embed live social feeds. If you want to showcase one particular channel or platform, or a combination of a couple, a live social feed is a great way to let users see exactly what’s happening in real time.
- Use widgets or sharing buttons. GetResponse found that emails including social sharing buttons experienced a 158% higher click-through rate. But be sure to include links to all of them, as some users may have a preference for one platform over another.
- Give people a reason to engage with your social channels. For example, allow them to enter a competition by liking a post or submitting an image with a specific hashtag.
10 Subject Lines
An important subject line tip that’s been well summarized by Constant Contact is “don’t be spammy.” They continue on to say, “Subject lines that are aggressively sales-ey are often the most likely to be marked as spam.” Your call to social campaign is great, because it doesn’t have to be promotional at all. Make it about your customers and community.
- Join our community
- Let’s get social!
- Connect with friends
- One of us! One of us!
- Daily updates from your people
- We’d love to see you more
- There’s more to experience
- Want to hear more?
- Wild times on our [insert name of social platform] page
- Connect with our social club
5 Calls to Action
You’re trying to promote cross-channel audience building with your social email campaign, so keep your calls to action focused on your social channels. According to Econsultancy, “don’t use too many buttons” and “make them stand out.”
- Come This Way
- Discover More Here
- Follow for Cool Tips
- Join to Know First
- Play With Us
Dynamic Content Suggestions
Your customers may be interested in following you on social. But they want to know what’s going on there before clicking through. Add AVARI dynamic social blocks to show them what they are missing out on, and watch the added engagement you get from the two options we suggest:
- Showcase what’s hot on social! Add a content block of whichever social channel you want to promote so that people can see what you post and are much more likely to click.
- Envigorate emails with social channel activity right inside the inbox for a bigger push. Add a variety of content blocks and let your audience decide for themselves where they want to follow you.
If you're not yet convinced about the power of using live embedded social feeds in email, consider how much social has become a part of every day life and think again. Email is the number one channel by which consumers want to recieve information from brands, and the perfect vehicle by which to entice them into becoming community fans too.
