Summary:
1. Introduction
2 – E-mail Marketing is still the marketing channel that ensures the highest return on investment
3 – Users and consumers are more willing to change social networks rather than email addresses
4 – Messages do not disappear so easily from recipients' email inboxes
5 – Email can be targeted, while social networking can only advertise products that are good for everyone
6 – Social Media is a channel that allows branding, not direct sales
7 – Email Marketing and Social Media must cooperate together
8 – Some counter-trend notes
1. Introduction
Social media has become a very important part of the internet and online marketing landscape over the last decade.
How has social media impacted email marketing, and does email marketing still play a defined role in a world dominated by social media?
They seem like rhetorical questions because the reality is that email marketing has become even more prominent than ever in this landscape where people now seem to be dominated by social media.
Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, Twitter, etc.
There are a growing number of social media sites that, at one time or another, are dominating internet traffic.
Naturally, marketing applied through social media has also grown, and this represents a necessity, given that consumers and customers spend so much time on social sites.
But does it make sense to dedicate all your marketing resources to social networking?
Of course not!
In fact, email marketing still plays a very important role in any complete web marketing strategy.
It is clear that in a world dominated by social media, you need to bring together your email marketing strategies with those of social media marketing, with the aim of achieving different goals.
I will now examine some advice on how and why to integrate email marketing with social networking strategies.
2 – E-mail Marketing ensures the highest return on investment
In fact, and regardless of when and to what extent social media have assumed global dimensions, it seems that email marketing guarantees you the most notable return on an investment.
This is highlighted by how little effort in terms of resources, work and time it may require to send a rather targeted message to a specific group of customers and users.
And if you are an entrepreneur who appreciates the importance of a fairly high ROI, email marketing should certainly be at the top of your list of tools you use for direct sales and communication channels.
3 – You are more willing to change social media rather than email address
Anyone remember MySpace?
It was the most popular social media about a dozen years ago, besides Google, so much so that everyone had a profile on MySpace and spent many hours every day on what was the dominant social media.
Then came Facebook's turn, which became the most popular, thanks also to the spread of the connected social network Instagram and the use of Whatsapp, so much so that Google was forced to remove Google+, which was now out of the market.
So one thing that represents the reality of social media is that users are certainly more willing to change their favorite social media than one might imagine.
Obviously this doesn't happen to email addresses.
It can certainly happen that users also change their email address, due to a convenient offer from a new reseller of network and telephone services.
But this doesn't happen every day.
However, much more frequently, they simply add a secondary email address and use their old address more rarely or for different purposes.
It must be said that this happens especially when your older email inbox is now inflated with spam messages and even useless messages, so much so that when you go to look for the messages that interest you, you have to sift through hundreds and hundreds of them. of junk messages.
And therefore the use of another new e-mail address is justified because it is not known by third parties and therefore not yet as inflated as the first.
Obviously this phenomenon could overturn the initial thesis, but there is another phenomenon of the opposite sign to be taken into consideration.
I take into consideration Hotmail which is still the most widespread web based email service in the world, as it is the oldest, and even if it is not checked every day by its users, many do at least periodically.
Certainly an email address is not as permanent as an ordinary email address could be, but once you are in possession of your customer's email address you are sure that your message will reach their inbox and will be read, provided that it has not changed or that you have not been blocked for any reason, or the message has not ended up in the fluency of electronic instruments.
Furthermore, all this discussion may contain something accurate, but only if it refers to some time ago, when people signed up to social media, and passed the time, but without actually knowing the how and why of all this.
Now that people have realized certain advantages, which are not just economic, and that they have linked themselves to the most used social networks, such as Facebook and Instagram, they will hardly change, mostly because it is much, much more difficult that a competitor could stop him in his tracks, especially if we take into consideration the inexorable closure of Google's social network, Google+.
But not only that, because now the companies that provide network and telephone services are popping up like mushrooms with their new offers, which are difficult to resist, especially in times of crisis like these.
In reality, there are other points of view that need to be taken into account when planning your marketing strategies, sharing resources to be allocated to Email Marketing and Social Media Marketing.
4 – Messages don't disappear so easily from email
This is an argument that reinforces the pre-eminence of Email Marketing over Social Media Marketing.
Once you have sent your message to a prospect, the message remains in that single email inbox until the recipient reads it or decides to permanently delete it.
This means that even if the recipient hasn't read the message yet, the message, with their subject line highlighted, will be 'still there' to remind them about their relationship with your brand.
Otherwise, a message on a social network is not permanent.
Once you have posted a message on a social media site, your message is viewed by those users who have accessed it some time before it was posted.
It doesn't matter the number of posts you post on Facebook or Twitter, you will never have the possibility that a large number of users, perhaps your desired customers, who cannot be targeted, will be able to access and read your post.
Instead your email message, regardless of whether it is immediately read or not, will always be potentially able to be read or remember, even if not yet opened, your relationship with them, by means of its subject, always visible in the list.
5 – Email can be targeted, social networking cannot be
It is inherent in the nature of social networking to provide a certain security in the protection of privacy.
But not only that, because people are not always willing to provide their real data on social media.
Otherwise, the email database contains information that allows you to segment and target your communication, based on concrete facts, such as purchase history, gender, age, and even geographical location.
The most effective messages are targeted ones.
Social media and social networks do not allow you to create targeted messages or posts.
6 – Social Media allows you to do branding, not direct sales
Social Media is certainly also part of your marketing strategies, with this limitation, according to the majority of marketing experts, who state that social media represents a marketing tool for branding and not for selling directly.
The main reason why Email Marketing continues to provide the highest return on investment compared to other marketing channels is that user behavior on social media does not translate into direct sales.
Social media users obtain information and discuss products, but do not necessarily purchase products.
In conclusion, Social Media is important for branding operations.
7 – Email Marketing and Social Media must cooperate together
We already know that any marketing plan worthy of the name is a plan that includes all available channels, and this means that social media and email marketing must work together.
There are great opportunities for users to share the contents of email messages through social networks and opportunities for users to subscribe to your list also through social networks.
Under this second hypothesis we can identify Facebook pages specifically created to be able to subscribe to a list after clicking on a specific link.
Moreover, the panorama offered by Facebook application developers has found many possibilities from this point of view.
Based on the first hypothesis, however, there are concrete possibilities of connections between blogs, social media and email marketing, which are free compared to the previous hypothesis.
And in fact we can observe how, for example in blogs, there is the possibility of sharing articles on social media and at the same time, one of the strategies considered among the most effective provides for the possibility of creating a follow-up of messages, consisting of first 600/800 pixels, in length, of the original articles, which perhaps are never read directly on your blog.
In this way you have the possibility that the recipient of the message will click on the link that takes you to the full article, and in this way you will be able to make your products known, by inserting purchasing advice into the email messages, you will be able to earn in terms of positioning on search engines because your articles, posted on your blog, will make the engines register the clicks on the links and the opening of the articles themselves on your blog.
Similarly, for example on Facebook, if you create a fan page, where you share the articles inserted in your blog, your followers will access that page to read your latest articles, they will find the link that will take them to your blog, and in this way you will have created a synergy between blogs, social media and e-mail marketing.
If you want, you can also share the same articles on your Facebook profile page, but without the results you will get with a fan page, since very few people will read your article.
You will also be able to share your articles on Twitter and on Linked, remembering that on the latter, which has a user base of professionals, you must share ad hoc articles.
8 – Some counter-trend notes
We have seen how Social Media is considered as a tool for carrying out branding operations.
I would partially disagree with this statement, just as I wouldn't agree that Email Marketing ensures the highest return on investment.
Maybe I could have agreed until about fifteen years ago.
Let's just imagine Facebook's profits, already less than ten years ago.
A few years ago Facebook bought Whatsapp for 14 billion dollars.
Facebook's revenues essentially derive from advertising, that is, from the investment that a professional makes to be visible on Facebook accounts, in a given area, and at certain times, above all.
This already represents an index of targeting, because, for example, a consultant who promotes Facebook, from direct or indirect experience, knows perfectly well that a certain segment of customers is at home quietly, at a well-defined time interval, watching your cell phone, and right on Facebook.
And this targeting represents a first contrast with the thesis that presents E-mail Marketing as the only channel capable of targeting its own segment of customers.
But not only that, because that consultant's client could very well invest between 10,000 or 15,000 euros to be visible in a certain area thanks to Facebook, knowing full well that three or four clients would be enough to amortize that cost and collect even 40 or 50 thousand euros.
And this represents a second negative point of the thesis, according to which social media are only used for branding and not for direct sales.
But it is also an example that marks another third point against the thesis, for which Email Marketing represents the best tool for a high return on an investment: in this case the social media Facebook has given a notable return from an initial investment.