Sep 15 2009
Is Share-With-Your-Network Killing Forward-To-A-Friend?
Share-with-your-network (SWYN) is a relatively new phenomenon in the email marketing space. SWYN includes links to social networking sites like Twitter, Facebook, MySpace, Digg etc. Some email pundits believe that SWYN is slowly but surely putting an end to forward-to-a-friend (FTAF) functionality in email. I personally don’t believe this is the case. What is clear so far is that forward-to-a-friend remains a fixture among most email marketing campaigns.
The email marketing agency Smith-Harmon found the following in their report FTAF vs. SWYN – The State of Email Sharing:
“There’s been some murmuring in the industry about the death of forward-to-a-friend (FTAF) lately because of the emergence of share-with-your-network (SWYN) functionality. Unlike FTAF, which is generally one-to-one sharing, SWYN allows subscribers to share an email’s content with all their friends on a social network. Shown to be considerably more viral than FTAF, SWYN also avoids entanglements with CAN-SPAM rules. Despite all those advantages, FTAF enjoys a four-to-one adoption rate over SWYN among the top online retailers. While only 12% of retailers use SWYN, 48% use FTAF—and FTAF adoption is up from 44% in 2006.”
Among retailers using individual SWYN links, Facebook and Twitter are the most popular. MySpace and Digg were the third and fourth most popular, with Delicious, ThisNext and StyleHive seeing minimal usage.
FTAF currently enjoys much higher placement in email designs than does SWYN. According to the report mentioned above, nearly 65% of those using FTAF included it above the fold, while only 15% of those using SWYN placed it above the fold.
Looking at a random sample of emails in my inbox, I also found that these trends hold true. The screen caps below are a sampling from fifteen creative examples that I’ve highlighted with purple boxes to call out SWYN content.
- 13.3% of the emails below have the SWYN content above the fold. (2 out of 15)
- 20% of the emails include the forward-to-a-friend (FTAF) and the share-with-your-network (SWYN) icons in the same space. (3 out of 15)
- 6% of the emails list a specific person who clickers will be following on Twitter. This is the CEO of Bluefly. (1 out of 15)
Sport Chalet and Macy’s are in the minority since they place their SWYN icons at the top of their creative.
The rest of the examples below have their SWYN icons towards the bottom of their creative. Notice the wide variety of ways that both forward-to-a-friend (FTAF) and share-with-your-network (SWYN) are presented in email.
While adoption rates are interesting to note I don’t necessarily believe that such rates speak to what marketers should be doing. Most of those examples showcased links to friend/follow the brand on social networks, rather than links to share the items themselves. I think the choice of whether and how to use FTAF or SWYN or both ultimately comes down to the characteristics of the subscribers on the list.
That is an interesting concept, I must admit that I hadn’t until now considered the idea that share to social might ever fully replace forward to a friend in email marketing.
Social networking offers users a place where they can share links and comments with a much wider audience with a single click – and I can see how that would be appealing to both the sender and he recipient. The uptake on social networks is also still growing so it looks likely that this trend is only likely to increase in the near future.
I think in the B2C market there is a high probablity that share to social will begin to completely replace forward to a friend, although I think they will always co-exist to give the user the choice – and also to cater for emails which by nature people would only want to share with one or two people and would not want to publisise on their Facebook wall or similar.
For the B2B market I suspect that forward to a friend will remain predominant – as businesses often have one persona on a social network and not one per employee. Sure employees are likely to use social networks, but often they want a seperation between their work and employed life. People do often have work twitter accounts though, and if tweeting continues to gain popularity I can see this being something which migth potentially tip the B2B scales away from forward to a friend.
An interesting idea. Thanks for the post.
[...] You can read the original blog post with it’s stats and figures based on their tests by click the link below: http://www.emailresponsibly.com/2009/09/15/is-share-with-your-network-killing-forward-to-a-friend/ [...]
[...] read a post on Email Responsibly which details figures from a series of email tests to see which links people used when presented [...]