Why Email Marketing is Still Better Than Social Media

Email is still the best online marketing channel.

What? Isn’t Facebook and Twitter all the rage?

Like the pretty girl in high school, these popular social networks receive all the attention. All looks and very little substance.

There are many reasons why email should be your number one priority.

Social Networks Have a Short Lifespan

Social media is here to stay.

Social networking is here to stay.

But will Facebook and Twitter continue to be on top forever? Very unlikely.

Look at what happened to AOL, Friendster, MySpace, etc. While they were all once great services, something better came along and people jumped ship.

What happens if these social networks just aren’t very cool one day? What if people get sick of Facebook’s endless changes?

What if Congress declares them a monopoly and breaks them apart due to privacy concerns? (That is probably coming by the way…)

Let’s say you run a promotion.

And you accidently break one of Facebook’s promotional guidelines (Very easy to do). They don’t like it, so they take down your business page.

Have you ever tried calling Facebook’s customer service?

You can’t. They don’t take calls.

They can and will do what they want. You’re builing on their land.

Which brings us to the next point…

That data is theirs… not yours.

“Your social graph” is also really theirs.

You don’t own anything on Facebook or Twitter.

All that time and energy is wasted on something you don’t have any ownership of.

Countless studies have shown that the ROI of Email is still the best. By far.

It’s not even close.

According to a recent study by MarketingSherpa (an online market research company),

Email marketing can be amazingly efficient. B2C marketers report an average 256% ROI from the channel — pulling in $2.56 for every $1 invested.

But amazingly, when asked if these companies had a way of quantifying the ROI of email marketing, 59% said NO!

Probably because they were wasting too much time on Facebook…

I’m not saying to avoid building an audience on those social neworks. They’re incredibly important communication channels.

But I am saying that they’re not your #1 priority. They are not marketing assets.