Last month, we rolled out a shiny new feature we dubbed “Share-to-Social,” which enables email recipients to click a button in an email to share their favorite messages with their contacts/friends in their social networks. Not only that, but we made sure the marketers using this feature could track the results. (You can check out my blog post about it here.)
Well, we didn’t stop there. This month we added the same capabilities to our Landing Pages application, which enables marketers to easily create landing pages coordinated with their emails.
Also, we’ve added a few new social networks to the mix. We’re up to five and counting: Digg, Facebook, MySpace, Twitter and LinkedIn.
After email, landing pages are a natural next step for sharing marketing content into social networks. Think about it. MarketingSherpa estimates that up to 50 percent of visitors to a landing page will abandon it in the first eight seconds. So, for people who stick around, we’re talking about either: the most highly engaged visitors and/or the very best landing pages, able to grab attention and keep it. Either way, these are pages with a high propensity for going viral. They yielded the first click. They can yield the next. And the next.
If you’re taking the time to create fantastic, thoughtful landing pages that recipients are most likely to share, then this is one capability you definitely want to consider adding to your email toolkit.
I really like the concept of your Share to Social feature but there is one thing that seems a bit counterintuitive to me. If emails and landing pages are becoming more and more relevant and personalized, why would one then want to share it to a social network which is more of a mass audience? I guess I could understand general messages like the promotion of an event. But if the content is personal and relevant to my preferences, it definitely wouldn’t automatically be personal and relevant to all of the people I’m connected to on a social network. Just a thought I’m curious to get your take on.
“Great question, Steve. BTW, I dig your Web site.
From my perspective, the success of social networks stems in large part from people wanting to share personal things about themselves—Scott posted a picture of his dog, Scruffy; Scott is having a super cool day at work, etc. With Share-to-Social, marketers have the power and potential to create messages, both generic and personally-tailored, that they think their audience would want to share.
Generic emails and landing pages can provide interesting content that reveals details about the person doing the sharing, as well as letting the person spread a little good news. For example:
Personally-tailored email and landing pages can be even better. For example:
Even though I’m sharing into a mass audience, it’s a network. Some of my friends (and their friends) might delight in chicken wings and vintage Modest Mouse as much as I do, or are as interested in knowing what’s on my Santa shopping list as I am in having them know it. So, sharing information that is personal and relevant can still be pretty personal and relevant to others, even those who don’t know me personally (yet).