A few weeks ago I was asked to present on How to Make Social Media and Email Work Together at SocialBiz 2010, a conference here in Northern California. After the presentation I had some great questions from the audience and I wanted to share the answers here:

Can you add an opt-in form to your Facebook page?

Yes you can. When you add an opt-in form to your Facebook page you can create a separate tab on your page so that new visitors will know exactly where they can sign up for more information. Remember to include the reasons why they should sign up, an example could be “email only” offers.

Can you send video in an email?

Technically you can add a video into your email. However, after you send it out most of the email clients will strip the video out of your email when they display it to your audience. Or worse they will block your email all together. At VerticalResponse we recommend that you either host the video on your website or upload it to a site like YouTube, then take a picture of your video, add the picture to your email, and link the picture to where the video can be played.

Video is an incredibly engaging medium and including it in your email could cause you to get more clicks. But to make sure that your email gets delivered correctly try this method first.

What day of the week is the best for email success?

This is a question we get all of the time and the answer isn’t always everyone’s favorite. That is because the answer is, that depends. It depends on your list and what and when they want to hear from you. For some businesses Monday is the best day to send, for some it’s Tuesday. I have even met one person whose best time and day to send is Sunday at 6pm.

I would recommend that you test it out for yourself. Do a split test for every day of the week and see which one performs the best for you. See how to do a split test using VerticalResponse.

Do you need to use a developer to set up an opt-in form?

If you can take a small piece of code that we provide and add it to your website, you don’t need a web developer or designer to set up a VerticalResponse opt-in form. We create the opt-in form for you all you have to tell us is what you would like to collect and select your colors. Then we give you the code that you need to add to your website. And the best part is we let you build opt-in forms for free. Here is a quick video on how to build an opt-in form.

If you have a TypePad blog, with just a few clicks you an add an opt-in form to your blog.

Do you have any stats about what value email marketing can bring to business?

In 2009 the Direct Marketing Association said that for every $1 that was spent on email marketing $43 was made in return. For 2010 they are predicting $42.08 in return.

Can you track an individual performance of email campaigns? 

Yes. For every campaign you send through VerticalResponse and many other ESPs you can see your open rate, click rate, bounce rate, unsubscribe rate, and if you have it enabled, click to conversion tracking.

We also have an integration with Google Analytics that allows you to see how much traffic was sent to your website directly from your email marketing campaign and in aggregate where they go.

If you are interested in more info about How Social Media and Email Work Together, we have a recorded version of a similar presentation. If you have more questions about how social media and email can work together please post a comment and we will do our best to answer them.

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