• by Loren McDonald , Op-Ed Contributor, November 4, 2010

No, I don't believe that social media will kill email anytime soon. But I do believe that it is changing email marketing: both the content of the messages themselves and email's role and value within the marketing mix.

Essentially, social media is forcing email to get real, to make the message more of a one-to-one conversation and to make the benefits that email drives more real and visible to corporate decision-makers.

Social media is driving this "get real" movement in at least five ways (if I left out one or two, please post a comment): 

1. Content that is human and more personable. Social media has helped to humanize brands and companies by putting faces and names to the brand. Savvy consumers expect to see a similar human touch in email messages, whether it's humor or personality that reflects the company's brand or ethos -- or hearing from and seeing employees who usually work behind the scenes.

Too many marketers are still talking at their subscribers or customers in email, not with them. Email marketers who don't gravitate their content and approach to more of a conversation will see more subscribers tune out for other channels or competitors that do it right. 

Here are links to a few of my previous columns related to more human content:

·       "Five Lessons Email Marketers Can Learn from @Sh*tMyDadSays"   

·       "Using Personality to Help Drive Engagement"  

2. Increased multichannel integration. Social media is becoming a catalyst that gets marketers closer to the holy grail of channel integration. Email is a key component in that integration. 

Email and social media form a natural collaboration. Your email messages invite subscribers to follow your brand on social channels such as Facebook and Twitter, and enable the sharing of email content  on subscribers' social streams. Your social-network pages can also promote email content and invite fans to opt in to your email program.

Social media is more often where the conversation happens about your brands, products or services today. Email, however, is often the vehicle that alerts consumers to the social content -- or is, in fact, "the right message at the right time" that converts the shopper into a customer.

3. Increased leverage of user-generated content in your email messages. User-generated content (comments, testimonials, reviews, ratings, etc.) is the fuel that social networks run on, and it's spilling over into email messages. Consider this the flip side of my first point, the need to add personality and the human face and voice to your messages.

Adding user content gives your subscribers and customers the power to help sell, educate and promote your products and services to each other in your messages.

I call this "Sideways Marketing," and it's the direction in which I see digital marketing evolving. Consumers are increasingly making their purchase decisions based more on the opinions of their fellow consumers than on the adjectives in your marketing messages.

Thus, email becomes a platform for subscribers to talk to each other, but it's not the Wild West environment that can happen in a social network. In email, you choose the product reviews, testimonials or comments you want to promote. 

This concept is already producing measurable results for King Arthur Flour (a Silverpop client), which found through A/B testing that emails containing testimonials generated a significant increase in clicks and revenue over messages without testimonials. 

4. Email marketers are thinking viral again. Declining subscriber use of "forward to a friend" functionality pretty much relegated viral email ideas to the backburner.

Now, however, social networks have made wide sharing of email content even easier. The onus is on marketers to think more strategically about what they put in their email messages in order to promote sharing way beyond their subscriber base.

This means more than just slapping a few links to social networks at the top or bottom of your email message. That approach is working a bit better than FTAF links, but it doesn't take advantage of the opportunity.

Smart email marketers are designing separate emails from the ground up to be shareworthy, and targeting social influencers with specialized content. The potential of share-to-social will drive more marketers to create content that is so highly valuable or interesting, subscribers will happily share it with their network.  

5. Proactive, strategic communications of email marketing's value. Social media is forcing marketers to better measure, analyze and report all the ways that email supports key strategic objectives, whether generating revenue, building the brand, deepening customer relationships or reducing costs.

Social media and mobile marketing are getting all the buzz lately, but they still haven't proven themselves to be significant revenue generators the way email has. Social media is currently mostly about conversation, but email excels at turning conversations into conversions and, ultimately, revenue. 

When you want to defend your budget and resource allocation against encroachments from these new kids on the block, you must more effectively communicate to management all they ways that email contributes to achieving corporate goals. 

These emerging channels are forcing email marketers to hone their "communication to management" skills -- a good thing for long-term success.  

Did I overlook any other ways that social media is encouraging or forcing change on email marketers? I'd love to hear your views on 

Until next time, take it up a notch.