Email Marketing Versus Social Media
email from Chico's
Despite all the buzz about social media, FAR more people are using email marketing than are using social media marketing.
Email Marketing is Sophisticated
Email marketing is highly developed, inexpensive for brands, and—for many—it works. Collect email addresses from anyone who orders online, enters a contest, or joins a rewards club. Then blast out thousands of emails and see your web traffic jump each time. If you have the sense to target people who actually like your products, it’s not considered spam.
In case you’ve never done email marketing, let me share with you that email marketing has become highly sophisticated for those who pay for the right tools. You can send thousands of emails and see how many people opened them, clicked on each link, or marked it as spam. You can test different subject lines or delivery times, or personalize the content with the recipient’s name or other details. You can even look at an individual and see which of your emails they’ve opened over time.
Of course, many emails are deleted or, even if opened, aren’t read. An open rate of 10-20% is considered good. But email has proven to be a successful way of keeping a brand in a customer’s awareness over time.
Take Chico’s, for example. Chico’s is a women’s clothing store that I sometimes frequent. I’m not a raving fan but I do like some of their styles a lot. I like them enough not to mark them as spam or unsubscribe. I get a LOT of emails from Chico’s. Occasionally I even open them.
Checking my deleted items box, I can see that Chico’s is sending a mailing to me every 2-4 days. Of those, I open and read one perhaps once a month or so. (Their stats probably show me as opening much more often—my reading pane in Outlook triggers a false “open”).
What’s Different About Social Media?
Chico's fan page
Why bother to move to a place like Facebook? Chico’s probably has tens or hundreds of thousands of email addresses they can reach, and only 1,580 fans on their Facebook page.
There are two answers.
First answer: Times Are Changing.
People are spending more time on Facebook, and less time reading email. They are opting-out of more emails, and creating stronger spam filters.
It has taken Chico’s years to collect their email lists. Building a fan base on Facebook will take time too, so starting now makes sense.
Five years from now, reaching people on Facebook will likely be far more effective than email marketing, even though that’s not the case today.
Second answer: You Can’t Top This
Fan comments on Chico's Facebook page.
How else can you get your raving fans to make public testimonials about your products? You certainly don’t get this through email. This alone is enough reason to be on Facebook.
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