I read a very interesting article the other day on the Marketing Sherpa blog highlighting how social media and email work together. Some of the takeaways that stuck with me are statistics that were found in Merkle’s study “View from the Social Inbox 2010”:
42% of social media users check their email four times a day or more as opposed to 27% of those that do not use social media
63% indicated that their email address for social media is the same for opt-in permission based email
What does this mean and how do they relate to each other?
First the obvious: social media users are two times more likely to be checking their email at least four times per day, disproving the long standing notion that email deployment should only occur Monday – Friday and in the morning.
Since social media users are regularly checking their inbox, email campaigns can be deployed at non-traditional times (evenings and weekends), with greater confidence that they will be viewed, and even better, acted upon.
For example, if a restaurant would like to offer a special for the weekend, they can deploy an email Friday afternoon knowing customers on their distribution lists will view their email.
Given this information, experimenting with non-traditional email send times can dramatically increase the ROI of certain campaigns.
Email as a Viral Marketing Catalyst
With over 60% of social media users having the same email address for their social media accounts and opt-in permission emails, the barrier to share relative messages from one channel to the other is no longer limited.
Besides viewing the email and completing the Call to Action, the greatest benefit an engaged social media user can bring to an email distribution list is the potential of making the email message viral amongst their social network.
Social media users tend to have “friends/followers” who share the same interests amongst a variety of things. As marketers, our challenge is to serve up relative content to the customer that they find worthy of sharing.
The Merkle study indicates that 20% of Facebook, MySpace and/or Twitter users have posted or shared an email/message from their opt-in permission emails. With highly engaged social media users checking their email four times a day, the potential of an email reaching beyond the original distribution list is high, a key catalyst to establishing a viral expansion loop.
In fact, Silverpop estimates that posted/shared messages on social networks reach around a 25% greater audience than an original email communication. It’s amazing that your email distribution list could increase 25% through your recipients sharing with their social network.
Thinking back to the restaurant example from before, one email sent out Friday afternoon notifying your email distribution list of your weekend special could turn into a pretty significant ROI!
So how does this become a reality? If I knew the simple answer I would be making a lot more money writing this blog. With that said, I think it all goes back to knowing your customer and keeping them engaged with your brand or product. The more you know about them, the more likely that you can present them with beneficial content, which may cause a ripple effect well beyond your original intended audience.
It’s funny how in a country with hundreds of millions of people, the world can seem really small through Social Media. This past Thursday, two members of Three Deep – Brandon Smith (aka @bg3dppc on Twitter) and Jeff Sauer (@jeffsauer) attended a gathering of Twitter users in the Twin Cities at an event called the Minneapolis Tweetup.
The event was held at the Bulldog in NE Minneapolis, which is one of the better restaurant/bars in the Twin Cities, and the promise of free food and cocktails made it an event not to be missed.
We met some great people at the event (@kareemy, @ddn, @swineheart, @paulmalenke to name a few) and called a successful event after about 2 hours – and decided to leave the happy hour around 8 PM. After driving home, I logged on to check my Twitter account and noticed some interesting news about the event:
Continue Reading Three Deep Attends Minneapolis Tweetup, Meets Mark Cuban →
We have alluded several times on this blog as to our company’s continued interest in Twitter as a listening channel. While a lot more informal and lightweight than blogs, the channel is a great way to listen to what’s going on over the web. As part of my continued Autodidacticism (I know it sounds dirty, but look it up… it means self educating), I am constantly perusing the Twitterverse to see if I can learn any interesting tidbit, technique or insights into how I can improve my skillset.
As part of my daily monitoring, I subscribe to searches for Twitter hash tags (basically words with a # before them) for several people, industries, events, etc. One of my favorite hash tags is the Web Analytics channel #measure. In addition, I love the stream provided by the newly minted #ganalytics hash tag (those of you who have been on Twitter for a while know that these are much better than the deprecated #wa and #ga tags, which were polluted by SPAM for Washington and Georgia state related tweets). These two streams keep me up to date with any new developments in these areas, and also allow for some new techniques.
Continue Reading Web Analytics Insights Found Cruising Twitter →
Our company President, Dave Woodbeck, sent the above slide deck to several members of our team this weekend, and I found it worthy of sharing on our blog. I made the executive decision to tone down the actual title of the slide show (what the f**k is social media?) to prevent any misunderstandings from those who read the title and get scared away.
The actual content of the presentation is much less harsh than the title would imply. The underlying theme throughout: you need to join the conversation! You can’t simply ignore the social interactions that are happening around your company, brand, clients, friends, family, etc. While the tactics used to deliver messages may change, social interaction will only become more open and candid. Like-minded individuals will be forming groups, talking, interacting, etc… and those that listen will be the ultimate winners in the social media landscape.
Continue Reading What is Social Media? – Excellent Presentation Social Media →
This question came to me indirectly through Twitter. Three Deep is developing a good relationship with the excellent ladies at the Savvy B2B marketing blog, and in order to keep up with one another, we follow our mutual Twitter updates. When @michellelinn had a question about WordPress (which is my favorite thing in the entire world), I knew I could help. Here’s how it all went down (in true multi-channel fashion):
My website, built on WordPress, is only showing up in Bing (not Google or other search engines). Any ideas on what I can do? Many thanks!
2:18 PM Jul 1st from TweetDeck
Continue Reading SEO Q&A – Search Engines Can’t Find My WordPress Site →
You installed Google Analytics on your site anywhere from 2 months to 3 years ago, thinking that you were pretty awesome for being so forward thinking and staying on top of the latest technology. Now you get awesome charts and pretty map overlays telling you how many visits your site has and where they are coming from. Life is good! Or is it?
Chances are, you are doing Analytics WRONG.
Don’t worry, I would estimate that 95% of people who signed up and installed Google Analytics are not using it to gain insights into what is really working both on and off their site.
Continue Reading $1,500 Google Analytics Action Plan… FREE! →
In addition to our live Twittering the #OMS event in Minneapolis, several Three Deep team members recapped the top 3- 5 things they learned on Tuesday at the Online Marketing Summit. Below are our observations. To view presentations and education materials presented at the June 2nd, 2009 conference in Minneapolis at the Depot, please visit the OMS learning site.
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Jeff S
I felt a little like Matt Damon in Good Will Hunting at this conference when he gets into a war of words at the “Haaavhaaad Baaaah” with a man who has far more formal education than he does. It turns out that for all of the formal education held by the Harvard man, he could have gotten the same amount of education for $1.50 in late charges at the local library. How do you like them apples?
Continue Reading Minneapolis Online Marketing Summit – Three Deep Reflections →
Yesterday 8 members of Three Deep attended the Online Marketing Summit in Minneapolis, and several team members decided to live “tweet” the event. This was first for many of us, and the results were some great interactions with fellow online marketers, occasionally witty commentary, and a great foray for Three Deep into the Twitterverse. Tweets are included in chronological order for readability.
threedeep: See you all at the Online Marketing Summit in Minneapolis Tomorrow! Let us know if you’d like to meet up with Three Deep.
With over 60% of social media users having the same email address for their social media accounts and opt-in permission emails, the barrier to share relative messages from one channel to the other is no longer limited.
threedeep: 
3DEmailMarCom: 
