5 Tips for More Shareable Email Content

When your business creates content that’s shareable, it’s amplifies the impression your email marketing is making on potential customers. Think of social media shares as a form of marketing currency, exponentially increasing the value of your content with every transaction. Through sharing, your primary audience creates a secondary audience for your content and opens up the potential for a tertiary audience.

Still unsure of the importance of social media in your email marketing strategy? Consider this: Nearly two-thirds of all adult internet users utilize at least one social network, and consumers are 71% more likely to make a purchase based on social media referrals. There’s enhanced value in the social proof spread by a connected internet user, rather than directly from your company, because consumers trust other consumers.

So, how do you leverage the power of social proofing to foster sharing among connected customer? Here are five easy tips:

Make it Valuable

Knowing your consumer, their questions and concerns, will help you create targeted and relevant content they’ll feel compelled to share within their circles. Start by learning more about your customers and then spending time in the various social media networks and online forums your audience is most active to better understand how they share and interact with their network. Identify the challenges they’re facing, the strategies they use to meet their goals and how your product can lead them to success. When you create valuable content aimed to enlighten consumers and solve their concerns, users will be more likely to share the content with others they know will benefit.

Make it Relatable

Using their voice, photos and shared content, users of social media create and project their own brand via their preferred social networks. Observe trending topics and interests among your subscribers and couple this information with consumer data. By understanding the social demographics of your target audience, you can create email content users will not only enjoy, but eagerly incorporate into their online feeds and share with like-minded users.

Make it Reactive

While negative news stories quickly overtake social media feeds, the desire to be the bearer of good news is an element of human nature also commonly exhibited online. Pieces that inspire feelings of delight and excitement, such as groundbreaking industry trends, always make for share-worthy content. Place your brand at the center of the buzz, and your subscribers may be more likely to click “Share.”

Make it Easy

With an average attention span of 8 seconds, you don’t have a lot of time to encourage your subscribers to take action. So, if you want your content shared, you’ll need to make it easy. If readers need to hunt for a share button, chances are they won’t hunt long before they give up-especially if they’re viewing your message on a mobile device. By making social media share buttons obvious, and keeping your layout clean and free of other distractions, you’ll increase the probability of a share.

Make it Mobile-Friendly

Speaking of mobile, did you know about half of all emails are opened on smartphones and tablets? Furthermore, over 60% of social media time is spent on mobile devices. In other words, if your subscribers are reading your emails on a mobile device, there’s a pretty good chance they’re also using the same device for social media. By ensuring your email design and content is mobile-friendly-that is, uses a single-column design, larger buttons and clear CTAs-you increase mobile shareability.

Don’t be afraid to conduct testing to determine what sorts of content garners the highest number of shares from your subscribers. Taking the time to determine what works best will provide your business with a greater return on your email marketing in the long term.

Want to ensure your shareable content is delivered to the largest audience possible? Download our free guide for increasing your email deliverability!