The Email Wars

Over the past few months we have seen more mainstream companies and emailers adding social media to their email campaigns. Now maybe it took 1000 articles in major publications – or even Oprah telling everyone, as we know she is a tastemaker – but more and more often I am seeing this added into emails.

Now some ESPs are touting that they did this deal or that deal to add social ties to campaigns, but anyone can do it in some simple ways. I believe that the two that truly matter to the larger audience are simply Facebook and Twitter. The others, while cool, are often overkill to the vast majority of online subscribers. Keep it simple, focus on the larger networks and do it right.

Once you have taken the step you have also opened up more to do. If you are not keeping these two locations updated throughout the day for your own brand you are just doing it to do it. You need to be serious about these tools if you are going to get into this “new” medium. Which leads me to ponder… who in your organization is responsible for community management and content creation? Is this going to fall under your job functions if you add it? Or do you already have a media/PR/customer outreach team who keeps these sites fresh? Should this new function fall under the job responsibilities of the person that handles email marketing?

The hardest part of all of this is that you are opening more locations that need more content. And is that content the same type of thing that you are doing with email? I can go out on a ledge and say that they are different enough to warrant a plan, strategy and resources to handle them.

If you goal is to simply give a tool that allows them to “tweet” it or “share” it that is one thing and very simple. But by giving people these tools I believe that you are also committing to being part of the larger conversation yourself.

So before you add “social media” or the ability to share your campaigns or content with others through community locations, step back and think about your commitment to it and who is going to handle it.