Phil Lauterjung

The usual answer to that question is – it depends.  That’s a good answer because it does depend on proper planning and goal-setting before diving in to the deep end, or tip-toeing into the shallow end.  Slapping together a Facebook page and asking someone (anyone?) in your company to start twittering won’t cut it.

There is a recent Engagementdb Report done by the Altimeter Group and Wetpaint that supports a measurable link between social media marketing efforts and revenue growth.  They evaluated the world’s top 100 brands relative to their use of social media in promoting their brand.  The companies with the highest level of social media use increased sales by 18% over the past 12 months – very difficult months as we all know.  Do I hear an ‘amen’?  The companies with the lowest level of social media activity experienced a 6% drop in sales.  Now I know that some are thinking “hey, I’d be pretty happy with only a 6% drop in sales”; but, that’s a topic for another conversation.

According to data compiled by Bill McCloskey of Email Data Source, the top companies could have grown sales even more had they promoted social media in their email marketing campaigns.  Only two out of the top 11 in the Engagementdb study did that.  McCloskey maintains that they could have grown sales even more by linking to social media platforms from email.  Which is something that’s very easy to do since they already have the email campaigns in place and the social media platforms as well.

Another very interesting observation that McCloskey makes from his research is that Twitter has recently overtaken Facebook as the top social networking site that marketers link to from their emails.  Up until March of this year Facebook outpaced Twitter by a wide margin, but in March Twitter pulled ahead by a small number.  It should be noted that both are seeing large growth in the number of email campaigns that are linking to them.  The numbers as of July 27th show Facebook with 9,063 (up from 2,491 in January) and Twitter with 10,277 (up from 1,181 in January).

Clearly many marketers are seeing results from using this strategy in their email campaigns.  What about you?  What tactics are you using that are producing results?  Or, do you still need to get started?

Image: Flickr-Powerhouse Museum

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