So you want to know ‘How to add a ‘Facebook Like Button’ to your email template‘. Ever since MailChimp promised to add the functionality to their system we have seen a buzz with people wondering how they do it. This article is a quick and dirty guide to DIY Facebook Like Buttons embedded in email templates.  So no matter who your ESP is you can embed a Like Button within your email design.

Well to be perfectly honest it really is not that hard, however contrary to what you may have hoped it is not quite seamless and there is no way for it to be. It involves a 2 click process.

The simplest way and the one most likely to work for most users is to use the following code.

— The Code —

<p>
<a href=”http://www.facebook.com/plugins/like.php?href=http://www.facebook.com/pages/Email-Expert/130177676994892?ref%3Dts&layout=standard&show_faces=true&width=450&action=like&colorscheme=light&height=80 target=”_blank”>

<img src=”http://emailexpert.org/dontexist/likebutton.jpg” title=”Facebook Like Button” target=”_blank”>
</a>
</p>

—-ends—-

Instructions

1. Change the URL to the page you want ‘liked’

2. Change the img location and upload your likebutton image.

Other Implementations

The Mailchimp implementation is a little different. When you click the ‘Like’ button you are taken to the hosted version of the newsletter and the “Like Box” as above is overlayed as a div. You could also take this route by adding the code to your hosted version of the newsletter.

With a little tweaking of the code you can do one better than the new window that is launched using this method. You could

As MailChimp said in their recent release:

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.

Qudos for MailChimp implementing this so quickly, but witha  little tweaking you should all be able to do something similar relatively painlessly while you await your own ESP or software vendor adding similar social sharing to their email newsletters.

Anyone else have idea’s on improving on this basic implementation?

Credit to @iamelliott for inspiring this blog post with his question on LinkedIn