Sunday, October 24, 2010

How Can the Integration of LinkedIn and Microsoft Outlook Affect Email Marketing?

written by; Gary San

Outlook, Microsoft's popular desktop email software for professionals, has become one of the latest tools to help bring email marketing and social networking under a single umbrella. This was all made possible through integration with LinkedIn, the increasingly popular business-oriented social network. Thanks to an add-on by the name of Outlook Social Connector, the mail program can now provide both professional and social context to enhance the everyday email experience. When users receive a message from a member of the LinkedIn community, Outlook automatically displays an expandable pane housing details on the contacts most recent activity on the social network. The partnership offers tremendous potential to email marketers who want to reap the benefits of LinkedIn using Outlook.

Features and Capabilities

The social connector tool comes with a host of interesting features, the most obvious and significant being the connection of the two platforms. Thanks to this integration, you can open the Outlook client and view important information about your LinkedIn contacts, which is pulled directly from their profile. This includes their profile photo and the people they have recently connected with on the network, as well as status updates. You can also view the latest professional details such as the contacts most recent job, and where they are located. Perhaps the most intriguing attribute is that even if you are not connected with someone on LinkedIn, the add-on allows you to easily connect with that person via Outlook.

Another added bonus is seamless synchronization of your Outlook and LinkedIn contacts. Outlook automatically consolidates the data for your existing contacts, and the people you connect with on LinkedIn. You also have the ability to email your social contacts directly from the mail client. When composing a message and tying in the name of one of your contacts, their information will be logged into the system and automatically appear just like anyone else in your address book. If that contact happens to change their information on LinkedIn, it will be automatically updated in Outlook as well. To make the deal even sweeter, the social connector add-on lets you invite people to join your LinkedIn network by simply clicking a button in your email program.

Although the Outlook Social Connector is included as part of the Microsoft 2010 Office Suite, email marketers do not have to purchase a new software bundle to enjoy the new social-friendly features. The add-on can be downloaded and installed to work with both Outlook 2003 and 2007.
The LinkedIn Outlook toolbar has been on the market for a while now, but this integration represents the first major partnership between the software maker and professional social network.

The Next Great Email Marketing Tool

Considering the dependency on email and social networking, the Microsoft-LinkedIn partnership will likely prove valuable for both parties. Outlook receives an instant boost with social networking features that put it light-years ahead of any webmail system, and LinkedIn finds itself in the inbox of millions of professionals that use Microsoft's email program. While Outlook may not be the tool of choice for large-scale campaigns, marketers who realize its value will be able to take full advantage of the integration.

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