People are more likely to share emails that include discounts than any other type of email campaign, according to a new Email Marketers Worldwide Q4 2011 research by email marketing software provider Emailvision. 34,7% of campaigns that include discounts are shared, say marketers, while only 20,8% of the humorous ones are passed along. Also, only 19,8% of email campaigns with direct incentives get shared and even less, 19,4%, those containing announcements and other types of fresh information.
Marketers around the globe try to reach their opted-in subscribers and these results show that discounts are the best approach, as they seem to be the most worthy of sharing with others. As social media strengthen their position, respondents mentioned Facebook and Twitter as being the most important social networking sites for their brands.
Surprisingly enough, the respondents mentioned that their primary goal in what the sharing of email campaigns is concerned is building brand awareness or reputation, 35,8% considering it as the most important. Increasing customer retention and support is seen as number two objective for 22,2% of marketers, while 14,8% of them consider increasing web traffic and sales as a main goal. 13,6% consider email campaigns as a way of having a two-way conversations with customers and only 7,4% see them as a way to grow subscriber lists. Last in top was listed gaining insight into customers preferences – only 6,2%.
Entrepreneur David Milberg noted, “In short, marketers use email campaigns as ways of reaching more customers, and people find it easy to share emails that include discounts. Focusing on building awareness means finding ways for more people to find out about a brand, a product and, if interested, might, at some point, opt-in to a newsletter.
The goal is to get the message across different channels to as many people as possible. Emails with discounts are more likely to be shared also because a discount involves the idea of saving some money, it implies taking action for yourself and also help a friend make the same wise choice, by passing along the information. Twitter and Facebook are indeed the most used social media sites at this moment to connect with friends and share what users find interesting, so the key findings are not that surprising.