Email marketing beats the crap out of social media marketing by a mile.
Or does it?
Many people get confused about which marketing channels to use when they market their small businesses.
In this post, we will look at email and social media as options for your business so you can make a decision on which one is right for you.
And guess what?
I’ll show you how to use email and social media to attract customers and clients, become an authority in your niche, and increase your revenue.
Are you excited?
Let’s start exploring your options.
Email Marketing is for Serious Small Business Owners
Social media sites can’t compete with the success of email marketing, so if you’re addicted to posting on these sites, you need to rethink your strategy.
But before we get into the email versus social media stats, here’s my take on why email marketing rules the Internet.
One Area Where Email Loses
As a copywriter, I can tell you that nothing beats a direct mail piece you get in the mail.
Why?
- It comes in your physical mailbox
- You handle the message
- You will be focused on your mail piece when you open the envelope
- The length of the message can be longer
- It will probably be personalized
- It may lay around your house for a while before you see it again
- Even if you decide to throw it out, you may read it
- You can get a series of direct mail pieces, each one with a better offer
Email is the closest thing to a direct mail piece on the Internet, and in some ways, it is even better.
It lands in your email inbox, and you receive messages because you’ve signed up to receive them.
So, email is usually very targeted.
Email is Better than TV
Believe it or not, on a personal level, email beats the crap out of a TV commercial.
Think about it.
Are TV commercials personal or public?
I love YouTube videos as a social media channel, but like TV, they are public too. With an email message, you can send a special offer to someone you’ve built a relationship with over time.
You can treat your subscribers like a club wherein they will receive coupons, offers, and other deals that will make them feel like they are a part of your inner circle.
So, you can easily beat TV and YouTube with email marketing by making your readers feel exclusive.
Like a direct mail piece, email can be personalized.
If you look at your email account, I guarantee you’ll see your name in some of the subject lines of email messages you receive, and this will draw your attention to it – even if it is for a few seconds.
Here is another good point: email messages are seen again and again.
Let me ask you a question.
Have you ever looked at an email message and left it alone, only to come back to it later?
Of course, you have.
This week, I was clearing out my email messages and saw a transmission from the world’s top blogger, Jon Morrow. (He had an offer to buy a course for only $7, and I bit on it.)
Why Social Media Sucks for Small Businesses
If you have 1,000 social media fans and 1,000 email subscribers, which one do you think will perform better?
With social media, if you have 1,000 subscribers and publish a post, you will get about two people to look at it.
On the other hand, if you send out an email to a subscribed list, your open rate on an email campaign will be close to 22%. In this case, your message was looked at by 220 people.
See the difference?
Take a look at the chart below:
In the two areas that count the most, quality of audience and ROI, email beats social medial hands down.
In other words, using social media to build a business is a long, slow path.
Social Media Is Controlled
As we have seen recently, if you put anything on social media that the owners don’t like, they can shut you down fast.
And if you get the owners of social media sites mad enough or accidentally violate one of their policies, and by the way, they have a ton of them – you can lose your entire account.
Say bye-bye to your fan/customer base because it will get erased.
With email, you can keep all your customers on file. That way, you can go to another email platform company and use their services if you need to.
Social Media is Not Focused Like Email
Another area where you have an advantage with email marketing is you can focus on your customers.
One of the reasons why researchers say email converts better is because it can be segmented.
What’s segmenting?
Let’s say you’re selling a course on how to grow better tomatoes in your garden.
Person #1 is a prospect who has not bought your course yet, and person #2 just bought it.
Person #1 will not be sent the same email messages as Person #2.
The prospective customer is not the same as the person who believed in you enough to buy your course, so the two should get different a different series of email messages.
Person #1 should get
- More information about the importance of growing good tomatoes
- News articles on tomatoes
- More enticing offers on buying the course
- Messages that offer discounts for buying the tomato course
Person # 2 should get
- An offer to buy more advanced courses on growing other things
- A link to a sales video that offers your buyers a trial online course subscription
- An opportunity to join your elite grower’s community
- News on articles about tomatoes
Once Person #1 buys the tomato growing course, their name will be segmented into the Person #2 list and sent offers related to people who have already purchased it.
Segmenting Can Take Many Forms
Email Preferences – Some people like to receive just text email; some don’t mind getting pictures.
Geographic Location – Most email platforms have a way to send different emails at times that align with different time zones.
If you live on the East coast and want to send an email to a group of people on the West coast, the time the email posts, it will be 3 hours earlier.
So, if you want an email to go live everywhere at 7 AM, you can have your West coast email posted 3 hours later to accommodate the difference in time zones.
Interests – Some people like jazz, and some people like classical music, so, you can segment your email lists based on different interests in your niche.
Inactivity – You can track which people are active in your group and which are not and send the inactive people messages asking them if you are bothering them.
Also, you can remind them of the incredible deals and opportunities they are missing by not even reading your messages.
This is just a sample of the different ways you can segment people in your email marketing lists.
Social media is more of a one-size-fits-all marketing message; you post it and hope the message fits enough people to make a profit for your company.
Where Social Media Beats Email to Death
OK, I realize I’ve been pretty tough on social media, so here is some good news for you Twitter and Facebook fans…
You should use social media.
How?
I’ll tell you in a minute, but let’s look at the value social media brings to the table.
Social media gets a much higher engagement rate than email.
You know what engagement is.
That’s when you own a poodle, and someone on Facebook makes fun of them, and you jump into the fray and leave a comment telling the poster that he isn’t worthy of sniffing your dog’s crap.
You know, that sort of thing; you are engaging people with a response.
Many world-class marketers will tell you they can get great engagement when they send out an email about a blog post or a podcast.
However, that engagement isn’t nearly as great as when they post on a social media site.
Let me give you an example of what I mean.
Just a few days ago, my wife and I had a snow crab dinner at home, and it looked so good I just had to take a picture of it posted it on Facebook.
My word, there are so many food enthusiasts on there!
I must have had a hundred comments with envy remarks to advice on other ways to prepare the meal.
However, if I had written a 10,000-word blog post on how to cook and eat a crab leg dinner, it would not have received that much of a response.
Social Media is Sticky
But here’s another aspect of social media – it’s sticky.
What do I mean by sticky?
Well, if you post on social media and even a small number of people share it, that can be huge, especially if they are in your niche and have 10,000 people following them.
Years ago, l was interested in electric bikes and scooters, and I built a Facebook page about my passion.
I haven’t touched that page for almost six years, and it’s growing on its own.
How?
People kept joining the group and posted pictures of their electric bikes and scooters, and then their friends joined and did the same.
And later, their friends followers did the same.
I could have never done this with email marketing.
With email, you must send messages consistently, or people will forget about you.
Combining Email with Social Media for Massive Conversions
Ok, if you’re totally confused about what kind of marketing to use, I’ve got some good news for you.
You can use both social media and email marketing if you so desire.
As a matter of fact, I’d recommend it.
But there’s one thing you need to do:
DO NOT IGNORE THE YOUR EMAIL LIST UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCES!
A lot of businesses get hung up on using social media because it can be fun and addicting at the same time.
Do you remember earlier when I told you that there is a vast difference between 1,000 social media followers and 1,000 people who receive emails from you?
I told you it’s not the same. Your social media efforts can help you build your email list, but your email is the tool that will bring in the money.
Think of it like this:
Social media is like a spoon – it delivers the food to your mouth, but it doesn’t do more than that.
Email is like your digestive system. Once the food is delivered, you chew it up, digest it, and your body sends it where it is needed.
(I could make an analogy about unresponsive email prospects, but it would be gross and rude.)
But you get the idea.
These two marketing channels can be used together to help your small business bring in more revenue.
So, how can you use the two of them together?
I thought you’d never ask.
4 Ways to Grow Your Email List with Social Media
Use Calls to Action (CTAs)
You can use this tactic today to build an email list or social media following.
So, if you want more people to sign onto your email list, tell them in your social media posts to go to your site and sign up. If you want more people to follow you on a social media site, then tell your email subscribers to go to your social media site and join your page or group.
Please, don’t waste your time putting little icons in your email messages believing people will click on them and go to your social media page.
Give them a text call to action and a text link to click on.
Repurpose Your Content
I do this frequently because I can’t spend my entire day writing for every channel I have.
So, I’ll take content from the email messages and post it on social media channels.
If I write a blog post, I’ll take a section of content and use it for either email or social media, and I also reuse social media posts for email messages as well.
Any time you can take previously written content will help you save some time and sanity.
Entice Readers with Gated Content
You can create gated content for your readers.
In my case, I have a lot of readers who want to learn how to cold email prospects for their copywriting business.
So, I created a video that shows them step-by-step how to do it.
The only way they can get to that content is to give me their email address.
Over time, you can build an entire page of resources as an offer for visitors to sign up.
Give Away Something for Free
Almost every website I go to has a free eBook offering.
I know of one copywriter who has written 64 eBooks and gives them all away just for giving him your email address.
However, there is one thing wrong with this.
Everyone is giving away free eBooks, and many of them are excellent and laser-targeted to a specific niche.
So, how can you overcome this problem?
Go back and reread the gated content point I made above.
Make something different to give away.
Here’s a list of different assets you can give to your subscribers:
- Planners
- Journals
- Newsletters
- Downloadable guides
- Access to podcasts
- eLearning lessons
- Access to an online community
- Video courses
- Templates
- Forum access
- Helpful applications
Of course, this all depends on the niche you are working.
If you’re a graphic artist, you could give away free clip art, or if you are a chef, you could hand out recipes.
I’m a Dumbass Because I Did This Wrong
Here is my epic conclusion to this post, and I’ve got to tell you another story.
I had an embroidery business in 2001, and I made one huge mistake – I did not take my email marketing seriously enough. If I had, I would have been much wealthier than I am now.
I created apparel that targeted musicians like trombone hats, trumpet shirts, and a line of embroidered items that musicians desired.
Well, it caught on, and I would get fan letters from all over the world who loved my stuff.
I had a lot of musicians from Japan who loved my stuff enough that they would pay international shipping charges to buy my items.
There was even one musical group in Switzerland that liked my apparel so much that they built a club based on my products. These musicians already had a small band they played in, and they started a band/club that met once a week, wearing my stuff while they played.
Cool!
But here’s where I went wrong – I wasn’t persistent enough with my email marketing campaigns.
I built an email list but didn’t pay enough attention to it.
No segmentation, follow-ups, upgrades, or other offers, and no money.
So, the moral of my story is don’t ignore email marketing or social media. Both of these channels are cheap but powerful ways to increase your revenue.
But if you are limited on time and have to pick one of the two channels, I would advise building your email list first.
But that’s just me.
What are your thoughts on this subject?
I’d be happy to hear your thoughts on this subject, so leave a comment below right now while you’ve got a few minutes.
It would make my day.