Social Media Integration

Add share links to your email content to allow campaign recipients to share a link or copy of your campaign on supported social media and expand the reach of your campaign.

Tip: track the social activity for your campaigns in the social report to see the number of hits to links shared by recipients.

There are two types of share link you can create:

  • Link to your campaign - recipients share an anonymous web version of your campaign when following the link.
  • Link to another URL - recipients share a custom URL, e.g. a link to your website, when following the link.

Supported social media

The Adestra editors support social sharing to: Digg, Twitter, Pinterest, Reddit, Google+, LinkedIn, and Facebook.

The method for inserting social links into your content depends on if you are using the HTML editor or Email Editor.

Email Editor

Press the Share Link email tool in a link, HTML box or source box to insert a share link.

HTML Editor

To insert an icon with a share link:

  1. Position your cursor where you want the link to be placed.
  2. Press the share link button to open the share link selector.
  3. Select a social site.
  4. Configure your share link.

To link existing text:

  1. Highlight the relevant text.
  2. Press the share link button to open the share link selector.
  3. Select a social site.

  4. Configure your share link.

    Note: creating a share link this way will remove the option to select an icon or enter text.

Configure Share Link

Once you have selected a social network, the share link selector displays the options for you to configure the share link.

Note: although the setup is similar for most of the social networks, there are some exceptions.

  1. Select the type of share link you wish to include, i.e. link to a web version of this campaign or link to another URL. The type will default to the current campaign.

    If you select to link to another URL, enter the full URL in the URL text box, e.g. https://uplandsoftware.com/adestra/.

    Exception: instead of the share option, Twitter has a status field showing what will be tweeted by recipients.

    The status will be pre-filled with a link placeholder representing the URL to the page being shared. This is a shortened link, used instead of the delegated domain to save space.

    • Edit the status by entering text before and after the link.

    • The link place holder must remain in the status in order for it to be tracked.

    • Keep track of the character restriction using the counter displayed alongside.

  2. If you wish to track the URL, ensure the track URL checkbox is ticked. Hits to the linked page will be recorded as page views in the campaign report.

    Note: the link will change to use Adestra's link shortener, instead of the domain. Deselect this option if you want your domain to be used.

  3. Unless you are linking from existing text, your link will include the icon for the chosen social network.

    • Select a size for the icon from the dropdown box.

    • To not have an icon displayed, select 'none' using the drop-down box.

  4. Add share text for your link or use the default message, e.g. Share on LinkedIn.

  5. Press the okay button to add the share link to your email content.

    Exception: Some of the social networks, such as LinkedIn, let you add more details to the page that is being shared, for example a title or description.

    Some options are pre-filled, e.g. the title will default to your campaign’s subject line. Before pressing the okay button, you may wish to change the title, description, etc. to something else.

Tip: add further customisation using open graph tags and conditional content for share links.

When recipients follow a share link, they will be directed to the social network site and given various options to customise the link they are sharing before they post.

Any pre-filled details are transferred to the social network’s share page.

Examples:

Share on Twitter

When recipients share the link, Twitter opens with the pre-filled details.

Screen capture showing a Tweet pre-populated with content generated by the share link.

Recipients can change the pre-filled tweet on the social network's share page before they post.

Facebook Like

When the share link is followed, a new window will open displaying the page being shared, with the like button at the top of the page.

When the recipient clicks to 'Like', they are given the option to also post to Facebook.

Screen capture illustrating how a link shared via Facebook Like might appear with the option to post to Facebook.

Conditional content for share links

Add conditional content to your email to customise your campaign for social media, e.g. to include a sign-up link that would not be relevant to an existing email recipient.

Example template code:

Copy 

[* IF vars.shared *]
Like what you see? Why not signup to our regular newsletter?
[* END *]

This conditional content will only be displayed to people who have clicked to view your campaign via a social network.

For more help including conditional content in your emails, contact Adestra Customer Support (adestra-support@uplandsoftware.com).

Customising share links with Open Graph tags

Use Open Graph meta tags to customise your share link, avoiding the default settings for elements such as text and images that some social media sites generate.

When customising the share link for an email, the meta tags will need to be entered into the <head> section of your HTML template.

When customising the share link to a website, the tags will need to be entered into the <head> section of your web page.

Screen capture showing an example of an edited link with custom graphics and text in the description.
Note: there are Facebook recommendations regarding image sizes when customising thumbnail images within your share link. For more information, see Facebook's best practices for websites and mobile apps.

The following basic meta tags will allow you to set the thumbnail image, the title and description, rather than using a default template which may not be quite as accurate.

  • Thumbnail image - <meta property="og:image" content="Image URL In Here" />
  • Title - <meta property="og:title" content="Title of the post here" />
  • Description - <meta property="og:description"content="Description should be written in here"/>
Screen capture showing how the listed basic meta tags might appear in the source editor.

For more information on adding code into the HTML of your campaign please refer to the Source Editor topic.