Blog

Introducing Social Sharing

January 12, 2011

Our new Social Sharing feature went live yesterday, making it super easy for you to share your campaigns on Twitter and Facebook and then see a report of the results. Before I dive into the details, here's a preview of the new Social Sharing report. You can click it for a full-size version.

We've been thinking long and hard about the best way to add this kind of social integration into Campaign Monitor. As always, our goal was to keep the sharing process as simple as possible for you and your subscribers. Here's how it works.

In-email sharing made easy

The easiest way for your subscribers to share your email is by adding a "Tweet" or "Like" button to your campaign. Then with a couple of clicks any subscriber can share your email with their friends or followers. To do this, we've introduced two new tags that you can easily add to your existing designs.

Add a "Like" button to your campaign

Just add the following tag anywhere in your email design and we'll instantly turn that into a working Facebook "Like" button.

<fblike></fblike> turns into

When your subscriber clicks on this button in their email, we'll load the following lightbox where they can "Like" your campaign and see which of their friends have also liked it. Here's an example of this in action:

If you don't want to use the standard "Like" button, just add your own text or image between the tag and we'll turn that word or image into a link that, when clicked, loads the lightbox like the one above.

Add a tweet button to your campaign

Let your subscribers tweet about your campaigns using the new tag below.

<tweet></tweet> turns into

If your subscriber is a Twitter user, clicking that button takes them straight to a compose window with the tweet pre-populated with your campaign subject and a shortened URL linking to the web version. Here's how that one looks:

{title}

Just like the Facebook Like tag, you can add your own text or images between the <tweet></tweet> tags and that will be used instead of the default tweet button, giving you complete design flexibility.

Sharing made simple for your clients

If you've built templates for clients, you can easily add permanent "Like" and "Tweet" buttons to them that work for every email they send. We've also made it simple for clients to add their own share links to any campaigns they send using the editor.

Get the word out from within Campaign Monitor

Our new social tags aren't the only way to get the word out about your latest campaign. You can also share them yourselves right from Campaign Monitor. The report for every email you've ever sent now includes a new "Share" button in the top right corner. Here's how it looks:

Clicking the "Share button" will open the modal popup below, where you can share on Twitter or Facebook with a single click:

Whenever that URL is mentioned on Twitter or "Liked" on Facebook, we'll track the results for you. You and your subscribers can share your campaign any way you like and we'll handle the rest.

Real-time reporting to bring it all together

While there are lots of different ways to share your campaign, we bring it all together with the new Social Sharing report. This includes who tweeted about your campaign, who liked it on Facebook and who forwarded your email on to friends. Basically, whenever anyone shares your campaign, we'll show you who it was and how they did it.

The report is broken up into two parts. Up top we've got a summary of the activity so far across Twitter, Facebook and email forwards.

{title}

Below that is a real-time list that pulls all of this together into a single activity stream. See what people are saying about your campaign on Twitter, who's sharing on Facebook and which subscribers have forwarded it to their friends.

{title}

For each subscriber that tweets, we'll show you their Twitter avatar and a link to the tweet in question. We also link to the subscriber snapshot and display a gravatar if available for anyone who "Likes" your campaign or forwards it on to friends.

There are loads of other subtle features in this report, but I'll leave some of them for you to discover once you start sharing. We hope you guys have fun with this new feature. It's a brilliant way to learn more about who is sharing your campaigns with the world, and what they're saying about you in the process.

Update: Custom domain support now available

A big thanks to everyone for all the passionate and overwhelmingly positive comments about this new feature. You'll be pleased to know we now support custom domains for all social sharing, and have more exciting updates to social sharing rolling out shortly.

Posted in: New Features & Updates

127 Comments

Website design Gold Coast
January 12, 2011 10:15am

Soo good!
Great new feature, I’m looking forward to using it!
James Hunt
January 12, 2011 10:22am

This could be very useful.
Vlan Zoiz
January 12, 2011 10:44am

For reseller, will the link match our own domain ?
Ant Hodges - Social Media Consultant
January 12, 2011 10:46am

Genius! These developments are constantly making CM the best email marketing platform on the planet! Well done guys.
David Greiner
January 12, 2011 10:55am

Thanks James and Ant, glad you like what you see. Vlan, right now the link will be the same for all customers, but we’d always consider supporting custom domains if the demand was there.
James
January 12, 2011 11:56am

Good work guys!
Would like to see it with the custom domains though!
Toon
January 12, 2011 12:16pm

Great work guys!
The clients will love it!
Kate
January 12, 2011 12:24pm

Is it my birthday already? Thanks CM!
Oz Dean
January 12, 2011 12:31pm

Superb update. As always super simple to incorporate. Nice work CM.
David Bell
January 12, 2011 12:48pm

Awesome feature guys, this is going to be so useful.
Julian Wellings
January 12, 2011 2:00pm

Excellent! And as always you’ve kept it simple.
Secret Pie
January 12, 2011 2:34pm

Just logged in to send WeForest.org’s January Newsletter….don’t touch that dial….back to Dreamweaver to add these functions in!!!

So pleased you’ve done this, and looks like you’ve (as usual) thought fully about the end to end process and, most importantly, reporting.

HUGE thanks!!!
Mika Tuupola
January 12, 2011 4:27pm

Support for custom domains would be nice.
Sean
January 12, 2011 4:31pm

Secret Pie - Dreamweaver? LOL
Ryan
January 12, 2011 5:04pm

This is awesome, can we make it a little more Reseller friendly, as well on the Facebook like have the ‘liked on’ the customers details not createsend.com! Still awesome though!
Gabriel Porras
January 12, 2011 5:07pm

Campaing Monitor rules!!!
Chris Burrows
January 12, 2011 5:48pm

Excellent feature - can this be intergrated to Linked In?
christy kilgore
January 12, 2011 5:51pm

Like! LIKE! LIIIIIKKEEEE!
Nickolas Simard
January 12, 2011 6:11pm

Wow, such a pretty new year gift!
Thanks for the hard work… and keep them coming! :P
Solveris
January 12, 2011 6:18pm

Love this. Thanks for adding. Linkedin would be very important to our customers as well. Hope that is in the works.
Patrick Smith
January 12, 2011 7:01pm

Does the <tweet> <fblike> code need to be in the <body> tag or can it literally be anywhere?

Thanks - great feature.
Seth
January 12, 2011 7:06pm

Nice features! Questions about the tracking to help understand it better to explain to my clients.

Twitter: Seems that you are pulling tweets based on a search for the shared URL, is that correct? Also, are you storing the tweet data locally or simply displaying the data from a realtime search each time page is rendered?

Facebook: What is the criteria by which a like will show up in reports? Do privacy settings come into play or will all likes be reported on regardless of user settings?

Thanks
Marcus
January 12, 2011 7:40pm

Thank you! It’s this kind of innovative attitude and simplicity that makes CM the best email marketing service there is!
Anna Yeaman
January 12, 2011 8:13pm

This look great, thanks guys! Quick question abt forwards. Does it track forwards like Litmus, via the forward button in an email client? Or via FTAF. If not I’d love to see that feature in CM (also read rate for that matter if I were being greedy). Though this rocks and I can’t wait to try it out.
Érick Loitiere
January 12, 2011 8:40pm

Looks good !
Alex
January 12, 2011 9:49pm

Great, would be better if my own url is used instead of the createsend url.
Vincent
January 12, 2011 10:30pm

Nice!
Please do add custom domains though.
Graham McLellan
January 12, 2011 10:33pm

Nice!

I’ve noticed an issue when using !important in CSS color properties, specifically H1 & A tags. We use !important in our CSS to try & combat webmail client overrides.

See screenshot: http://swordfox.co.nz/public/cmfblike.png

It would be great if you could do the same in social.min.css to override this.

Also it would be awesome if you could assign a URL to the like button, e.g. <fblike url=“http://www.facebook.com/swordfox”></fblike> maybe only for the template based buttons not those added from the editor.
Jeremy
January 12, 2011 11:19pm

The “Like” image doesn’t look any good on backgrounds other than white, due to the corners being transparent.

All good otherwise.
Bart
January 12, 2011 11:31pm

Awesome update! We’ll be implementing this feature as of tomorrow!
David Greiner
January 13, 2011 12:04am

Thanks so much for all the kind words everyone.

@Seth: “Seems that you are pulling tweets based on a search for the shared URL, is that correct?”

That’s right. Any time the shared URL is mentioned on Twitter through tweets and retweets we’ll show that in your reports.

Are you storing the tweet data locally or simply displaying the data from a realtime search each time page is rendered?

Twitter’s own search wasn’t up to scratch with the results quality we were after, so we’ve partnered with a third party service that indexes tweets to give you guys the most accurate results possible.

What is the criteria by which a like will show up in reports?

We’ll show you likes from all subscribers that received the campaign. If any non-subscriber likes it, we show you a sum total of them at the bottom of your activity field.

Do privacy settings come into play or will all likes be reported on regardless of user settings?

Not for your own subscribers, we will show them to you regardless, but for any non-subscribers who re-like that campaign from a friend’s Facebook page, we can only show you a count, no personal data will be made available for those people. Hope that helps.

@Anna: Great to hear you like it, I look forward to seeing what the Style Campaign crew does with it.

Does it track forwards like Litmus, via the forward button in an email client? Or via FTAF.

Right now it’s FTAF only. We’re a little concerned with the accuracy of organic forward tracking right now, and will continue to do more testing and tweaking before we introduce something like this into the app. I agree it would be very useful, if it’s accurate.

@Graham McLellan: Nice spotting Graham, we’ll make some CSS tweaks to ensure this won’t happen in the future and get it live ASAP.

Also, you can actually supply your own Like or Tweet button, just place your images in between the tags I mentioned in the post and we’ll turn that image into a Like or Tweet button for you.

@Jeremy: Could you share a screenshot of that please. The buttons should be transparent PNG’s that work on any background colour. I’d like to get to the bottom of that one for you.
Jesse Dodds
January 13, 2011 1:23am

We’ve just fixed up the solid background on the Facebook Like button and the social.css file so the h1 and close button links can no longer be overridden by custom styles. Should be going live soon :)
Melba Gounas
January 13, 2011 1:46am

Looking forward to using this guys. Nice work!
TradiArt
January 13, 2011 2:32am

Amazing!! Thank you for this!!
Graham McLellan
January 13, 2011 3:47am

Thanks David, with regard to the image between the like or tween buttons - that’s cool but I was referring to the URL that is liked on Facebook so you can get FB page likes straight from the email.
David Greiner
January 13, 2011 4:02am

@Graham: Gotcha. Because Facebook likes require JavaScript or an iframe to work, we can’t do them directly in an email. So, we need to go to a landing page (in this case the web version of your email with a nice lightbox asking them to click Like). If you wanted it to use your URL, you’d need to roll your own Like functionality on your site.

Hope that helps.
Graham McLellan
January 13, 2011 7:59am

@David: Hmm I don’t think we’re on the same page. With the generated JS on the web version the FB code is something like: <fb:like href=“http://createsend.com/t/r-DE90E6BAD2E089A0” show_faces=“true” width=“400”></fb:like>

What I am requesting is instead of the href attrib defaulting to that of the email URL it would be good to be able to pass in a particular URL e.g. a face book URL so they can directly like an FB page.
David Greiner
January 13, 2011 8:49am

@Graham: I’m on your level now. I’ve discussed this with the team and everyone agrees this would be a useful improvement. We’ll look at giving you this kind of flexibility in a future release, and I’ll be sure to post here when it makes it into Campaign Monitor. Thanks for the suggestion.
Natural Retreats
January 13, 2011 11:21am

Perfect timing. Was just about to send out our latest newsletter and spotted this new feature. Will definately be integrating this before we send it out. Its going to be very useful

Thanks
Rhys Harry
January 13, 2011 1:58pm

Great stuff, some of our clients will be delighted about this.

How about putting tweet & like links in the forward to a friend page? I think the more opportunity you give recipients to tweet or like as opposed to emailing a max 5 friends the better. This would need to be optional & configured in the Customize Forward to a Friend page as not everyone uses twitter & facebook.
John
January 13, 2011 2:41pm

Hi

Really like this new feature which has been added and will add another interesting layer of insight for our emails.

One request I would like to see - I would like to be able to share directly to a business page (i.e when sharing currently, I can only share to my own personal profile). So effectively when I click share to Facebook in my reports section, I would be able to choose from a list of pages which I administrate and select one for the message to be shared across on there.

Is this a feature which is being developed?

Cheers
Shar0n
January 13, 2011 4:30pm

Thanks you - an excellent feature. Only downside being the createsend.com references. Keep up the good work guys. I’m sooo glad I found you! Why can’t all companies be like you?
Peter
January 13, 2011 7:37pm

Indeed nice feature, only custom domains instead of createsend.com is a must have feature.
Scott
January 13, 2011 7:42pm

David,

Great feature.
I vote for custom domains though
Joel Turner
January 13, 2011 7:54pm

Been waiting for this. One word - brilliant!

Thanks

Joel
Jacques
January 13, 2011 11:01pm

Very cool feature. I was hoping this would be on your list this year. Nice job.
David Greiner
January 13, 2011 11:19pm

@John: That’s a nice idea and something we’re looking at supporting soon. We hope to make it easy to either let people promote the email itself, or another page you specify like your Facebook profile, or a specific landing page. More on that soon.

@Rhys: We actually went down that path originally before we built the social sharing and forwards. It’s something we’d consider, but given how easy it now is to add these directly to the email, we’d need a few votes before going down this path. Thanks for the suggestion, and consider your vote added.
Jeremy
January 13, 2011 11:37pm

David,

Screen shot showing how bad the Facebook “Like” button is on a dark background may be found here:

http://thebennett.org/temp/like.png
David Greiner
January 13, 2011 11:41pm

@Jeremy: Thanks for posting that, can I ask which email client that is, as it doesn’t look like it’s supporting the alpha transparency in the 24-bit PNG. We might have to switch to transparent gifs for the best cross-client support.
Jeremy
January 13, 2011 11:43pm

David,

The Facebook “Like” button is a gif, and it doesn’t look like it has any transparency. You can find it here:
http://img.createsend.com/img/social/fblike.gif

The tweet image has transparency (http://img.createsend.com/img/social/tweet.gif).

Jeremy

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