If I'm on social media, I don't need email marketing, right?

Nope. Email marketing beats social media hands down!

Why?

Because the two are completely different tools.

Why?

Email marketing allows you to “push” information into people’s inboxes. With social media, you rely on people to “pull” the information. BUT, both vehicles have their place in a balanced marketing toolkit.

For example, having 1,000 email addresses is different than having 1,000 Facebook fans. When you post on Facebook, about 5% of fans will see your post (that’s 50 people). When you send an email, about 18% of subscribers will see your email (that’s 180 people). That’s a substantial difference.

Of the people who open your email, about 5% will click on a link; based on the 1,000 subscribers with a 18% open rate, that’s 7 people. On social media, the click rate is 0.07% for Facebook and 0.03% for Twitter.

Those are dramatic numbers. Email is clearly an excellent tool that consistently performs.

The data above is sourced by MailMunch and it validates a similar experience to what we see with our clients in our Full Service Email Marketing Program.

So, can you ignore social media? No, there is a special place for it in your marketing mix.

Engagement is driven best on social media. When you want to frequently expose your company to the market and get engagement (Likes, Comments, Shares), social media is ideal. The trick is to ensure that the content you post is shareable; what that means is that the information is mostly NOT about you, but rather information your followers find interesting and would want to share with their friends.

By combining the two approaches you can elevate your impact. The direct forward rate with emails is quite low, but the share rate of emails posted on social media is good. What that means is that your email messages, shared to social, get seen by others who are not on your email list.

The other wonderful benefit of social media is advertising. Because of its highly-targeted options, particularly for Facebook and LinkedIn, when you’re looking for new customers, running ads that offer something of value is highly effective. We have several clients for whom we ran such campaigns and the results are very strong.

Bottom line: Email is an excellent marketing tool with low cost and highly effective performance rates (when properly executed). If you’re not using it, you’re leaving money on the table. Social media has value, and in most cases, can be highly effective as a complementary marketing tool.

Want to learn more about this? Call me.