Email Still Beats Social Media

Email still remains the king of online marketing, and even snail mail performs much better than social media.

A recent survey by Crossview revealed that 39% of customers preferred to receive promotional messages via email as opposed to just 9% from social media.

The old fashioned direct mailer (via snail mail) also remains a potent tool, with 23% preferring it over social media.

That's not to say that social media isn't an effective tool, it's just that as marketers and business owners we need to keep perspective on where we're focusing our marketing efforts.

In other words don't abandon email and mailers for the latest "flavour of the day" internet marketing technique.

Go Where Your Customers Are

Other research from Exact Target shows that while 90% of people subscribe to emails from brands, less than half do so via social media. And that figure is more or less the same across all age groups.

In marketing terms, this means go where your customers are, and at present they are overwhelmingly on your email lists.

Social vs Business

Sure there are a whole lot of people on social media sites, but they are there to be social, not make you rich.

While there are some standout examples of companies that have used social media to great effect, there are just as many, if not more, of companies who got it badly wrong.

As Dan Ariely points out in "Predictably Irrational," there are some very distinct boundaries between social situations and business ones. And if you cross them or get them wrong, it can do you more harm than good.

But that's a topic for another post.