Social sharing with the new MessageFocus

An exciting new update to MessageFocus this week brings you the ability to quickly and easily add share links into email campaigns. By inserting share links into your content, you are giving your recipients the ability to share a page, such as your email or website, to social networks at the touch of a button.

New MessageFocus social sharing links

Adding share links into your email campaign

Share links for the most popular social networks, including Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and Google+ can be inserted into your content using the ‘share link’ tool within the HTML editor. The links can be configured to share an anonymous version of your email (so remember your personalisation defaults) or a custom URL such as a link to your website or an article. There are options to track hits to the page that you’re sharing, and you can pick from a few different versions of the social network’s logo to insert into your content, or simply use one of your own.

Some social networks such as LinkedIn let you supply a little more information on the page that is being shared, a title or description, for example. We’ve picked some sensible defaults for these, usually your campaign’s subject line, but you’re free to change them as you like.

MessageFocus social sharing interface

How your recipients share

Most share links will open the social network’s share page, providing a familiar interface, where the recipient can make some final changes and confirm before posting. However, share buttons for Facebook Like and Google+ can’t be used in email, so when clicked these will open a new window displaying the page that you want to share, with the share buttons at the top of the page.

Sharing your email to Facebook

Customising your message for social media

Something that we’re especially excited about is the ability to add conditional content to your email that is only displayed to individuals that are viewing your campaign via a social network. This means you can link to, or even safely embed, a signup form directly into the email, allowing you to use social media as a medium to grow your email database.

Here’s a quick example:

[* IF vars.shared *]
If you find this message interesting, signup to our regular newsletter.
[* END *]


Reporting

This feature wouldn’t be complete without giving you the ability to measure the success of your share links. Your summary reports now feature a ‘shared’ figure, which displays the number of your recipients that have shared your message to a social network.

Plus, a more detailed social report is available within your campaign reporting, which contains a breakdown of the social networks shared to. If you have selected to track the page being shared, details of the page views are made available, allowing you to measure not only the number of times the page has been shared, but how many times it has been viewed as a result.

Social sharing reporting page in MessageFocus

This is just one of the many new benefits in the new version of MessageFocus that Adestra clients can start using right now. Don’t miss out on this and the many new features that are ready and waiting for you to use, such as split testing, content preview, copy campaign and improved data security features.

Carl Chambers
Development

For more information on the product click here ^pdf