Maximizing Social Sharing of Emails: A Silverpop Benchmark Study

Silverpop
From First Click to Lifetime Customer

WHITE P A P E R

Emails Gone
Viral: Measuring
“Share to Social”
Performance
A Silverpop Benchmark Study

Engagement Marketing Solutions

Silverpop Engagement Marketing Solutions WHITE PAPER

EMAILS GONE VIRAL: MEASURING
“SHARE TO SOCIAL” PERFORMANCE
A Silverpop benchmark study
Executive Summary

A lthough the concept of sharing email messages with social
networks is still in its infancy, Silverpop launched this study of data
generated by our Share-to-Social feature to measure the current state
of “social sharing” activity and to understand what motivates recipients
to share email messages with their trusted social networks.

We hope this study provides insights to companies deploying or planning 6. View rates have room to grow. On average, your email will collect
to deploy share-to-social functionality so they can maximize the opportuni- an additional 1 percent of views when shared on networks, a number
ties of this emerging viral technique. we expect will grow as social sharing moves into the mainstream.
7. Shared email has a powerful “multiplier effect.” Using conserva-
With this report, we have created a series of benchmarks against which tive numbers, our model estimates a posted email message has an
marketers can measure their own social activity. These benchmarks average increase in reach of 24.3 percent (based on original emails
establish a baseline for future studies that will examine whether sharing delivered), but we also expect this figure to increase exponentially
activity or metrics change as the practice spreads from early-adopting once sharing becomes mainstream.
email recipients and marketers to the mainstream.

The findings are presented in the form of questions marketers often
have about social sharing and email, such as: Which networks should I
Survey Methodology
Silverpop researchers reviewed 562 email messages containing links to
include? How many? Which ones generate the most clicks on my shared
social networking sites that were sent from 98 business-to-consumer
messages? Background information and best-practice recommendations
companies and 16 business-to-business firms to more than 54 million
presented after the findings will help you sharpen your share-to-social
recipients. We analyzed data from email and social network sharing activ-
focus for maximum benefit.
ity and also evaluated these creative variables:
What Did We Learn? 1. Use of a brand or product name in the subject line
1. Most companies strike a middle ground. A majority of email mes- 2. Use of offer in the subject line
sages intended for sharing include four to five social sharing links. 3. Average viral life of emails on social networks
2. The life of a shared message is about one week. Email messages 4. Design format of the emails
generate clicks on sharing links for an average of 6.8 days, median 5. Position within the email of links to social networks
of two days, ranging from one day to 44 days. 6. Popularity of various social networks
3. Including sharing links isn’t enough. Thirty-five percent of email
messages studied generated no social email clicks. Simply including
sharing links doesn’t cut it. “Right now, your customers are writing about your products on blogs and
4. Click-through rates are inconsistent. We found little correlation recutting your commercials on YouTube. They’re defining you on Wikipedia
between many variables, such as location of the social-sharing link and ganging up on you on social networking sites like Facebook. These
in the email, offer type, whether an offer was included in the subject are all elements of a social phenomenon that has created a permanent
line, format of the email, etc., and the likelihood that a message shift in the way the world works. Most companies see it as a threat. You
would be shared. can see it as an opportunity.”
5. Facebook dominates among social networks. No matter what — Charlene Li and Josh Bernoff,
you measure, if Facebook is one of your variables, it will generally “Groundswell: Winning in a World Transformed by Social Technologies”
outperform other networks—but there are exceptions.

www.silverpop.com 1-866-SILVPOP (745-8767) © 2009 Copyright Silverpop. All rights reserved. The Silverpop logo is a registered trademark of Silverpop Systems Inc. 2


Study Findings: Answering Marketers’ Frequently Asked Questions Number of Social Network Links Used - By Percentage
40%
1. Which social network links should I include in my messages?
According to Nielsen, Facebook is the world’s most popular social network. 35%
It has more than 250 million users, almost half of which log on every day.
Three in 10 people online around the world visit it each month. 30%
Facebook also receives the greatest amount of shared content, accord-
25%
ing to a study by widget maker AddToAny of the networks to which users
of its content-sharing button post the most links. Its research found 24 20%
percent of users posted content on Facebook, followed by 11.1 percent
who generated email messages with shared links and 10.8 percent who 15%
posted to Twitter.
10%
Not surprisingly, every social email evaluated by Silverpop included at
least a link to Facebook. MySpace, Twitter and Digg were the next most 5%
frequently included links. While LinkedIn was a distant fifth overall, within
0%
the B2B emails analyzed, 83 percent included a link to LinkedIn.
1 2 3 4
% 5 6
Percent of Email in Which Links to 7 8
Specific Networks Were Included
Although our research didn’t discover the magic number of links to
Bebo include, narrowing your focus to just the most important ones will help you
Reddit increase viral activity among the key few. Combine your survey data with
Delicious analysis of which networks over time are delivering the most sharing activ-
LinkedIn ity to narrow (or expand) your message’s universe of social networks.
Digg 3. Which social networks get shared most often?
Twitter The Average Email Share Rate by Network is designed to understand
MySpace the relative frequency of sharing per each network. To set a baseline, we
Facebook calculated the individual number of shares per social network and divided
by the total number of unique clicks per message.
0% 20% 40% 60% 80% 100%
Interestingly, while links to Facebook, MySpace and Twitter were included
most often in email messages, Bebo, Delicious and LinkedIn actually had a
Takeaway: While including share links to Facebook, MySpace and Twitter higher percentage of share link clicks among the networks.
are safe bets, it is critical that you identify on which networks your sub-
scribers are most active. Utilize third-party research such as Forrester’s Average Email Share Rate by Network
Technographics profiles and ask subscribers when they opt in, as part of a
6.00%
subscriber profile, or in a stand-alone subscriber survey.
5.13% 5.41%
2. How many social network links should I include in my email messages? 5.00%
We counted the number of network links each email message provided,
whether as a text link or an icon. 4.13%
4.00% 3.88% 3.99%
• Average number of social networks included in messages: 4.5
• Median number of networks included in messages: 4 3.07%
3.00% 3.22%
• Number of networks ranged from 1 to 8 (The Silverpop Share-to- 3.17%

Social feature offered eight social networks at the time of the study.)
• 16% linked to 6 or more networks 2.00% 1.71%

• 60% linked to 4 or 5 networks 1.19%
• 23% linked to 4 networks 1.00% 1.24%
1.48%
0.85%
0.95%
0.83%
Takeaway: There is no “correct” or definitive number of social sharing 0.96%
0.00%
links to include in your emails. What’s more important is to ensure that you
Bebo
include links to the networks and sharing sites that align best with your Delicious Digg
Facebook
Average LinkedIn
content, value proposition and your subscribers’ social activities. Median
MySpace
Reddit
Twitter



We surmise that while marketers included share links to these networks 5. What percentage of overall clicks can I expect from social email links?
(Reddit, Bebo, Delicious and LinkedIn) less frequently, when they did The Social Email Clicks to Email Clicks metric measures how effective
include these links, they were more closely aligned with their subscriber your email was in generating share clicks as a percentage of the overall
base and social habits. click-through rate of an email. It answers the question, “Of the recipients
who clicked my email, how effective was my content, design, network
For example, while it is safe to include a Facebook link in just about any options and other factors in motivating them to also click a share link with
email, content-oriented and networking-oriented emails would be more the intent to share?” It is calculated as unique email share clicks divided
likely to be shared to Delicious and LinkedIn, respectively. by the total unique email clicks.
Takeaway: Align the social networks you choose for your email mes- • The average for the study emails is 8.7 percent, meaning that a little
sages with the demographics and motivations of your subscribers and the less than one of every 10 clicks in the average email is on a share link.
content and value proposition of your emails. Getting this element right will • The median is 3.1 percent.
greatly increase the rate of sharing from your emails. • Social email clicks as a percentage of overall clicks range from 0.1
percent to 100 percent.
4. What kind of click-through rates do
shared messages generate?
The Social Email Click-through Rate
measures the click-through rate on the
share links in the emails. It is calculated the
same as email CTR: unique clicks divided by
emails delivered.

• The average across all messages in the
study is 0.5 percent.
• Social Email Click-through Rates ranged
from a low of less than 0.1 percent to a
high of 38.7 percent.
• 8.1 percent of emails have social CTRs
of more than 1 percent.
• 49 percent of the email messages have
social email CTRs of 0.1 percent or less.
• While the average social email CTR of
0.5% may not seem very impressive,
it is roughly 1/10th of the average 4.7
percent CTR measured on the emails in
this study.
• It’s also several times higher than the
average CTR on email “Forward to a
Friend” (FTAF) links. While we are not aware of any industry studies • In the top-performing quartile, the average is 25.5 percent with a
on FTAF, we believe most marketers are seeing CTRs from about median 19.9 percent.
0.01 percent to 0.1 percent. • In the bottom quartile, both the average and the median are 0.5 percent.
• In essence, for the emails in the top performing quartile, roughly 1/5
Takeaway: The low (0.1 percent or less) social email CTR on nearly half of to 1/4 of the clicks in the email were on a share-to-social link.
emails may appear discouraging, but it actually confirms our expectation • Some differences we uncovered between the top and bottom quar-
that social sharing success takes much more effort than just slapping in a
tiles based on this metric:
few share links.
• Messages in the top quartile are more likely to brand the subject line
Variables such as link location (placing the social network links at the (42 percent) than messages in the bottom quartile (23 percent).
top, in the middle or at the bottom of an email message) or design (text • Messages in the top quartile are less likely to mention an offer in
links versus the networks’ official icons) can have an impact on sharing, the subject line (36 percent) than the bottom quartile (55 percent).
but those aspects are less important and should not be the focus of your • Layout likely has some impact: Messages in the top quartile are
testing efforts. For roughly the same production effort, however, the 0.5 more likely to be emails with mostly text (44 percent) compared
percent average social email CTR is significantly higher than the CTR on to messages in the bottom quartile, where 24 percent were
email FTAF links, and the viral reach is much greater than with FTAF. considered mostly text.



Takeaways:
• Although it’s not conclusive in this study, the greater prevalence of
brand names in the subject line of more frequently shared email
messages supports a common belief that trust and affinity are
important motivators of sharing. (See the following section for more
explanations about what prompts people to share content.)
• Also, the lower propensity to use offer-based subject lines among
email messages in the top quartile supports our expectation that the
subscriber’s own inner motivations are superior drivers of sharing
over offers with simple price cuts or savings.
• We can only conjecture why the emails with higher share link CTRs
had a higher propensity to be mostly text-based emails. It is likely
that many of these “text-based” emails were short, focused and
lacked the multitude of products, articles, images and other attributes
of image-oriented emails. This singularity may have made it more
logical for recipients to share these emails with their networks.

6. Where should I put my social-network links to encourage more
sharing: at the top, in the middle or at the bottom?
As with so many email-related questions, this one has two responses,
neither of which directly answers the question: 1) “It depends,” and 7. How many people will view my message once it gets posted on a
2) “Whichever location you pick, test it, test it and test it again.” network?
The Social Email View Rate conveys how many additional people viewed
We looked at where marketers placed their social-network links, either at the an email message after it was posted on a social network. It is expressed
top, in the middle or at the bottom to see if we could uncover any trends. as a percentage of email unique opens and is calculated by dividing the
total social network email opens by the unique number of email opens.
While the majority of email marketers added social links to the bottom of
the message, we could find no conclusive evidence to show that one loca- • The overall average is 1 percent, and the median is 0.06 percent.
tion increased sharing more than another. All link positions saw messages • Nearly 11 percent of email messages see an additional 1 percent of
with both high and low sharing rates, although the messages with links email views.
located at the bottom had a greater percentage of high share rates. • In the top performing quartile, the average is 3.9 percent, with a
median of 0.6 percent.
However, without conducting A/B split testing to compare one location
• The highest lift was 292 percent.
over another, we aren’t prepared yet to announce the bottom as the best
location for share links. How to understand this metric: Assume 100,000 recipients opened
your message. On average, an additional 1,000 people viewed your mes-
Percentage of emails with Various sage from a share on a network. For a top performer, a shared message
Social Link Positions would generate an average additional 3,900 views (or opens).
12% Takeaway: We believe that an average bump of an additional 1 percent of
5%
email views is quite encouraging at this stage of sharing adoption by both
Top senders and recipients. Expect to see this additional view rate increase
Middle steadily as marketers increasingly understand what makes their emails
83% Bottom shareworthy and subscribers become more comfortable sharing email
content across their social networks.

8. Which social networks will generate the most views on messages
posted to a network?
Takeaway: Consider starting with your share links in the familiar admin- Social Network Effectiveness measures the comparative performance of
istrative area at the bottom of your messages, but focus more on design, major social networks for driving social network views. It is calculated by
copy and value proposition. Then conduct various split tests over several dividing the number of social network views by social email clicks (the
messages to determine what approach works best for you. Additionally, recipient’s click on a social network link or icon on the email message).
some Silverpop clients who have tested location and style have found In simpler terms, this metric conveys the percentage of share link clicks
that the treatment and copy surrounding the share link is ultimately more that result in emails being viewed on the network—hence “network
important than link location. effectiveness.”



Facebook: Takeaway: As with email in the inbox, you can expect the most opens and
• Average: 68.3 percent clicks of shared emails on social networks to occur in the first couple of days
• Top quartile average is 194.7% with median 133.3% following delivery. If you are incorporating more social and viral activity into
• Emails in the bottom quartile generated no views your marketing, keep in mind that maintaining a constant flow of viral activity
will likely require a new message about every five to seven days.
MySpace:
• Average: 4.6% 10. How can I estimate the number of additional people who will see
• Top quartile average is 18.4% with median 5.6% my email once it is posted to a social network?
• Emails in the bottom quartile generated no views The Estimated Social Reach Rate metric is an estimate of the reach of a
Twitter: shared email. Answering this question is difficult because so many variables
• Average: 5% affect the outcome, and tracking actual reach is not possible across most of
• Top quartile average is 20.1% with median 4.8% the networks. However, we developed a model that you can use and modify
• Emails in the bottom quartile generated no views as appropriate to estimate your additional email reach via social sharing.

Two caveats: First, Silverpop cannot track how many email shares were
Social Network Effectiveness
actually completed on a network, only how many share links were clicked.
Second, we do not know how many “friends” each person has on a net-
work, so we can’t estimate how large of a population potentially could be
Top Quartile - Average exposed to an email share on that network.
Twitter To create a reliable estimate, our model assumes:
MySpace • 50 percent of the people that click on a share link end up actually posting
Facebook the share. This obviously varies widely by network, the content, etc.—but
Average a 50 percent completion rate is probably a conservative rate.
• The average person has 100 friends in his/her network. Again, this varies
widely by individual, demographic and network. According to an article in
0 50 100 150 200 The Economist magazine, Facebook sociologist Cameron Marlow found
that the average Facebook user has 120 “friends.”
The social networks and sharing sites Twitter, Bebo, Delicious, Digg, LinkedIn The Model: Number of Social Email Clicks (share links clicked) multiplied
and Reddit all generated minimal network views. This may mean that users by estimated share completion rate (50 percent) multiplied by estimated
view these networks more as “post-to” rather than “open/view” networks. average number of social friends per person (100) divided by emails
delivered equals estimated social reach rate.
Of all the networks in the study, only Facebook had a strong Social
Network Effectiveness. More than one quarter of Facebook messages Real-Life Email Example: Here’s how the model works using an actual
had an effectiveness rate of at least 100 percent. email from this study: 5,021 share links clicked X 50 percent estimated
share completion X 100 social friends/111,954 emails delivered= 224%
Takeaway: This data clearly suggests the importance of creating highly increase in reach. In this example, the email share content would have
“usable” default content to ensure and increase the likelihood the content will an estimated reach of 251,050.
actually be posted and then viewed. As with all marketing content, test your
share content in advance to see how it is presented to social network viewers. Based on this model, here are study findings regarding the Estimated
Social Reach Rate:
9. How long will my shared email messages generate clicks • Average is 24.3%
on the networks? • Median is 5.4%
To measure the active life of a shared message, we created a new metric, • Top quartile average is 55.1% with median 13.8%
Life of Share Activity, to determine how many days a shared email mes- • Bottom quartile average is 6.8% with median 1.7%
sage saw opens or clicks after being posted on a network. • High is 1,933%
Although several factors can influence the “life of a share,” such as an offer Takeaway: While the assumptions in our model are certainly debatable,
expiration or a subject line that extends interest, in general expect the greatest we hope you’ll find the model itself valuable in estimating the additional
percentage of sharing (66%) to occur from one to five days after email delivery. reach of your emails. Modify the model to fit any insight you have on your
• Average Life of Share Activity is 6.8 days subscribers. For example, if they tend to be early adopters and active on
• Median Life of Share Activity is 2 days Twitter, you might take your average up to a few hundred friends. If they
• Subscriber activity ranged from a low of 1 day to a high of 44 days are teens on MySpace, perhaps you cut the average number of friends but
• 18 percent of messages had sharing activity for more than 2 weeks increase the share completion rate.



Also, consider modifying this “reach” metric to reflect social media impres- Altruism: People share content because they believe their network or
sions. The Facebook research we referred to earlier notes that although friends will want to know about it. Sharing makes them feel good.
members have 120 friends on average, they typically only actively interact
with about five to 10 of their friends. Validation: Sharing certain kinds of content validates the sharer’s sense
of worth, expertise or views. Sharing feeds the ego.
Finally, whatever model you use, metrics such as Estimated Social Reach
Rate are an important part of measuring the success of email share-to-social Affinity: When people have common interests, they want to share news,
efforts. Because sharing emails to social networks is still so new, the practice articles and other information with like-minded friends and contacts.
is actually several phases behind social network usage itself. So, the greater Sharing makes people feel more a part of their community.
value is in the viral multiplier effect that happens once an email is shared. As
Prurience: Sharing makes people feel less guilty for gawking at other
share-to-social adoption grows, the value of this exciting new functionality and
people’s misfortunes.
process will grow exponentially.

Making These Study Results Work for You
Social Sharing Success Requires More than Simply
Inserting Share Links into Email
Silverpop client experiences have shown that email sub-
scribers are more than willing to share email messages
with their friends and peers when they can post them easily
to their social networks.

Getting email to go viral through traditional methods is
difficult. Silverpop’s “2006 Email List Growth Survey” found
that while 24 percent of respondents said they plan to
implement a viral marketing campaign, only 10 percent
who had done so said they were successful.

Further, Forward-to-a-Friend links don’t extend your email
message as far as social sharing can. Without offering
incentives, you can typically expect forward rates of only a
few tenths of 1 percent. What Is “Shareworthy” Content?
These elements can help make an email message a candidate for
However, the practice of sharing Web content has now spilled over into
sharing on social networks:
email content sharing on trusted social networks. Email marketers who
can craft message that recipients not only anticipate receiving but also Trustworthiness. Sharing content involves some risk for subscribers,
find relevant enough to share with friends will find social sharing can because they are attaching their personal brand to yours. If your brand’s
dramatically extend their reach. trustworthiness is questionable or in decline, sharing your email is likely
to be the last thing on a subscriber’s mind.
To understand how to create highly viral or “shareworthy” messages, you
need to first know what motivates content sharers. Although the concepts Tribal interests. You must know what “tribes” (determined by customer
outlined below were not designed specifically with email demographics or personas) comprise your list and what motivates these
in mind, they do apply directly to email sharers. groups of like-minded individuals.

Why Do People Share Content? Simple and obvious. If something is complicated or requires an expla-
Paraphrased below are the most common impulses that compel sharing, nation, the recipient will realize that it will fall on deaf ears and will have
according to Charlene Li and Josh Bernoff, authors of Groundswell, a little motivation to share. One exception: People who want you to think
must-read for anyone exploring social media practices: they are brilliant will be excited to show you just how smart they are.

Contributing to the conversation: The goal or impulse to share is to Ease of sharing. If the recipient has to spend too much energy to
further a conversation. Sharing benefits people through the value of the share the content, few will bother.
information shared in return.
Social acumen and adoption of subscribers. While social networks
Self-interest: Sharing provides personal benefit through points, discounts, have gone mainstream, your subscribers’ use might vary widely, from
freebies, etc. Sharing rewards the pocketbook. near 100 percent to very low.



Creates value. Your message must provide Take the long view. Don’t despair if the clicks
value to your recipients before they will come slowly. A subscriber database full of
share with their networks. One exception: 20-somethings will likely take to sharing more
when people know that a particular topic or quickly than a B2B list of C-level executives.
offer is extremely relevant to friends, even It will also take many months of testing and
though they don’t benefit personally. observing to find your sharing sweet spot.

Reward/Incentives. These can increase Design for sharing. Group all your viral
your forward or share rates, but “rewards” features to capture both social networkers and
that tap into sharing motivations, as outlined email forwarders. Don’t overlook any opportu-
above, will likely deliver a better ROI than a nity to go viral. Consider designating specific
chance to win an iPod. messages to focus specifically on social shar-
ing and list building. Design the emails from the
Content. Your messages must be well- subject line to the offer, copy and sharing link
written, timely and relevant, with a clear placement to encourage sharing—particularly
value proposition, call to action and appeal from your most influential sharers.
for sharing.
Make sharing worth the effort. Give customers
Best Practices for Social Email a good reason to share your promotional emails
Sharing with their friends, and make it easy for them
Overview: Although we were surprised ini- to connect by including links within the email
tially to find little consistency in which kinds to their favorite social sites. Turn them into
of email messages were shared the most or a powerful extension of your acquisition and
drew the most social network views, that in awareness efforts - helping
itself indicates that social sharing is something that’s highly unique to your you to reach highly qualified
company, your brand, your email database and the demographics and prospective customers who
social acumen of your email recipients. share the same interests as
your brand’s most engaged
It also means that the most frequently heard advice for success in email email recipients. Doing so will
marketing also applies to social sharing of email messages: Test every as- drive revenue and lifetime
pect of your email messages to determine what spurs greater social sharing customer loyalty.
and, subsequently, greater social-network opens, clicks and conversions.
Conclusion: Social Sharing is the New and Better
Silverpop Recommends: Forward-to-a-Friend
Educate your readers. Don’t just drop icons into your message template The findings in this study support our contention that social sharing, while
and expect sharing to take off. Highlight your social-sharing option in not as prominent yet in email messages as the FTAF link, has already sur-
your welcome messages and regular mailings. For maximum exposure, passed FTAF in extending the reach of an email message.
launch your social sharing in a special message or devote prime space
in your regular message to highlight the location and use of your sharing What makes email social sharing worth the effort to implement is the vast
icons or links. actual and potential increase in reach. Email forwarding will typically reach
only a handful of friends, generated when a subscriber uses the forward
Reward your persuaders. Recognize the email recipients who regularly button in his email client or an FTAF function.
share your messaging with social networks, and pay particularly close
attention to your most active sharers. Acknowledge their contributions Although social sharing among subscribers is still a new concept, the
by giving them more than what others might get: coupons with deeper potential to extend your email message reach to hundreds of recipients
discounts, first to receive new product announcements, etc. Work with per individual share activity exists today.
them and reward them.
However, success with social sharing requires effort: choosing the links
Test, test, test. While some of the best practices of email marketing that resonate most with your subscribers, providing the kind of content
still work when encouraging recipients to post messages on social sites, that appeals to your subscribers’ sharing motivations and embodies the
there are differences and nuances in what generates the highest results. elements that promote “shareworthiness” as defined in the previous sec-
Because share-to-social is still so new, the various best practices are still tion, educating subscribers about how to share content using your links
emerging and have yet to be discovered or agreed upon. Testing is the key and testing repeatedly to make sure your social-sharing program is as
to incorporating social media into the mix. effective as it should be.



This study is not intended to be the final word on the metrics and utility of social 2. Read more about Groundswell: Winning in a World Transformed
sharing. We expect to learn more as the practice spreads from early adopters to by Social Technologies by Charlene Li and Josh Bernoff at Forrester’s
the mainstream and to collect more data in the future to map the evolution and “Groundswell” blog.
expansion of share-to-social. We invite you to share your thoughts, questions and
ideas for future research. You’ll find contact information via email, telephone and 3. Follow the latest social-media developments on the blog “Mashable.”
our corporate blogs in the last section of this paper.
4. Read insights into the integration of email and social marketing by
Loren McDonald, Silverpop’s vice president for industry relations, in
Resources for More Information MediaPost’s Email Insider column every other Thursday.
1. Download the recorded Webinar “Email Marketing Goes Social: What It
Takes to Make Email Sharing Work” for insights into on how to leverage 5. Stay up to date with news, trends and events in social sharing,
your existing email marketing efforts to tap into social marketing. Listed email marketing, lead generation and share your comments on digital
with the Webinar description are links to more resources on the marketing topics on Silverpop’s Engagement Marketing and Demand
Silverpop Web site. Generation blogs.

To find out more about Silverpop’s Engage solution and how it can benefit your company, please contact us toll-free
at 1-866/SILVPOP (745-8767) or email us at info@silverpop.com.

Visit us at www.silverpop.com


Engagement Marketing Solutions SURVEY
SHARE-TO-SOCIAL

SILVERPOP ENGAGE SHARE-TO-SOCIAL
Tap into the power of social marketing
Now you can:
• Discover untapped markets • Increase the reach of your message
• Grow your audience • Identify your most influential customers

S hare-to-Social is a groundbreaking feature of the Silverpop Engage platform that brings each
of these goals into reach, making it the first marketing technology provider to incorporate the
ability to easily share email marketing messages on social networking sites and pull detailed
reports on the results. Silverpop allows you to easily tap into the power of social networks such
as Facebook, MySpace, LinkedIn, Digg and Twitter, unlocking a whole new range of possibilities for
Engagement Marketing Solutions
viral marketing that can make your marketing message more effective than ever before.

Make it easy for customers to share your offers with friends in their social networks
Every marketer dreams of creating a strong viral campaign—one that facilitates and encourages people to pass along ideas and
offers to their friends. Yet few are successful. But today, social networks and the relationships they foster represent a greater
potential for sharing information than any other digital marketing channel. Including email. But combine the targeting and metrics
of email with the reach of social networks, and you’ve entered a whole new world of possibilities.

The new Share-to-Social feature in Silverpop Engage does just that—it combines the best of both worlds. Now you can quickly turn your
email communications into socially enabled viral messages. Using links contained within your email message, customers can quickly
share your message to one or more social networks, adding their comments, including images from your message, and more.

It’s point-and-click easy!
Just select the network you want to allow customers to share your message to, and the link automatically appears in your email.
When customers click on the link, your message is posted to their profile pages.

www.silverpop.com 1-866-SILVPOP (745-8767) © 2009 Copyright Silverpop. All rights reserved. The Silverpop logo is a registered trademark of Silverpop Systems Inc.

Engagement Marketing Solutions SHARE-TO-SOCIAL

Just think of the possibilities! When your
customers post your message on their favorite
social network sites, everyone connected to them
receives a notification. Their friends can then
view the message and click on links in it to land
on your Web site where they can opt in to receive
your communications directly. They can also post
a comment about the message and share it with
others in their own networks. And that’s a lot of
people! Research has found that social network
users are, on average, connected to between
150 and 200 friends.1

You can even track the viral activity
of your messages
The enhanced reporting capabilities ofSolutions Engage enable you to identify which of your messages have gone viral, allowing
Engagement Marketing
Silverpop
you to track message activity at a granular level and target future communications based on that information. You’ll be able to
see how many times a message has been shared on social networks, viewed and clicked.

Identify your most valuable brand influencers
One of the most powerful benefits of the Share-to-Social feature is its ability to pinpoint which customers share your message
on their social networks and cause it to go viral. You’ll be able to quickly build segments targeting customers who post your
message or who generate the most opens or clicks from their shared items. For the first time, you’ll be able to understand which
recipients are your most influential and ardent evangelists. You’ll be able to engage those individuals with specific offers and
content that reward them for their efforts or encourage them to share new content in the future.

Share-to-Social helps you grow your audience
By always including an opt-in link in your messages, you allow social network users who view your offers on friends’ pages to
sign up for future communications from you, providing them with direct access to your content while expanding your subscriber
base. Ultimately, you’ll energize your existing marketing program, turning it into a powerful acquisition tool capable of increasing
your audience and filling your database with highly qualified customers who share the same interests as your most engaged
customers.

The power of social networking is indisputable. Facebook alone comprises more than 60 million active users. It’s time you tapped
into the power of social marketing, and with Share-to-Social, you’ll be well on your way.

Best of all, you can start today—using your current campaigns, lists and creative.

For more information on Silverpop Engage, including on-demand training and other documentation, please contact your
Relationship Manager or Silverpop Support.

1. “The Benefits of Facebook “Friends:” Social Capital and College Students’ Use of Online Social Network Sites,” by Ellison, Steinfield and
Lampe: Department of Telecommunication, Information Studies, and Media Michigan State University; 2007 Journal of Computer-Mediated
Communication

To find out more about Silverpop’s Engage solution and how it can benefit your company, please contact us toll-free
at 1-866/SILVPOP (745-8767) or email us at info@silverpop.com.

Visit us at www.silverpop.com

www.silverpop.com 1-866-SILVPOP (745-8767) © 2009 Copyright Silverpop. All rights reserved. The Silverpop logo is a registered trademark of Silverpop Systems Inc.

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