(©digitalmarketer.id)
The short answer is "yes" to an extent. Email marketing is definitely not dead, it's just taking a back seat in many companies as they try and understand the workings of social media marketing. However, the effectiveness of email marketing cannot be denied and can still overtake other forms of marketing.
Email marketing gives an organization the ability to control exactly what they want their consumers to see, feel and think. They can target their consumers based on demographics, gender, location, and age. This is a lot harder to achieve with social media marketing, with email marketing there is a feel-good factor, which is caused by simply seeing your name at the start of the email. HOW SAD! But incredibly effective! The ability to customize and personalize emails to suit the consumer creates an easy and special online experience.
Those emails that plague your inbox and you aggressively delete, still sneakily get in your head! Brand recognition is key in many companies success, bombarding you with their name and logo through emails will increase your chance of choosing to look at that brand when you are looking for a particular product or service. Sneaky! Unfortunately due to the amount of "Spam" emails that are untargeted and repetitive the click-through rate has dropped dramatically and many people do not give out their email addresses.
(©brand-image via shutter stock)
The ability to showcase your branding can be done extremely effectively on social media, due to the freedom and ease to use photography, graphic design, and video content. This can be deemed to leave more of an impression on consumers, especially younger audiences online. However, contrary to this email campaigns can be more successful in driving consumers to take action even if the branding is less visible.
Shareability is what makes social media so successful, people naturally share content with others if they feel it's inspiring or a benefit to their friends online. Social media content provides much higher engagement rates and is available to access for a longer period of time, especially when shared on different social media outlets to different diverse audiences. Whereas, when was the last time you shared email content with others? Exactly!
According to this 2016 sharing activity graph created by Mary Fernadez for optinmonster. 57% of online content sharing happened on facebook. Other social media outlets like LinkedIn and Twitter also were popular. Email only accounted for a measly 4% of that sharing activity.
(©maryfernadez-optinmonster)
However, the people who do subscribe or forward email content of a brand have a stronger relationship with the company and usually are more likely to be brand advocates which create regular and loyal consumers.
Online marketing is all about reach, how many eyes you can get on to your content and how many will click through onto your product or service. Unfortunately, having 1,500 social media followers is not the same as having 1,500 email subscribers. Due to social media algorithmic changes, many of these 1,500 followers will not see the brand's social media content decreasing the outreach drastically. Email marketing can be seen to outperform social media in terms of reach as its personal, direct and easily accessed. However, social media gives the opportunity for content to go viral and reach an incredible amount of people. To use social media successfully in terms of outreach the organisation needs a strong understanding of how to connect their consumers to the content, this can be by using hashtags, campaigns names that consumers can follow and blog post tags.
(©2016GetReponse)
Looking more closely at the impact of email marketing and social media marketing in online businesses. A 2016 study by GetReponse stated that 23% of online businesses felt that the biggest benefit of email marketing was creating more leads and improving sales for the company. (22%) regarding the online businesses return on investment (ROI) it is clear that email marketing is the front-runner at 25% as social media only receive a 14% at excellent.
When looking at the security aspect of both marketing tools, email can be safer and more controllable. Social media outlets can be a different story between hackers, fake accounts, and fake content. We all recall the huge MySpace security fail, which caused the downfall of the platform. Companies using social media need to be careful and vigilant with their accounts and content having a secure email list is a safe alternative to connect directly with consumers.
An example of email marketing being done extremely effectively is the charity: water campaign, after donation the consumer receives an email that shows the journey of the donation and the impact and difference it will make. This gives the organisation complete transparency and consumers have a personalised and direct knowledge of where their donation is going. (©2016Charity:water.org)
Postmates is a delivery service that deliver goods locally, their email marketing campaign captured my attention because I love a GIF. Who doesn't?
The use of movement and fun visuals are very effective in getting consumers to interact with the email content, they use questions and fun facts to connect informally and encourage sharing content on social media. This is a great example how companies use both marketing tools to boost their reach.
(©2017Postmates-Chipotle)
Should businesses invest more of their money and effort into email marketing or social media?
Do they have to choose?
Combining both of these marketing tools can be extremely valuable to your business especially if you can successfully play each platform to its strengths and maximize your results. Through sharing opt-in offers on social media and through paid ads you can grow your email list as well as drive traffic to your website. With social media being a mid-funnel channel this can drive more conversions with email due to social medias ability to engage with broad and diverse audiences. Both forms of marketing are much more environmentally friendly and cost-effective as there is no media space fees or printing costs.
To conclude this debate, many companies have tried to use social media to market their brand and connect with their consumers, which has led them to leave marketing slightly in the background. However, both marketing tools are parallel universes that can work and communicate successfully together. The power and strengths of email marketing cannot be ignored and can be enhanced further by using social media. The most successful way to combine these two tools would be to use email to ensure reach, create traffic and get direct conversions. Alongside this businesses can use social media to help the brand engage with potential and current consumers and help make more sales.
Amy McMillan