Last year the number of people who use social sharing buttons in their emails increased 40% to 18.3%. This number is based on people who began including social sharing via Twitter, Facebook, and Linkedin. It seems that these people made a smart decision – social sharing is everywhere – so why shouldn’t it be in your emails?

51.9% of people who use social sharing in their emails only use one icon. 40% of those include two icons. Marketers see this as an improvement – but according to Econsultancy this number is still low when compared to incredibly high performance of newsletters that include social sharing icons.

Emails that include those buttons have a 115% higher click through rate than emails that do not include social icons. Econsultancy also reports that last June, offering at least 3 social options led to 55% higher CTR and an email with one offering had just a 30% higher CTR than an email without any sharing options.

Where should you place social sharing tags? You can really place them anywhere, but the most common place is at the top or bottom of your message.

So how do you add social sharing buttons to your emails? Each ESP is different. At Exclusive Concepts we use Bronto, and it is very easy to add Twitter and Facebook and Linkedin icons to our emails. You simply click on the icon you would like to add in the build bar in the editor. If you have a different ESP I’m sure it’s just as simple.