The legacy* editor’s Follow block allows you to link different social media accounts directly from your campaign. The legacy* social sharing feature allows your audience to share your campaigns with their social networks via email, Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn.
How to use the Follow block
- Navigate to your Campaigns tab.
- Open a saved legacy* draft or click on the Create new campaign button to choose a legacy* template.
- Click on the Follow block icon in the left panel and drag it over to your mailing.
- As you drag the block over to your campaign, you will see yellow sections appear labeled Drop here. These yellow drop spots will turn green as you hover over them, so you know where the content block will appear in the mailing.
- Once you release the block, it will appear in the place you designated.
- In the pop-up window that appears, enter your social media handles for each of the icons that you want to include.
- We provide the protocol and domain for each of the social sites, so you only need to provide the path unique to the account you want to feature. For example, when adding your Twitter account, you don’t need to enter https://www.twitter.com. You only need to add the end of the URL because that’s the portion that is unique to your account.
- It’s generally easy to find the proper link extensions for social sites. Log in to the site and click on the profile image – this will usually open the profile page where you can then view the URL and simply copy and paste everything after .com/. Just be sure to enter your business social accounts and not your personal accounts.
- Do this for all of the social links you’d like to feature in your campaign and those icons will appear in the Preview box. Platforms that you leave empty will not appear in your email.
- Select an icon set style. If you don’t like the color options, click on Switch to black & white to view the black and white options.
- Use the Size dropdown menu to select small, medium, or large icons.
- Use the Orientation dropdown menu to select a horizontal or vertical arrangement.
- Use the Position dropdown menu to select a left, center, or right alignment.
- Be sure to send a test so that you can confirm that the link behind each icon works correctly. If any links are not correct, reopen the Follow block settings and make adjustments as needed.
The legacy* Follow block reflects the old Twitter icon and does not include the new “X” icon. For the most current “X” icon, please use the new drag and drop editor.
How to enable social sharing on a campaign
The legacy* footer automatically has social sharing options included in the footer. To activate them, follow these steps:
- Navigate to your Campaigns tab.
- Open a saved legacy* draft or click on the Create new campaign button to choose a legacy* template.
- Scroll down to the footer and click on the section labeled Share this email.
- In the pop-up window that appears, check or uncheck the boxes to choose which sharing options you want to give your audience. The options are: email, Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn.
Once social sharing is enabled, recipients of your campaigns will be able to click on any of the share icons you’ve added and share that campaign over email, Twitter, Facebook, or LinkedIn. Here’s a peek at what that process looks like for them.
When a recipient clicks on the envelope icon, they will be taken to a webpage that allows them to “resend” the mailing to up to 10 email addresses per day.
When a recipient clicks on the Twitter icon, they will be taken to the Twitter login page. After logging in, they’ll see a pre-populated tweet with the link to your campaign. They can change the note that appears before the link or add a note after it. By clicking the Tweet button, they’ll post it to their feed.
When a recipient clicks on the Facebook icon, they will be taken to the Facebook login page. After logging in, they’ll be prompted to type a message or comment about the link they’re about to post. By clicking the Share Link button at the bottom of the page, they’ll make the link and its accompanying message visible in their profile.
When a recipient clicks on the LinkedIn icon, they will be taken to the LinkedIn login page. After logging in, they’ll see the option to post your campaign to the LinkedIn updates section or share it with individual contacts.
How to track your share results
To see who shared your campaign, you just need to look at the response data for that campaign.
- Navigate to your Response tab.
- Click on the name of the desired campaign to open it.
- Click on the Shares tab.
Here, you’ll see a list of who shared that campaign and the network that they shared it to. While you can see which of your contacts shared the campaign, you can’t see the individuals who clicked to view the campaign from the share links (but you can see the number of folks who clicked). Although those folks aren’t in your audience yet, if they like what they see, they can easily use the signup link in the footer of your campaign to subscribe to your marketing communications.
How to remove social sharing icons from the footer
You can easily adjust or turn off the sharing block to prevent it from appearing in the footer of the mailing. To do this, you’ll need to be in an open campaign and navigate to the footer. Simply click on the Share this email block in the footer and uncheck the ones that you do not want to display. To remove the block entirely, simply check all four options. You’ll still see the social share block in the editor, but it won’t be visible in the inbox.
* In April 2022, our legacy editor was replaced with a new drag and drop editor. Accounts that existed prior to this change still have access to the legacy editor through their previously saved templates and campaigns, however new, from-scratch campaigns can only be created in the new drag and drop editor. Accounts that were created after this change only have access to the new drag and drop editor. Please refer to our new editor FAQ article for more information.