I am here to dispel a rumor that drives me crazy. Despite what you may hear, email is not dead and you can quote me on that. Social media is a growing, successful and powerful form of communication, but it is meant to be used in conjunction with email, not to replace it. The following are some very convincing reasons and statistics that prove you still need to be using email marketing.
Email reaches everyone
Social media is great for building a brand identity and engaging with an audience, but email is an easier, more effective way to reach a large amount of people for several reasons:
- Not everyone has a social media account; you will be missing a large demographic of people if your marketing strategy relies solely on social media.
- The people who are on social media are spread across dozens of different channels. That means you need to individually craft your message to fit the style of each channel, send it out via each channel, and monitor the responses on each channel.
- One email goes out to everyone and requires very little monitoring (but do monitor!). Even if you have a lot followers on Facebook, only a portion of them actually see your posts. You could “boost” your post so more followers see it, but that will cost you. Email sends everyone on your list the message–no Facebook EdgeRank involved.
Email has amazing analytics
Social media analytics are good, but email analytics are amazing. You can check exactly who opened your email, when they did it, what device they were using to do it, and what links they clicked on. All of that information gives you the capability to make your emails insanely effective.
The statistics
This infographic, by Attachments.me, features 8 stats that prove email marketing is alive and well.
Now, I know I just convinced you that email is even more amazing than you once thought, but I must stress the fact that it is best used in combination with social media and other communication tools. Email is an alive and powerful tool that will serve your marketing strategy well by achieving results on its own and helping strengthen your other forms of marketing.
You need to pay special attention to the mobile block on this infographic. More than 30% of all email is read on a mobile device, and some are seeing levels as high as 50%.
Yet few email design and the landing pages that lead to them are optimized for mobile viewers. That alone will kill open and conversion rates for email marketers.
A very good and valid point, Curt!