Email and Social Media:  Two great and inexpensive ways to get your campaign’s message out there.  You can increase the effectiveness of both campaign tools by using them together.  E-mail creates an excellent opportunity to extend your presence on social media sites, and social media sites provide a way to get more e-mail subscribers.

At the moment, most GOP campaigns aren’t using these tools together to unleash viral energy.  While some savvy campaigners use “forward to a friend” features in their e-mails, few if any campaign e-newsletters make it easy to share e-mail content on social networks.  Here’s a look at how to close the gap, and why it’s so important that you do so.

Why Include Social Media in Your Campaign E-mail?

Just as your campaign content can “go viral” as supporters share it across social networks, your e-mail promotions can get a big boost by making them easy to share.

A recent study by Marketing Sherpa concluded that simply including sharing buttons to an e-mail marketing campaign led to a “25% boost in reader interaction, and a surge in inbound traffic from social networking sites.” Moreover, huge gains were reported in traffic via social sites: 2,070% from LinkedIn, 1,680% from Twitter and 1,351% from Facebook.

How to Do It

Share buttons have become common on website content, and they can be easily integrated into your e-mails. If your e-mail consists of multiple articles, make sure each points to a page on the Web, and that your Facebook, Twitter, or LinkedIn share buttons are set with the URL of each respective article (note: you’ll want to stick to images and text links for your e-mail share buttons as opposed to JavaScript).

Beyond sharing articles though, make sure all of your e-mails include prominent links to your presence on various social sites. Calls to action in a sidebar or in the header like “Follow Us on Twitter” or “Become a Fan on Facebook” will help supporters connect with you on social sites and help build your audience.

Online Grassroots Growth Strategies

Once your campaign team has integrated social media into your e-mails, complete the circle with cross promotion. There’s no harm in reminding your Twitter followers, Facebook fans, or LinkedIn contacts that your campaign has an e-mail newsletter.  Once they signup, they are likely to share content about your candidacy with their own networks on social sites.

It is important to create compelling content that people want to share. While a good campaign event promotion might not be as viral as a funny YouTube clip, your supporters will be more likely to spread the word about a political issue if there is a specific call to action.

Create content that passionate GOP activists will find useful.  Point out stories that might be of interest to your supporters beyond the limits of your campaign.  Remember that the names on your list aren’t just statistics—they’re people.  

By blending thoughtful campaign management with easy social media sharing options, your e-mail marketing can become a powerful tool to build energy among your supporters, grow your grassroots base and spread your campaign message to voters.