Integrating Social Media with Email

There is a lot of talk right now about integrating social media into emails. According to eMarketer just over 50% of respondents have implemented, or at least formulated, a strategy to connect the two power marketing channels. With only half of the executives surveyed on the bandwagon, this is a great time to get a jump on your competition.

There are quite a few reasons why adding social functionality to an email template is a great idea.

• First, it takes little-to-no effort to manage directly after you have set it up, especially if you are already monitoring the and interacting on the social media sites you send users too. 
• Secondly, there is not necessarily a lot of user overlap between the two marketing channels; those individuals you reach by email who tweet about your content may not be following you. By using two channels congruently you can expand your social media base while getting some free word of mouth. 
• Thirdly, you can compare your email service provider's analytics with your own to see which content is being shared and clicked to; any content that sticks out might just be a gem you need to replicate to create truly engaging content.

Implementation

There is at least one simple way to integrate social media into email that requires little to no knowledge of social media - AddThis is a link sharing and bookmark service that automates the process of allowing users to post information from a blog, email, or whatever to their favorite social media sites. When the user clicks the Facebook icon, for instance, they are forwarded to Facebook's link sharing page with relevant information filled in and the link ready; similar actions take place for other social sites. One great thing about AddThis is its analytics feature which allows you to track which sites your users post to as well as demographics, clicks, and top content. AddThis's integration in the email provider I use, SubscriberMail, is a little spotty as it allows little-to-no customization, but I'm sure they will work out any problems over time.

If you are trying to be either a little more creative, or a little more controlling, you can build your own tool. Create your own icons for whichever services your target audience is most likely to use, then use the following URLs for links (documentation is linked, for those I could find):

• Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/share.php?u=&t=
• Twitter: http://twitter.com/home?status=
• LinkedIn: http://www.linkedin.com/shareArticle?mini=true&url=&title=
  &source=
• Digg: http://digg.com/submit?phase=2&;url=
• Email: mailto:?subject=&body=

There are a lot more out there but these probably cover the majority of people, especially those just starting out. For any others you may want, you can generally find the documentation on the company's site.

Calculating Community Equity

So I have been thinking about David Allston's idea of community equity, and have worked out what I think is a good approach to the problem. The above equation would return the added community equity.

ACE (added community equity) is simply community equity generated during the current time period minus the community equity generated during the previous time period. This shows the net benefit of actions taken by the company during the current time period (whatever that may be).

For comparison purposes community equity is equal to total community equity divided by the number of followers. I have framed it this way so that two users with widely different follower bases can compare the value of their actions during a similar time period. Community equity, then, is the sum of each follower's followers times a given weight for each follower, plus the number of clicks per thousand followers (for the account) plus the number of new users.

The weights are defined as the ratio of positive tweets over negative tweets if there are more positive than negative tweets, or the ratio of negative tweets over positive tweets if there are more negative tweets than positive. Weight is calculated for each individual follower.

Actions taken into account in this equation:

• Actions taken by followers that increase awareness of brand, either positively or negatively, will have the most affect on community equity. People talking about your brand and retweeting your tweets are worth the most.
• Clicks per thousand followers is a measure of interactivity and attractiveness of content. I use clicks per thousand followers as clicks per followers would have to little affect. This may need to be changed straight clicks - any opinions on this?
• New followers - it is reasonable to assume, in my opinion, that new followers are in some way engaged in your content and information, or they wouldn't have followed you. This is a major assumption many followers may just be looking for you to follow them.

What is not included:

• The number of followers you have: This is not added to your community equity score directly as non-interactive followers add little to you community. While you are having an impression on them, the people that go to bat for you are really having the most affect on your brand and your community.
• Number of tweets can have either a positive or a negative affect on trust building - if you are spamming tweets with marketing material and little value-added, you would be negatively affecting your brand. I would like to include something about this in the equation, but it may not be readily available information. 

Added community equity would have to be compared to prior periods to determine what numbers are a good range, what is average, and what is below,

There is a lot more that could probably go into this, but for a starting model it sounds good. Let me know what you think could be added to make it more reflective of community equity.