The blogosphere is abuzz with tired arguments over whether or not social media signals the death of email. The most recent prediction comes from Matt Cain of Gartner, signaling that "by 2014, social networking services will replace email as the primary vehicle for interpersonal communications for 20 percent of business users." This very well might be true, for the 20 percent that need to collaborate; however, it in no way replaces the need for bi-directional communication.
Anyone who engages in a debate over which channel is superior is approaching this from the wrong angle. Not only do both channels complement each other from a marketing perspective, they are significantly more powerful when used together than either channel alone. It's also interesting to note that according to a recent Merkle study, social media users are much more active users of email than those who haven't jumped on the social media bandwagon.
What's most interesting is that while the pundits continue to debate the value of one channel vs. another, the 800-pound gorillas in the email marketing and social media spaces are answering this question for us by taking convergence to the consumer.
In the past few weeks, Google, Microsoft, and Facebook have all announced plans to integrate email and social media for their end users. Google and Microsoft plan to integrate social functionality into Gmail and Outlook respectively, and Facebook is rumored to be launching its own webmail service. These announcements are significant in that, if all three are successful, the consumer's view of email and social media will become highly integrated during the next year or so.
As email marketers, it is important to prepare for this shift by developing an integrated marketing strategy for the two channels now. According to a recent StrongMail industry survey of more than 1,000 business leaders, 69 percent of businesses are planning on following through with this integration in 2010. Given the opportunity, the figure is not too surprising.
Besides the obvious benefit of extending reach, integrating social media into email marketing allows you to establish metrics that tie the sharing activity back to an email database record. As a result, activity can be tracked back to the consumer that "posted," emailed or tweeted about your brand.
Once you have that data, you can review the following key performance indicators to help you determine the value and contribution of influencers within your email database:
Contacts: When the social content in your email messages prompt recipients to share, one of the typical options is to share via email, which is facilitated by allowing users to login into their online address books. Even though social media sharing tools won't provide you with the email addresses, some will tell you how many they have. Knowing the size of their network can help you establish their influencer potential.
Invitations shared: Tracking the number of invitations sent by your email recipients lets you see the potential brand advocates within your email file. While forward-to-a-friend never enabled this, new solutions that motivate sharing within a campaign offer the ability to track social engagement via invitations in a scalable way. Understanding invitation behavior lets marketers target potential influencers in new ways.
Invitations accepted: Tracking activity across multiple generations is very valuable. Recipients within your email database may have large personal networks and send a significant amount of invitations on your brand's behalf, but unless the content you provide them is relevant, you limit your programs' potential. Identifying contacts who drive actual participation within their networks allows you to focus incentives on your most powerful influencers.
Conversions: Whether defined as a sale or a subscription, tracking conversions driven by each member of your database from their networks is essential. This, combined with the elements described above, allows the email marketer to develop an influencer segment and determine contribution to the organization at the individual recipient level.
In the end, it's social media's ability to create close relationships with the customer that makes the world's most valuable brands successful. With the right strategy, adding social media functionality to email can help your brand develop similar relationships with your customers and their networks.
Kristin Hersant is director of corporate marketing at StrongMail. XCOM Media is StrongMail Systems' partner in Southeast Asia.
