SWYN Vs. FTF: Does Social Sharing Remove Too Much Friction?

Author:

Mike May

Source:

A lot of ESPs are now offering share-with-your-network (SWYN) functionality, and I can attest first-hand that inside the email industry we're pretty excited about the email-social media integration that SWYN affords. "It's like forward-to-a-friend on steroids," we (collectively) say. Instead of subscribers passing your message on to a friend or a handful of department colleagues, they can now push it out to their 350 Facebook friends or 1200 Twitter followers. What a huge lift for your readership and ROI metrics, right?
 
Maybe -- for now, anyway. Social sharing is appealing for marketers (email and otherwise) because it removes a lot of the friction from word-of-mouth marketing, and can amplify an audience exponentially. We're all suddenly very organized about learning now to build campaigns optimized for SWYN functionality, tapping into the huge viral lift social media affords...