This post was part of a 2 part series originally posted on the ListEngage blog.

Marketers have been talking about “Making Emails Social” for awhile now— but how many people are actually having success with this mantra? Even though today there are many ways to integrate sharing functions into email like – ShareThis, AddThis and Forward to a Friend, social–sharing still hasn’t hit its stride.

So, what’s the holdup that’s keeping people from clicking, sharing, forwarding and (ultimately) getting your brand in front of more people?

Here are the Top 5 Things that Keep a Subscriber from Sharing Emails Socially:

1) What the heck am I sharing? (Uncertainty) – If you’ve placed a “ShareThis” button in your email campaigns and aren’t seeing a lot of clicks and sharing, you might ask yourself – “do these people know what they are sharing?” – do you make it obvious with visual cues and an explanation?

2) Where does that link even go? (Skepticism/Confusion) – Your users might be leery if they’re unsure of what happens after they click a “Share” function. Will they have time to review it before it posts? What will it look like?

3) Who would I want to share this with? (Common Interests) – You are uniquely you and sometimes your interests are very specific. Odds are, many of your contacts might not be interested in the personalized and specific emails you get in your inbox every day… which brings us to our next question.

4) Why would I want to share this? (Motivation/Value) – Great, you’ve just digested an email with some goodies in it from one of your favorite brands… but unless it has really compelling content, value or an offer you’re not going to bring it to anyone’s attention on your social networks.

And most obviously there’s the question of:

5) Why don’t I just Forward this to them directly? (Ease of Use) – Most users want to expend the least amount of energy possible sharing their info… and sometimes a quick forward from your own address is best.

Stay tuned and find out how to get them to share your emails in our next blog post (coming later this week).