Two studies reported by eMarketer – studies from StrongMail and ShareThis – indicate that email recipients are more likely to share content via email rather than, say, social media.

According to StrongMail, during the third quarter of 2009, 86 percent of sharing activity related to social programs was done via email. Facebook only got 6 percent of shares, while Twitter got another 4 percent.

Whilst Twitter shares had the highest click-through rates – and email the lowest – content shared via email led to higher conversions.

StrongMail found that content shared by email was most likely to lead to purchases, subscriptions and other conversions. Embedded badges, which boasted a high click-through rate, were also better for conversions than Facebook or Twitter.

Here, based on StrongMail’s data, are the conversion rates for online content shared by Internet users worldwide in the third quarter of 2009:

• Email: 36.8 percent
• Embedded badges: 20.5 percent
• Personal links: 8.9 percent
• Facebook: 3.2 percent
• Twitter: 0.4 percent
• Other: 10.1 percent

Meanwhile, research by ShareThis conducted in October 2009 also found that email topped sharing activity. Email was the top channel for distributing content to friends, accounting for 46.4 percent of all shares. About one-third of shares went to Facebook and less than 6 percent were tweeted.

As in the StrongMail study, ShareThis found that shares on Twitter had the highest click-through rate, while email links were the least likely to be clicked. Nevertheless, emails shares led to the most page views per click, at 2.95, whilst users who clicked on links shared on Twitter only visited an average of 1.66 pages.

Here are ShareThis’s figures for the number of page views per unique click for online content shared by worldwide Internet users in October 2009:

• Email: 2.95
• Facebook: 2.76
• Twitter: 1.66
• Other social media channels: 1.59

Source: eMarketer, “Users Still Sharing by E-Mail,” eMarketer, December 23, 2009

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This entry was posted on Tuesday, January 5th, 2010 at 11:21 pm and is filed under Email Marketing, Kikabink Lab, Social Media. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.