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Social Media Trounces Email, and Other Stupid Assumptions
I’m surprised about how many articles tout the supremacy of social media while ignoring the importance of email. I get it. Email isn’t sexy.
In fact, it’s boring. And most of us hate it. Who hasn’t been at work and said “Sh*t! More email!” or has just been afraid to open your inbox? It’s practically as old as the internet, which in internet terms makes it pre-Cretaceous. And let’s face it, a guy saying “You’ve got mail” just doesn’t give you the same exhilaration as seeing yourself retweeted.
I find myself hoping Meg Ryan will star in a compelling romantic comedy about how she met someone on Twitter.
What do the numbers tell us?
Before you get overly excited watching another YouTube video explaining how “Facebook is the third largest nation,” think about email. By the end of 2010, there will be an estimated 2.9 billion email accounts.1 Using the same useless logic, email is the world’s largest nation (which I think would bump Facebook down to 4th). Last year there were approximately 90 trillion emails sent. That is significant. OK fine, of those, about 4.5 trillion where actually legitimate. SPAM estimates range from 80%-99% of total email, and I’m assuming 95%.2 That is still significant.
Also consider this: in a 2009 study, 95% of participants said they were using email (what the hell do the other 5% do? Fax?), while 65% said they connected with people via social networks.3
So why do 34% of senior marketers regard email-marketing as low priority? Among nine other digital categories, the only thing that ranked lower was “games.”4 Yeesh. Email has become the dumping ground for the electronically apathetic.
Email may in fact result in better lead generation, interest, and interactions. One link tracker (Tynt) claims that email is responsible for 70% of total shares.5
I can personally attest to seeing higher profits, event attendance, and (gasp!) social media participation following email campaigns. I couldn’t find great statistics comparing email vs. social media effectiveness, so here are some of my own stats (if you have any examples or resources, please LET ME KNOW!). Out of over 1.5 million emails sent, I saw an average open of 22.5% with clickthroughs of 3.4%. This didn’t really blow my pants off, but some of the properly targeted email campaigns saw much better results: 60% opens and 30% clickthroughs. Hey, when email is done right, it can deliver good results!
In contrast, social media saw 229,000 views with an average interaction/feedback of about .3%. Clickthroughs, when applicable, were around 3%. In some ways, this is comparing gyros to baguettes, but it still helps me determine where I should focus resources, in both areas.
Email: If email is so old, why are we still doing it wrong?
Many people treat email like the old crappy tool we imagine that it is. You may be sticking with the same strategy you had pre-dot-com bust. Email has changed and I hope you have adopted a better, more measurable strategy that can help you maintain a good sender reputation and deliver good content to the right audience (if not, your emails are sitting alongside those of a Nigerian princess). If you are interested on how to do that, let me know and I’ll blog about it.
The rate of growth in social media is in fact impressive (I love those YouTube videos!), and social media does demand attention… but not at the expense of your email strategy.
For a parting thought: we may ignore social media posts (have YOU paid attention to your full Twitter stream?), but we (most of us) won’t ignore our emails. Which leads to an interesting question – If you won’t ignore your personal emails, why are you willing to ignore your business’ email strategy?
Think I’m off-base? Did I miss something? Let me know!
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