Where Should Email Rank in Your Marketing Mix?
The bottom line in regards to our marketing efforts is how well they convert, that is, succeed in getting us the decisions we desire, whether that is opt-ins to a mailing list, direct sales, click or other responses. Over the years, email marketing has been a staple in this regard, providing new customers and sales. Recently as the attention has shifted to the far more exciting and sexy world of social media marketing, email has sometimes become the unloved stepchild, and largely forgotten, at least as far as popular marketing methods go.
That is what we call, a HUGE mistake!
While decidedly not as “new” and exciting as the latest social media darling might be, email consistently perform at what can only be termed as outstanding levels! A significant new study by Custora shines a lot of light on exactly how rewarding email is to smart marketers. Rather than being in decline, customer acquisition using email has quadrupled during the last four years, and these customers were at least 10 times as valuable as those originating from either Facebook or twitter. This is due in no small part to the fact that we are much more used to seeing marketing show up in email, while it’s still fairly new to social media. Over time the social media platforms may in fact prove useful in this regard. It’s just not happening at this point, so you would be wise to allocate your marketing activities accordingly.
How to allocate your marketing efforts
Given that email boasts an ROI of $40 for every $1 spent, and social media far south of $1, efforts ought to be made to use your social media to funnel to your email lists. Getting your brand in front of people and showing what you can do is a good use of social media at this juncture. In spite of all the media hype surrounding using social media to replace email, the data proves different. Don’t make the mistake of sending email to the archive just yet!
