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Email Marketing vs. Social Media: Pros, Cons & Opportunities
Considering the current day statistics, more than 4.5 billion people use the internet, and approximately 80% of them are using social media. But, here’s the catch, almost all of them have an email account.
Emails and social media both serve as a means of electronic marketing. While social mediamarketing might seem like the future, emails provide you with a more direct approach to your clients.
To understand this better, let us look at it this way.
“If Social Media is the cocktail party, then email marketing is the ‘meet up for coffee.’ The original 1 to 1 channel.”-Erik Harbison
Now it might give you a certain level of idea on how this works, but it doesn’t essentially describe which one works best.
Here’s a detailed insight on both Email Marketing and Social Media.
What is Email Marketing?
Email marketing is the process of using emails to send out promotional emails and services. It is also used as a means to develop one to one relations with your potential clients.
Email marketing has numerous benefits that are associated with it. Consider it is a cost-effective means of communication that allows your customers to be informed and send out customized emails.
- As per the 2020 world statistics by Statista, over 3.9 billion users have an email account, and approximately 293.6 Billion emails are sent and received every day.
- The Pros of Email Marketing
- While email marketing might seem like an outdated way of promoting your business, it efficiently serves as a means of persuasive digital marketing. Here are some advantages of Email Marketing.
- Trust is a crucial factor when it comes to marketing. People tend to do business with those that they have already worked with. –Email marketing helps you develop relationships and credibility.
- Email marketing provides you with an inexpensive way to reach out to your clientele. All you have to do is send emails to your potential customers, free of charge.
- Unlike other digital channels such as Facebook, Instagram, and paid promotions, Email marketing provides you with your own list –You don’t have to rely on any algorithms that decide who and when can they see your content. Hence, you get a higher Return on Investment (ROI).
With over 3.9 billion email users, the open-rate of emails is at an average of 22.86%. In contrast, the click-through rate approximates around 3.71% and the ROI at a whopping 4400%. –Email Marketing has a higher ROI.
What is Social Media Marketing?
Social Media Marketing is the process of connecting with potential clients using social media platforms. This requires publishing read-worthy content on your social accounts, interacting with your followers, and running advertisements.
- To analyze how your social media marketing performs, you have to focus on its targeted reach, client engagement, and sales over social media. The most widely used social media platforms include Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Youtube, Linkedin, and Snapchat. All of these feature advertisements and promoted posts that provide revenue and sales over time.
- According to a data analysis by Statista, over 3.6 billion users have social media accounts globally. There’s a wide range of social media platforms. Surprisingly the active users of social media are less than the number of Email account owners.
- The Pros of Social Media Marketing
- Statistically, social media has lower average accounts than email accounts. However, it has its advantages. Here are some benefits of social media marketing
- Social media marketing provides you with a platform for delivering organic social content. –Social media gives you valuable real-time insight into who your clients are and what they like.
- While organic posts might work most of the time, but they aren’t as effective as they used to be. –Social media provides you with paid advertisements. They can either be in the form of a video ad or a picture ad.
Social media marketing has a 0.58% engagement rate for Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter altogether, and over 3.6 billion total users. It has a relatively low engagement rate of 22.86%. –However, social media allows you to drive traffic into your website and boost your overall sales.
Email or Social Media: What Should You Go for?
There doesn’t necessarily have to be a winner. Both of these are potent channels to be used side by side for increased overall revenue and engagement.
In terms of revenue and reachability, email marketing has an ROI of 4400% and an engagement rate of about 22.86%. However, social media has a comparatively low engagement rate of 0.58% and almost no ROI.
A study was conducted based on the ages of 18-24 and 25-65. It was found that over 74% of people chose emails for B2C interaction. Whereas only 24% of people preferred social media ads for B2C exchange.
If you’re a business owner and plan on sending out promotional emails, there’s a good possibility your client wants it over an email. Whereas, if your clientele wants to reach out to you, there’s a good possibility they will reach out to you on social media.
- Opportunities For Using Email And Social Media Marketing Side By Side
- To ensure you get the most out of your digital marketing, you can follow these tactics.
- Based on the interaction of your customers with emails, you can target them with ads.
- Make use of your current email list and link it to social media platforms to find new customers.
- Set-up ads on social media to direct people to sign-up for your mailing list.
Key Takeaways
- Emails are proven efficient for a higher return on investment (ROI).
- People prefer receiving promotional emails over ads.
- People prefer B2C interaction over social media.
Conclusion
If you’re a marketer, you know what marketing service would get you a higher ROI. Both email and social media can be used for digital marketing. It can help grow your current mailing list. If you fail, you can use a web scraper and email extractor.
