A study conducted by e-mail marketing provider GetResponse indicates that e-mail messages that include a social sharing option generated 30% higher click-through-rates (CTR) than e-mails without a social sharing option. Additionally, messages with three or more sharing options generated a 55% higher CTR. The study analyzed social media integration and sharing using Twitter, Facebook, MySpace, LinkedIn and Digg in almost 500 million e-mails sent by over 19,000 GetResponse customers.

The GetResponse e-mail marketing platform is tailored towards small and medium-sized businesses (SMB). Simon Grabowski, CEO of Implix, for which GetResponse is the flagship product, commented, “The impressive 55 percent CTR increase achieved by adding social sharing options tells us it’s not enough to integrate campaigns with social media networks — the power is in sharing.”

Other findings from the study includes:

• 60 percent of all social e-mails included only one sharing icon. Only 11.2 percent of social e-mails included 3 icons or more.
• E-mails with a Twitter sharing option returned over 40 percent higher CTR than messages without any social media links.
• Twitter was the most popular social sharing option, included in 67.2 percent of all social e-mails; Facebook came in a close second at 62.7 percent.
• E-mails shared on Twitter returned CTR of 10.20 percent — over 40 percent higher than messages not linked to any social media.
• Almost 19 percent GetResponse SMB users linked their campaigns to Twitter at least once. Only 13.5 percent included other social sharing options.

This study provide a useful and easy-to-implement tip to SMB marketers. ROI is high, as the added costs to include social network links is a negligible amount of time. Longitudinal study might include a qualitative assessment of the destination to which the responders are linked. In other words, will those companies that provide better experiences on their social sites and streams keep those customers clicking.

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