3 Tips to Get Your Customers to Share and Forward Your Marketing Emails

Pat yourself on the back if you represent a business that works hard to have email campaign content be entertaining and engaging to your subscribers. It’s your mission as a company -- to generate the best killer content, that is, electronic missives that are compelling enough to warrant long-term brand loyalty, love, social sharing and more.

?Yet in a general bid to make your email content lovable, you may be forgetting how best to craft your campaigns so that the organic forwarding of your emails is optimized. Vital to being a profit-generating marketer for your company, is continually remembering that such forwards, over time, can significantly boost sales, brand awareness, and the number of your subscribers – a triple derby win-win-win for your business that is wholly organic and effective.

?Well, we’ve got your back (!) with the three following tips. If you’ve recently made it a circled, underlined goal in your diary to boost the forwards of your company’s emails, read on:

Tip One: Throw In a Share Request

Simple, effective, but often overlooked. These are the words describing the primary call-to-action (CTA) in the email body that asks subscribers to forward your email newsletter on to others. A study put together by Litmus.com found that the most forwarded emails were 13 times likelier to ask for a forward than emails lacking a call-to-action. This small change in an email that lacks a CTA can pay off massively: with a good, compelling call-to-action, new people are more likely to read the email, and even fan-follow and fan-share your email newsletter.

When you’re designing the pitch, simply add a forward or share request near the footer of the email to augment the organic share of your email newsletter. In this way, your readers will be reminded to click the Forward button of the email they just enjoyed reading. Such small, effective "forward to a friend" requests significantly help introduce your business to potential, new subscribers. Again, a highly rewarding result for something so easy as embedding a CTA in the email body text. So easy, so powerful.

Tip Two: Hold an Event

Nearly one-third of emails for forwards announces events, points out the study by?Litmus. Because psychological buttons are pressed when events are announced to people, your customers are often keener to forward the event email to others when presented with the opportunity. People are drawn to share them with friends and colleagues who might also want to attend, especially if the event email is crafted right. Often featuring a limited-time offer, such as “Book a spot at an event by [specific date],” these emails trigger a sense of urgency and are time-sensitive. The emails point out that “spot are limited,” which make people naturally worry about potential scarcity.

If you make in-person events the bread and butter of your company’s email campaigns, these e-missives will be forwarded more than your other types of messages. In combination with some good content, that goes hand-in-hand with a good “draw” of an event that your target audience would wish to attend, your subscribers will look to spread the word and therefore deepen awareness of your brand – which is terrific marketing for your business. ?

Tip Three: Feature a Promotion

Americans love finding out about deals and discounts that have them saving – this is Marketing 101. So throwing in a good deal in your email campaigns will have some subscribers want to pass it on to their close, near-and-dear connections.

The Litmus study found that while your promotional offers might not be your most forwarded emails, they earn, at the very least, a decent, average number of forwards. Unlike the most popularly forwarded emails (transactional, content, events), promotional emails are primarily about the sale. So even if they are forwarded less, the hope is that those forwarded will lead directly to purchases by new customers. ?

Quality Content Is King

A marketing strategy that features the three above tips is vital to having people forward your emails to new people. But what really prompts people to forward is simply quality – sharp graphics, captivating writing, and a good curation of content topics. The better content you have, the more likely people are going to know, like and trust you, and when their trust in you gels, they’ll eventually go to you to buy and recommend your services to others. This is how your email marketing cookies should crumble, if you’re doing things right. Work on building trust through quality content, and your home building email campaigns will help generate sales for your company, like cookie magic.