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How can your email campaigns benefit from integrating social media?  To find out, MarketingSherpa surveyed email marketers to see how adding social media to their email campaigns has helped them.

Using their survey results, along with other research and our experience here at Dukky, here are 8 great reasons to start incorporating social media elements into your email campaigns:

Reason #1-Increasing awareness

Adding social sharing to an email campaign is an easy and effective way to increase awareness of your brand.  Social sharing prompts your customers to forward your offer to their friends and family, generating positive word-of-mouth that people are likely to remember.  MarketingSherpa found that 35% of email marketers believed social sharing was “very effective” at increasing awareness, while 58% believed it was “somewhat effective.”

Reason #2-Increasing Reach

By generating positive word-of-mouth, social sharing also increases the reach of your campaign. According to MarketingSherpa, an analysis by email service provider Silverpop found that adding social sharing to an email campaign increased the reach of that campaign by an average of 24.3%.

Reason #3-Increasing ROI

Since social sharing increases the reach of your campaign at minimal additional cost, it often  greatly increases the ROI.  To increase ROI even more,  you can also use your company’s social media accounts to support your email campaigns with appropriate content and messaging.  MarketingSherpa found that 22% of email marketers rated social sharing as “very effective” for increasing ROI, while 51% found it “somewhat effective.”

Reason #4: Get past the “spam filter”

Sure, your emails may be getting past your customer’s email providers spam filter, but does that mean your customers ever really SEE them? Not necessarily…people’s inboxes are bombarded by so much unwanted marketing material that they develop pretty keen “spam filters” of their own, screening much of it out.

However, when someone forwards an email of yours to their friends and family, their friends and family are almost guaranteed to pay attention, unless the customer in question is an incorrigible sender of junk mail and chain letters. Great aunt Flo, I’m looking at you!

Reason #5- Grow your lists

Incorporating social sharing into your email campaign can also help you build your lists. Your customers undoubtedly have people in their networks who are interested in your product-by allowing them to share your offer, you can bring these other potential customers into the fold.

20% of the email marketers surveyed be MarketingSherpa found adding social media components to their email campaigns to be “very effective” at growing email lists, while 52% said it was “somewhat effective.”

Reason #6  Encourage Customer Loyalty

Did you know that customers you gain through recommendations are more loyal to your brand, right from the start? It’s true-a 2009 study by PeopleMetrics found that “A customer is more willing to forgive a service failure if they chose that organization on the strength of a friend or family member’s recommendation than if they came to the company ‘cold.’”

Reason #7: Lead generation

Combining email and social media is also a great way to get more leads. According to MarketingSherpa, 21% of email marketers believed this technique was “very effective” for lead generation, while 55% felt it was “somewhat effective.”

Reason #8:  Identifying your Influencers

When you use Dukky to add social sharing to your email campaigns, you get the added benefit of being able to easily identify which of your customers exercise the most influence on behalf of your brand. Find out who your biggest influencers are, and create special rewards and promotions just for them to keep them talking about your company.

Did I miss any reasons? Post them in the comments!