Should You Trade in Email Marketing for the Social Media Bandwagon?
The Millennial Generation has paved the way to a hot marketing craze: social media. Businesses everywhere are shifting their budget to accommodate for these new marketing outlets. Things like Twitter handles and Facebook pages are swarming the internet and new job titles like Social Media Marketer exist. But is it really all its chalked up to be? Can social media marketing really be a replacement for the ways we’ve mastered reaching out to customers?
A new study published on Forbes states that email marketing is still more effective than social media. And not just more effective but it says “far more effective.” The study shows that acquiring new customers based on email campaigns is four times as high as it was just four years ago. Meanwhile, customer acquisition through Facebook and Twitter hasn’t increased at all. Their numbers still remain “a miniscule percentage.”
It is always important to diversify your marketing and customer service tools. With so many businesses jumping on board with social media, this new study speaks wonders for what direction their sales might be going in. This is definitely not the time to get rid of email marketing all together. In fact, both marketing types are important for starting conversations, planting the seed and growing as a whole. I wouldn’t necessarily call them ying and yang because one can in fact work without the other but I don’t recommend deleting either. Instead, implement better time management to be able to use both.
There are many advantages to using both social media and email marketing together. For one, you can draw customers into your email marketing by posting statuses like “Don’t forget to subscribe to our emails for 10% off your next order.” This is a great way to keep sales out of social media and use it to communicate with your customers. You want to use the millions of hours users spend on Facebook and Twitter to your benefit. This means posting something valuable so they’ll share it with others and responding to your customers. In return, you also want to include social media in your email marketing campaigns. This can be done simply by including buttons or hyperlinks to your social media sites. It’s also a great way for your email promotion to get shared with your customer’s friends and family.
When it comes down to it, social media is changing email marketing but not replacing it. Luckily, most businesses don’t have to make a decision between email marketing and social media usage. However, if you are faced with this decision, email marketing is the stronger leg to stand on right now. Use it wisely and you can see those impressive numbers in your business too.
Megan Totka is the Chief Editor for ChamberofCommerce.com. She specializes on the topic of small business tips and resources. ChamberofCommerce.com helps small businesses grow their business on the web and facilitates connectivity between local businesses and more than 7,000 Chambers of Commerce worldwide.