5 Social E-Mail Trends to Watch

Social e-mail sharing, where recipients share noteworthy e-mails with their friends on social networks such as Facebook and MySpace or spread them via Twitter, is the new frontier for today's e-mail marketers.

But as promising as it is, social sharing remains uncharted territory to marketers who want to break new trails but don't know what to expect beyond the next mountain range.

Silverpop last year published a study of e-mail social sharing practices earlier this year called "E-Mails Gone Viral: Measuring 'Share to Social' Performance." Here are some key findings from the study:

1. Share-to-social extends reach.
Using actual numbers from study subjects and an average of 100 friends in a user's social network, social sharing delivered an average 24.3 percent increase in reach. On top of that, the shared messages generated, on average, an additional 1 percent of opens.

2. Facebook rules, but …
All the e-mail messages studied included a link to share them on Facebook, and that social site along with MySpace and Twitter accounted for the majority of messages shared to networks. Links shared to Bebo, Delicious and LinkedIn, however, actually drew a higher percentage of clicks.

3. Brands in subject lines tend to beat offers.
While specific creative elements didn't seem to factor heavily into an e-mail's "shareworthiness," the study found that the e-mails most frequently shared were more likely to feature brands or product names in the subject line rather than specific offers.

4. Sharing activity lasts about one week.
As with e-mail in the inbox, the majority of opens and clicks of shared e-mails occur in the first couple of days following posting on a social site. On average, the last click on shared e-mail messages occurs about seven days after the initial share, with activity ranging from one day to 44 days.