MailChimp v5.2 will be released early next week and include support for the social plugin. Essentially marketers will soon have a simple way to plop Facebook "Like" buttons inside their e-mail messages.
The e-mail "Like" buttons will look and function in exactly the same way that they do on the web. So, when a subscriber clicks the "Like" button in an e-mail, the campaign is then posted to their Facebook profile. Those "Like" behaviors are tracked by MailChimp and made accessible in the campaign social stats section.
While somewhat controversial, "Like" buttons have proved to be incredibly popular, especially for content creators and online publishers. Nearly 65 million users reportedly "Like" things daily, and TypePad users have experienced a 50% increase in referral traffic to their blogs from Facebook.
If the MailChimp "Like" addition works as advertised, we predict the upcoming feature will prove extremely popular with e-mail marketers and have the potential to massively boost user engagement.
Given the very nature of Facebook "Like," the e-mail recipient that clicks to "Like" something is taking a much more social and long-lasting action than simply clicking on a link. In fact, some might even make a case for replacing the link with the "Like" in e-mail altogether.
Watch the video below for a descriptive walkthrough of the new feature.