Tell me that you think this statement means: "Email and Social Media Integration."

To me the blend is pretty simple... most business (even if they haven't entered the social realm yet) have an email list, and social media is another avenue for growing that list if that's your objective. However, I would add three important notes here to be successful:

1. Have a plan: Start out with a written objective for integrating social and email, and make sure your objectives are in alignment with your market. Jumping into social media without having a clear objective or doing your research on which platforms your market uses is a huge waste of time and resources.

2. Avoid using social media for push-marketing: People have had to become very selective about who they invite into their email inbox. Just because you build it, they won't necessarily come. Providing regular, timely, VALUABLE content through social channels on a regular basis greases the "trust factor" wheels. If prospects find your social content to be compelling without blatantly salesey, they're more willing to part with their email address or subscribe. Developing a "social editorial calendar" is very helpful in planning the delivery and type of content.

3. Don't abuse your e-list: Trust is fleeting. We all have our finger on the "unsubscribe" button the moment we feel the messages are too numerous or too pushy. Continue to provide value in your email newsletter and share helpful information, and respect your prospect's time and privacy. Luring customers into opting into your list and then blasting them with daily emails is a definite brand-buster that can cost you.

There is no doubt that email marketing is a proven concept that's been around long enough to show statistically relevant results. Social media is still evolving, but incorporating it into the mix can broaden your opportunities to engage with people, share helpful information and give them opportunities to opt in for direct communication with you. Blending the two can bring success--if you develop a plan for doing it right.

This statement is nipping at the edges of this concept:

"Email is the sweetheart of social media" - it is the driver, or the traffic cop, that points the right people to the right content, housed on social media platforms.

Email IS social media. All digital media are -- based on how we use them. Socially. To say we need to integrate them is to over-complicate. Which is precisely what social media gurus and vendors rely on: Your believing this is all "revolutionized" marketing.

In fact, what makes social and email marketing work successfully, together or at all, is not new. I don't normally link out to content but I wrote a 2 part series on this exact subject -- recently at Revenews.comhttp://bit.ly/g5NskN

It means that you create a seamless experience, and leverage email content for social media distribution either sharing the content directly from an email or re-using the content in social media to create buzz. Also leveraging social media to get more email opt-in subscribers through original content.

Hi Andrew, I often ponder this one.

For me, the two are inextricably linked. I do not know of a single social media instrument/platform/community that does not have an email address attached to a user as a unique identifier. And email alerts are the strongest traffic driver of all social networks.

As a subject/topic, it seems to occupy a great deal of web space.

And it seems to be a "must have" for every email marketer (if you look at how almost every ESP has it real high on their list of "differentiating functionalities").

From a campaign perspective, it should mean to me, providing a simple, one click way for an email recipient to chose to "share" any content within an email across their social (or possibly business) networks.

And the email platform should then display some reporting to see that this has occured and to what extent. Without compromising the privacy of any of the original recipient's social network members who they chose to share it with. I am not sure if a user would want it to work the other way round - they would just send out an email from their SN platfrom but call it something else (update, whatever).

But I only see FB messages as emails viewed through a different client/UI and tweets as a morphed SMS/email subject line - for mass distribution/consumption.