Name Media runs a collection of enthusiast Web sites for everyone from pro photographers and tech heads to astrology buffs. Together the ad-supported sites get about 120 million page views a month from 11 million unique visitors.
Now Name Media is hoping to turbocharge those traffic numbers by adding a feature to its e-mail newsletters that lets recipients link them to the personal update feeds on their social network pages. Friends in those networks can go to the page, view the e-mail, comment on it and, if they’re interested enough, grab it and post it on their own pages.
The platform, Share-to-Social from e-mail service provider Silverpop, assigns a unique code to every shared message so mailers can know whether their mail is being shared more on Facebook or on MySpace. Mailers can also use tracking to see which recipients’ social-net postings have produced the most clicks, pinpointing the true influentials in their house lists.
Silverpop CEO Bill Nussey says the provider went looking for a way to combine e-mail’s measurability and opt-in with the viral potential of social networks, which research suggests are eroding e-mail’s channel importance. The result was Share-to-Social, which lets e-mailers add an embeddable link to messages and track their progress through social nets.
Share-to-Social messages are also more measurable than “forward to a friend” e-mail campaigns, Nussey says, since most users use the “forward” toolbar button to pass along e-mail, even if they’re offered a tracking button within the message.
Name Media has only begun to add social sharing to its e-mail, but sees it as a way to extend its communities beyond its niche Web sites. “We want to plug our sites into the broader Internet,” says Name Media General Manager Robb Rosell. “We’re taking newsletters that we’re already putting effort into and using them to create interest in our sites among new audiences.”
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