Believe it or not, there were some techie types (otherwise known as nerds) who thought that Twitter, Facebook, etc. would completely eradicate the need for and use of email.  Well, here we are in 2011 and email isn’t going anywhere, at least not in the foreseeable future.  The smart ones have figured out how to incorporate email marketing with the social media outlets.

One example is Biz Stone, who launched his first edition of the new Twitter Email Newsletter.  Yes, he could have done the Twitter thing with it, but it is one smart guy who realizes that information flows through various channels, and people tend to receive information in a variety of those channels.  Also, tweeting a newsletter in blocks of 140 characters at a time is a little less than efficient.

The big thing holding all the social media together, according to some, is—you guessed it—email.  Where do updates and recaps of your day in the social media appear?  Your inbox.  One such example is Nutshell Mail , where you can sign up for these types of updates to hit your inbox a few times daily.  Also, Brady Sadler wrote a great post on Gowalla.  Gowalla uses email to try to create a more personal bonding experience with its users.

What about Google Wave?  I doubt that it will replace Gmail anytime soon.

Yes, the bottom line is that email is the foundational tool for communication.  You use it every day.  At work, at home, at school, and at play.  Goodmail is creating ways to use video in the inbox and companies like Brightcove should join the bandwagon. Gmail has let us know that you can run YouTube videos inside an email sent to your Gmail account. And Outlook 2010?  Yes, even  Outlook 2010 is going social, streamlining social communications into one platform.

Features of Inbox 2 recognize the many data streams constantly bombarding us and this is a perfect opportunity for the creation of a unified platform.  Exact Target has bought CoTweet.  HubSpot has packaged Inbound Marketing in such a way that demonstrates that they understand the whole “email is glue” concept.  It also demonstrates that they know how to turn potential customers into customers.  So what is the point of all of this?

Email is the way things are and the main line flowing through the Internet. As far as we can see into the future, it will remain so.  Just ask Mark Cuban.

In case you’ve had your head buried in paperwork, social media is only getting more popular.   In an effort to foster the growing relationship between email marketing and the world of status updates, eConnect Email has integrated Social Sharing into our application and now it can easily be added into your emails with the addition of a tiny little tag, Welcome to Social Email 1.0.

Any emails sent through eConnect Email that include the social sharing tag can now be shared with the following social networks with ease:

Email (of course)
Twitter
Facebook
LinkedIn
Google Buzz

Our email marketing application simply grabs your email’s subject line and creates a tiny URL using bit.ly to share a copy of your email to your social media world.  We have also integrated the Forward-To-A-Friend functionality in the Social Sharing center, making it easier to send your email to another inbox, although that is so last year.

So now that you’ve done the work to create your campaign you can leverage it to another audience with the click of a button.  Easy right?

Awesome. How easy is it?

Super, duper easy. If you are coding your emails by hand, you’ll simply include the following tags where you want a share prompt.  If your using the editor, simply click Custom Fields and you can insert either a text link or share  image automatically.

%%socialshare-icon%% will give you this:

%%socialshare-link%% will give you this: Share this

Below you will find a screen shot of what the Social Sharing landing page looks like once the “Share This” link or image is clicked.

So, can I tell how often it was shared?

Of course! When you log into your Reports area, you will see a Share Statistics tab.  Every time someone shares with a specific network, that number will be displayed in the reports, broken down by network.

What else should I know?

We started with the most popular social networks to share to, but may add more down the road depending on user feedback (so send us your feedback!).