Social media or email marketing—which is more effective? Social media is all the talk these days while so many people ask if email marketing still “works”? The truth is that both email marketing and social media are effective but in different ways. Before we dive in and provide the answers to these questions, it’s important to know that the best marketers have a diversified and integrated strategy. What we mean is your strategy is made up of various channels and both organic and inorganic marketing.
So which is more effective: email marketing or social media? It depends on your goals… Rather than it being one or the other, they can actually work hand in hand to complement each other. Social media is a great way to reach new audiences worldwide and email marketing is a way to keep your people engaged. It’s still very much alive and isn’t going anywhere any time soon. I bet you’ve checked your email at least twice already today.
What Kind of Goals Does Social Media Help You Achieve?
I’m sure you already know the benefits of social media and why your business needs to make use of its platforms. I won’t spend too much time here. But as a quick recap, social media is great for increasing brand awareness and getting your company in front of brand new eyes. It’s actually a way to help build your email list. If you have an offer or lead magnet, you can promote it through social channels to capture more emails.
Social media also revolves around quality content and focuses more on pleasure. The more quality content you release, the more you’re positioning your company as a thought leader and expert in the industry. This is building trust. With a crowded digital landscape, getting prospects to trust you is everything and will ultimately lead to increased conversions.
So you build a following, but it doesn’t end there. By capturing emails and information from the following you built, you’re taking full ownership of your audience. Keeping your people only on social media platforms means that the platform has control over your followers. If Instagram was down for a day, would that mean you can’t engage with your clients and prospects?
What Kind of Goals Does Email Marketing Help You Achieve?
If you’re looking to take ownership of your followers and keep your list engaged, then email marketing is for you. Emails are a way to keep in touch with a fairly warm audience. Keep in mind two things here: 1) a company that has already purchased from you is likely to buy from you again. 2) A contact might not be ready to buy but by keeping them engaged, you’ll be top of mind for when they are ready.
Each channel of the digital marketing world has a completely different purpose and different expectations. For example, people don’t want to be sold on social media. The strategy there is to provide compelling and insightful value to your target audience. On the other hand, email marketing is actually the preferred channel for people to receive promotions and information about your latest releases.
The average click-through rate for emails is 2.5% while the average for Facebook is a measly 0.89%. See what we mean? And it makes sense. All of the people you’re communicating with via email have opted into them, so they’re more likely to be interested and less likely to be annoyed.
So if you already have a list and you aren’t consistently engaging them via email, your team is leaving money on the table. If you’re looking to build a bigger list, social media marketing is an effective way to do so. Email marketing has its many benefits, but you can’t reach new accounts in the way that you can on social media.
TLDR
It shouldn’t be about choosing one or the other when it comes to social and email marketing. They can (and SHOULD) work together to compliment each other and further lead prospects down the funnel. Each is great for achieving different things, but if your goal is to increase conversions, you might have more results (and faster) from email marketing.
But don’t take that and run. The most effective and top marketers use a diversified approach to marketing. Why choose when you can use both email and social media?
