A report from GetReponse found that the use of social sharing buttons increases CTRs.

The integration of marketing channels is poised to be a top trend for 2012, and marketers may want to start with email and social media marketing content. A new report from GetResponse found that weaving social sharing features into email marketing can improve response rates and engagement.

The company analyzed its massive database of client campaigns and found that adding social sharing options into email content boosts click-through rates by 115 percent. More than 5 percent of email campaigns encouraging recipients to share content see clicks, while the figure falls to 2.6 percent for those messages lacking social integration.

However, just 18.3 percent of email marketing campaigns have successfully implemented sharing options.

“With 3.1 billion email users worldwide and more than 1 billion social media users, messages can gain incredible viral and word-of-mouth power, thanks to social media integration,” Simon Grabowski, founder of GetResponse, said in a release.

In terms of the top social platforms for email integration, LinkedIn proved most effective. More than 9 percent of campaigns that included LinkedIn sharing options were clicked through by subscribers, while Facebook (5.4 percent) and Twitter (5 percent) walso showed modest improvements in CTRs for email campaigns compared to those lacking the feature.

Brafton recently reported that 43 percent of businesses are happy with the targeted content they have created for their email marketing campaigns. However, most believe they could improve by gaining a better understanding of consumer data. As such, GetReponse’s stance on social content use should encourage more to integrate the channels. 

Joe Meloni is Brafton's former Executive News and Content Writer. He studied journalism at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, and has written for a number of print and web-based publications.