From Twitter handles on TV to hashtags in print, the influence of social media spans far beyond its official boarders. New research shines a spotlight on social’s increasing sway over email
marketing, and some opportunities that brands continue to miss.
From “like” buttons to sharing options, a whopping 76% of emails now include some sort of social element, according to
social marketing and analytics firm Curalate and the email-marketing specialists at Movable Ink.
When email marketers work social into their equations, Facebook content is used 53% of the time,
while Twitter content is used 14% of the time.
Where is social and email failing to align?
Well, when asked to identify top challenges in bringing social images into email, 52% citing
different databases and systems; 51% cited issues with analytics and collection; and 49% cited stifling silos in cross-channel collaboration.
According to the researchers, email marketers
leverage Instagram images less than 3% of the time, missing big engagement gains in the process.
In fact, the popular social network delivers 58 times more engagement per follower than Facebook
and 120 times more engagement than Twitter, according to Curalate and Movable Ink.
If brands do use Instagram imagery in their emails, they should strongly consider Valencia, Rise and X-Pro II,
and they appear to be the photo filters that deliver the highest revenue per impression when used in an ecommerce environment.
Similarly, contextual tags -- taken from Instagram images -- that
are excel at driving revenue in an ecommerce environment include “eyes,” “smile, “makeup,” “female,” “water,” “hair” and
“travel.”
This year, more than 200 billion emails will be sent and received every day of 2015 -- 57% of which will come from brands -- Curalate and Movable Ink expect.
The
research was based on first- and third-party data from which Curalate pulled an aggregate source of 700 brands and their daily consumer engagements with images.