If you take a look at today's most successful email marketing programs, you'll notice something they all have in common: the ability to motivate customers to promote brands through social networks. Done well, this strategy is about much more than just including a social sharing icon within an email. It's about establishing and growing a relationship with customers. It's about providing them value and content they want to talk to others about. And most importantly, it's about creating true brand fans.
As an industry, we have conditioned subscribers to think of email as a place to receive and manage special offers. While discounts can be very effective at grabbing the consumer's attention and helping to meet quarterly revenue goals, they're not enough to build true brand fans. That's where social media can play a key component.
Here are five lesser-known ways you can make social media and email work together.
