MIND RAMBLES: ON EMAILS, SHARE BUTTONS & CASL

THE NEW AND IMPROVED SHARE BUTTON

Today I “attended” an email marketing webinar. It was put on by an email service provider – it facilitates email marketing. According to the presenter, 68% of Canadian consumers prefer emails as the way to receive brand information; only 5% want it via social media (what a shock, considering the source – haha).

The webinar started with a discussion of something called a Share Button which email marketers should put in all their emails to enable the email's recipients to share the email message.

Well that triggered my interest!

IS SHARING AN EMAIL SPAM?

You may remember being inundated (and likely annoyed) with “opt in” emails because of CASL (Canada's Anti Spam Legislation) which was all the rage last summer -- if you don't know about CASL you could read my post here. Since the legislation took effect, over 300,000 complaints of spam have been reported to the CRTC; over a quarter of which were about the same company. So far three companies have been fined. On a more positive note, spam originating from within Canada – not from overseas – has dropped 37% since July 2014. But I digress...

Was sharing a marketing email spam? Probably not; after all it's not on you if somebody else forwards your email to someone. But as it turned out, the Share Button only encouraged and enabled the recipient of the email to share to social media not actually forward the email so it cleverly avoids the whole issue.

CANADIAN CONSUMERS PREFER EMAILS TO SOCIAL MEDIA

But wait, I thought you said consumers wanted email not social media interaction. Another hour lost, sigh.

Anyway, the takeaway from this? Emails rule and using share buttons can increase your email lists. Well, according to an email service provider.