If your email recipients like your content, they can use the buttons to quickly share it with their network, thus increasing the reach of your communication and encouraging new subscribers.

It’s as easy as adding a quicklink in the 3mail editor:

What’s even better, is that every time someone tweets or likes your content, it shows up in your 3mail campaign reports in real-time, closing the loop and helping you to see how often your content is shared on these social networks.

We are very excited about this new feature, and have more in the works. Next up: Unlimited monthly plans for 3mail’s heavy users who prefer to pay a flat fee instead of paying everytime they send. You asked, and we’ll deliver! Look for this update in February 2011.

About 3mail:

3mail is an email marketing tool designed specifically for economic development and tourism. With 3mail, you’ll know exactly how your campaigns are performing. See who opened, clicked and forwarded your email.

3mail lets you:

1. Create and send your own beautiful email campaigns
2. Manage and grow your recipient lists
3. Review powerful reports and campaign statistics

Check it out here and start sending amazing email campaigns today. Thanks for your continued support. We hope you love this new feature as much as we do!

This post represents the best of what I thought was tweet-worthy in 2010. I challenge you to do the same and post your best of in the comments section or @ me on Twitter.

You can follow me here. I’d love to connect.

- HC

Best Tweets of Q4

One of the best posts I’ve read on writing for the web and email: http://ow.ly/3vMX3

RT @mashable 5 Ways Cities Are Using Social Media to Reverse Economic Downturn – http://on.mash.to/hm2l2n #econdev #placebranding

Very cool. RT @fastcompany San Francisco Aims for 100% Green Power by 2020 http://bit.ly/fKJpO0 #econdev

Hip does not equal sustainable. RT @mellormurray Great post – Cool or uncool cities? What really matters is prosperity http://ow.ly/3p20G

Need a social media policy for your EDO? Good database of corporate, gov’t and non-profit examples here: http://ow.ly/3hq2k #econdev #sm

RT @mellormurray How do you measure economic development success? http://ow.ly/39xqD

Approaching tourism from a regional perspective. Applies to #econdev too. http://ow.ly/35v4G (via @sandyratliff)

RT @jupia Low corporate taxes not a major draw of foreign investment; Conference Board http://bit.ly/c7TRa7

Business incubators as an #econdev tool – more likely to succeed AND stay local when they do – http://bit.ly/b4H7KK (via @EcDevComDev)

Best Tweets of Q3

Data as a municipal asset. http://bit.ly/b2A36R (via @MartinProsperiT) We were pretty impressed when Vancouver did this: http://ow.ly/2K8OH

Interesting ideas in here for cities/ #econdev too RT @mashable How Universities Can Win Big With Location-Based Apps – http://mash.to/2Io3I

Good news for small cities! RT @urbanophile Michigan State Study: Networks, not size, give cities competitive edge – http://is.gd/eTB9H

Don’t rely on clean tech industries for job creation: http://ow.ly/2qoIT via McKinsey Quarterly

How cities are using mobile apps for tourism and economic development http://ow.ly/2qoFL #econdev #tourism #placebranding

Why low taxes alone won’t get the job done for economic development. http://bit.ly/apHlhT via @edmarketingpro #econdev

“I‘ve seen thousands of ads that were too complicated or too generic. I’ve never seen one that was too simple or too specific”-@adcontrarian

Is marketing really the job of economic developers? Damn right it is. Our thoughts on why: http://ow.ly/2keu5 #econdev

Best Tweets of Q2

Make lemonade out of a tourism lemon: Wales sells the hell out of its shortcomings http://ow.ly/21aSs #placebranding #tourism

Real-life example of the diff’ce a copywriting tweak can make: Adding the word “not” increases organ donors like crazy! http://ow.ly/23leJ

For economic developers, tourists in your city are like fish in a barrel. They are here, loving the place – take aim and market like crazy!

Marketing in lean economic times is a competitive advantage. Here’s why: http://ow.ly/1Tvn1

One of the most pragmatic and intelligent articles I’ve read about social media measurement. http://bit.ly/c5qI4B @AmberCadabra

A great tourism campaign rises from the ash cloud: http://ow.ly/1VENs Iceland’s new commercial is sooooo good. #econdev #tourism

Australia seeks to attract business investment with new logo. http://ow.ly/1PKhx Australia Unlimited? I give it a 4 out of 10.

@PureMichigan deserves their own “Ads We Love” blog post I think. Amazing job guys. http://bit.ly/9O8ldx

on3 is THRILLED to announce that we’ll be opening an Atlantic Canada office! http://bit.ly/de5OXk

Best Tweets of Q1

Colorado tries to woo California companies away with campaign professing their love: http://bit.ly/baITtc

Email marketing you can measure: http://bit.ly/bKy5WU

Love how this CEO thinks about digital vs. traditional – i.e. there is no “vs.” http://bit.ly/cyY1kD Found via @danaditomaso (via @acriley)

Why companies are choosing to locate in smaller cities. http://bit.ly/7KGiaM

Survey of 1,000+ EDOs (US): Median marketing budget for effective marketers? $99,000. Ineffective ones? $40,000 from http://bit.ly/aIJ1BE

The avg company that blogs: 55% more visitors, 97% more inbound links, 434% more indexed pages. via @hubspot. Only 11% of Cdn EDOs blog.

Test your email campaigns to improve results! Lots of studies that show why it’s so worth it can be found here: http://bit.ly/9CUsIV

Eleven myths of economic development. http://bit.ly/5v9Og

Neat tourism/ec dev idea: private company sponsoring free parking. In this case, very colourful! http://bit.ly/c6fbgv via @ibelieveinadv

Place Branding: 5 ways to get it right http://bit.ly/ak7esO

If you are a city/region on Twitter, you WILL get negative feedback. The opportunity lies in how you respond.

Why you shouldn’t hire a local marketing agency: http://bit.ly/8Ah0oo

We are pleased to present the results of the 2nd Annual Economic Development Marketing in Canada survey. In June and July of 2010, we asked members of the Economic Developers Association of Canada about their marketing practices, budgets, challenges and ambitions. The results are now available, and will serve as a valuable resource for the profession when it comes to benchmarking, planning and budgeting.

Some of this year’s key findings include:

• Business attraction is the top-ranked marketing objective. Business retention is a distant second.
• 37% of respondents say their website is the single most effective marketing technique they are using, and 70% have a dedicated, frequently updated web presence.
• With the exception of radio, advertising has decreased overall. Those that indicated they aren’t doing any advertising at all has increased by 8% over the 2009 survey.
• The adoption of social media is increasing, and continues to be the top planned activity identified for 2011.

A big thanks to all the respondents who took the time to participate. We will continue to conduct the survey annually and welcome your feedback, questions and suggestions. We hope you find it useful.

You can view and download the 2010 and 2009 surveys here.

The on3 team will be attending the Annual Economic Developers Association of Canada Conference next week in Quebec City. We hope to see you there. If you’ll be in town for the event, drop us a line and let us buy you a fancy French cocktail. And be sure to attend the presentation of the Marketing Canada Awards, emceed by our own Jim McGimpsey.

We will also be releasing our annual Economic Development Marketing in Canada survey at the conference so if you are a registered delegate, watch your email for a link to download it. To see last year’s survey, click here.

It doesn’t make sense to develop our marketing programs in isolation from each other anymore. Great marketing will work across platforms, and great economic development marketing is rooted in a region’s ambitions for attracting investment and opportunity.

(Version A)

And this?

(Version B)

Well, when it comes to getting people to click on a link,  the first email increases the likelihood that they will click by over 100%. But why?

Every year, the Economic Developers Association of Canada (EDAC) conducts a survey about the marketing practices of its membership. This year’s survey was receiving a much lower response rate than 2009, and EDAC wanted to send out a final reminder to try to boost response rates. To ensure that the email garnered the maximum response, we conducted a simple A/B test with the emails you see above. The emails were identical in subject line and message content, but we swapped the image of a smiling, pointing human face with a pie chart in versions A and B.

We started by picking the pie chart image that fit with the idea of the survey. But then we got to thinking that there is a lot of research out there that shows a big jump in clicks and opens when you have human subjects looking at or pointing to the call to action in your message. We decided to test it out for ourselves and sent Version A and Version B to a subset of the overall email list (10% each) and ran the test for six hours. The results are shown below:

Open Rates

• Version A (smiling pointer) – 25%
• Version B (pie chart) – 13%

Click Rates

• Version A (smiling pointer) – 8%
• Version B (pie chart) – 4%

Based on the size of EDAC’s mailing list, we can extrapolate that they received an estimated 46 extra clicks (100%) and 93 extra opens (90%) by sending the winning Version A to the remaining 80% of their mailing list, rather than Version B.

Results:

Sure enough, the response rate to the survey doubled within a week of sending out the reminder email, bringing them back up to 2009 levels. Had we sent out original pie chart version without testing, we’d likely be extending the survey deadline and sending another email plea.

We’ve blogged before about the importance of doing A/B testing with your email campaigns. This recent A/B test for EDAC using our 3mail Email Campaign Tool (shameless plug) demonstrates the incredible difference in results that can be achieved by something as simple as changing a single image.

• Be Specific in Your Messaging: Why “Live, Work, Play” and other clichés will harm your marketing efforts.
• Does Your Economic Development Website Speak Effectively to Site Selectors?:  Highlights from a US-based study of site selectors regarding their frustrations and preferences when it comes to ec dev web properties.
• 8 Tips for Getting Started with Social Media and Email: As more economic developers embrace new social tools, it is important to realize that when it comes to these new marketing channels, the old rules simply don’t apply. Here are 8 tips that cover ideas, etiquette and advice for getting started.
• Has Branding Become a Dirty Word? Our most popular EDAC White Paper, where we explore myths and misconceptions about place branding.
• Branding a City: One of our very first blog posts, this one covers off why place branding is different, and more complex, than other types of branding.
• Place Branding Inspiration Gallery: Over the years, we’ve reviewed quite a few logos and re-branding efforts from cities and regions around the world. Here are 7 posts to get you thinking about your own visual identity and branding program.

Have you subscribed to our RSS feed yet? Grab the feed here.