Posted by John Vinson

As an email marketer, I’m sure you’ve read and heard all sorts of ideas in regards to the relationship between social media and email. Some say the advent of social media means the end of email marketing. Others see the two as allies, working together in tandem. Most of it is hearsay, with little facts to back up either point. Well, GetResponse has provided us with some healthy statistics to ponder over, with a study which captured some interesting results.

Basically, the study showed marketers are increasingly connecting social media and email with their campaigns. The study analyzed 500 million emails, from more than 19,000 marketers. While there were many interesting findings, one particular statistic showed the current state of the relationship between social media and email:

“Emails that included at least three social sharing icons generated over 55 percent higher CTR than messages without any sharing options.”

So, including links to social media provides a higher CTR, but how many marketers are actually adopting the practice?

60% of emails linked to at least 1 network

26% linked to 2 networks

8% to 3 networks

6% to 4 or 5 networks

Twitter was found to be the most used sharing option, with 67% of all emails with a social link having one directed to Twitter. Facebook was right behind, at 62%. Not surprisingly, Twitter also showed the best click-through rate at 10%.

For people who added more than 1 link or sharing icon, they enjoyed a higher CTR as well. With 3 or more links, the CTR increased to 11%, while having only 1 link showed an 8% CTR. Not having a social link at all dropped CTR to 7%.

These statistics are definitely worth pondering over, if you’ve been deciding whether to introduce social linking in your newsletters. There will still be detractors who see social and email as completely different worlds, but these people obviously don’t have the facts. Adding a social element doesn’t guarantee you greater success, but with evidence of higher CTR it certainly doesn’t hurt.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, June 23rd, 2010 at 9:10 am and is filed under Email, Social Media. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

About the Author: John is a staff writer for WebProNews.