Millennials haven’t ditched email for social, but that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t take advantage of social media. Marketers can reverse direct traffic back to their marketing campaigns from social media. There are several ways to do that but the most effective and focused way is through your current email subscriber list. Here’s how you’re going to do that:

Include Social Sharing Icons

Include social media icons in your email marketing campaigns to get recipients to share the campaign on their social network. This helps you drive more attention for your campaign and increase subscribers. However, for this to happen, you need to have a visually stunning and/or highly creative email campaign with very clear calls to action to share. Once you’ve set the call to action, activate that bar, graphic or icon as a link or social share trigger. For Millennials, never say something as hideous as “click here to share this email campaign,” which is the best way to date yourself as incredibly uncool.

In addition to social sharing on multiple platforms, try focusing on one. And if you’re unsure about which social channel to choose, run an A/B test prompting a share with your two top guesses. This brings us to our next point: focusing on one network.

Focus on One Network

The thing that Millennials and the super successful and wealthy have in common is that they’re incredibly busy people. The successful 40-year-old executive may be focusing on growing her empire and raising her family, but the Millennial is just as lightening fast. The Millennial may already have a start up empire or they may be couch surfing on Airbnb. The point is that the nature of the Millennial is multi-faceted and hyper attentive, meaning they can filter through multiple streams of communication while juggling a handful of priorities. It’s this ability that’s made them so attractive to a workforce. However, for you this means that you’ve got to make communication as dead simple as possible.

Golden Formula: Clear Calls to Action and Efficient One-Step Actions

When it comes to email marketing, you can use the same strategy to get users to share your email marketing campaign. However, in this case you’re going to be laser focused on one getting them to share on a specific social network. This works for two reasons: (1) you’ve taken away from a decision they need to make, however small, that frees up more time for action, (2) you’ve made it really simple to move forward with action.

As a rule, these two step protocols that gauge the level of efficiency in communication is a must-have vetting process for any communication piece you design for a Millennial audience. But it doesn’t just start and stop with Millennials. That 40 year old Generation X executive who is fluent in a Millennial’s world – and a part of it as well – will want the same level of clarity. And of course, as a last measure, ensure that you’re featuring email opt-ins on your social media network: Facebook, Twitter, and even Pinterest are great places to start widening the net for your subscriber list.

Tags:
Author Bio:

by Shireen Qudosi

Shireen Qudosi is Benchmark Email's Online Marketing Specialist and Small Business Advocate. An Orange County based writer, Shireen specializes in online marketing and public relations. She has written for over 75 publications and has launched nine successful new media campaigns to date. Her work has been featured in the New York Times, Denver Post, the Oklahoman and Green Air Radio, among others.