Get a Personality & Leverage Social Media to Keep Email Subscribers Engaged

Humanizing your business can go a long way to driving better relationships with your customers and prospects....so go ahead, get a personality.

This can mean literally putting a face (or faces) in your messages like you see here in at the top of one of Saddleback's newsletters:

Orvis also does a great job with Rosenbauer's Deal of the Month - outlining his opinions on the reel at hand:

Even if you don't have or can't develop a distinct individual to represent your brand, "getting a personality" can also just mean speaking in a conversational, friendly tone and creating dialogue.

The advent of social media platforms has also made it easier than ever to drive conversation and interaction with your email subscribers. We want to peak their interest, make them laugh or get their thoughts - even if they aren't ready to buy from us today. That way, they'll hopefully want to continue interacting with us over time.

The idea here is that we want to engage and speak WITH - not at - our subscribers.

Beyond including "Follow" or "Like" icons and Share-With-Your-Network functionality in our email templates, we can leverage social media in our emails in the following ways to drive interaction:

1. Include secondary calls-to-action that include "conversation starters." This is the simple tactic of asking a question and linking through to Facebook or Twitter for subscribers to answer and talk to one another. They can relate to the time of year, the email message topic or even products and the business itself.

For example:

• What is your favorite way to celebrate Labor Day?
• How do you wear your scarf?
• Share your best tips for organizing the kitchen.
• Tell us your favorite Halloween punch recipe!

Driving interaction that potentially gives subscribers information they can use or simply facilitating fun sharing is a great way to add value to your communications.

2. Get feedback on new products or have subscribers to vote on certain product decisions - like color. Enabling customers to play a part in the direction of product production can help you create or supply products subscribers really want and make them feel that you care about their opinions.

3. Drive subscribers to fun pictures or videos on your social site, as Burt's Bees did in a newsletter below. Take them behind the scenes of product creation or share some fun history of the company. This is a great way to really show your business personality!

4. Offer polls or quizzes that help subscribers find solutions to their problems or find the most fitting product.

 The good news is that not only are these kinds of interactions going to make your brand more approachable and drive better relationships, but you will also help positively influence deliverability and prioritization in the inbox as people open and click on your messages.

Additionally, we can then turn around and use some of the interesting conversations we've had with subscribers in these social spaces and start leveraging them in our email messages - taking content full circle.

How have you seen retailers leveraging social platforms to drive engagement?

Kristen Gregory
Manager of Strategic Services at Bronto
@kristengreg