5 Social E-Mail Trends to Watch

1. Educate your readers. Explain how the sharing process works and why recipients would want to pass your messages along.
2. Reward your persuaders. Track which subscribers share most frequently. Reward them with offers, inside information or other special treatment.
3. Design for sharing. Group all your viral features to capture both social networkers and e-mail forwarders. Don’t overlook any opportunity to go viral. Designate certain messages to focus specifically on social sharing and list building. Design e-mails from the subject line to the offer to copy and sharing link placement to encourage sharing, particularly from your most influential sharers.

Loren McDonald is the vice president of industry relations for Silverpop, an Atlanta-based provider of engagement marketing tools. Reach Loren at lmcdonald@silverpop.com.