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I’m a customer of Flowtown and recently received an edition of the newsletter from the company, announcing a new design.
The newsletter provided a nice overview of the new layout and some features, including three clickable screenshots and – since Flowtown is very much about social media and even social CRM but also a bit about email marketing – obviously the necessary social sharing tools.
The design of the newsletter, the placement of the various content elements, the call-to-action, the unsubscribe buttons, well, about everything you expect from a good email was there, including a nice big button to log-in to my account.
However, the first link I clicked was the blue, nicely underlined, link in the opening sentence “Today we’re thrilled to announce an inside-out redesign of the Flowtown you’ve come to know and love 
” (see screenshot).
What I expected as a recipient was an exhaustive online overview of the redesigned Flowtown.
However, when clicking the link I arrived on my Twitter page where Flowtown nicely populated my “What’s happening” field with the text “Oh Snap, check out the new Flowtown! http://flo.tw/MXl #Branding #Marketing”.
A nice invitation to spread the word it seems. At first I was kind of pleased with this original approach to combine email and social media.
But after a few minutes I didn’t like the approach anymore for one simple reason: my expectations hadn’t been met.
Now: kudos to the folks of Flowtown for innovating (and having a good product) but in email marketing it’s all about the recipient’s expectations.
So: hurray for these kinds of “socialized links” but thumbs down for using them as the main call-to-action, without notifying the recipient when implementing them.
However, here you have it: another simple way to combine email and social. Takeaway: experiment with it but watch the phrasing.
The first link should have lead to the page with the features and innovations and the link that opened the Twitter account and added content to it, should have had another text.
What do you think?
About the author
J-P De Clerck is a 360 degrees interactive marketing consultant and serial bloggers, specialized in the cross-fertilization of online channels and interactions. His areas of expertise include email marketing, social media marketing, search engine marketing, content marketing, web analytics and conversion optimization. He manages several blogs and online communities regarding various interactive marketing and media topics.
You can connect with him via Twitter or visit his personal blog here.
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About J-P De Clerck
