Email marketing and Social Media Optimization are very closely related to each other. But they serve very different purposes in the overall marketing strategy.
But for the growth of the business, which channel performs better and where it is worth investing more resources. Email marketing is better for driving traffic to the website and social media is better for engaging the audience.
Let us find out the marketing strategy that performs better.
The performance of Email Marketing
Reach
Unfortunately having 1000 email subscribers and 1000 Facebook fans is not the same thing. It is usually said that out of those 1000 fans on Facebook, only 2-5 people will see each post you publish. In other words, if you have 1000 followers on Facebook, 1000 followers on Twitter and 1000 Email subscribers, then this is what will happen:
- 400 people will open your email
- 120 Facebook fans will see your message
- 30 Twitter followers will see your message
You can clearly see that Email marketing performs better than social media in terms of reach. This is an average open rate that can be increased by writing better subject lines.
Higher click rate
Email marketing has a higher click-through rate than other social media sites. For social media sites like Facebook and Twitter, the click-through rate is known as engagement rate.
This rate includes not only clicks but also likes, comments and shares, etc.
Higher conversion rate
Email marketing has a higher conversion rate than any social media channel or a search. Internet marketers believe that email marketing has a higher conversion rate because it provides the ability to segment list and personalize your message.
With highly customized options in email marketing providers, it has become easy to deliver highly personalized messages based on the interest of the subscribers.
The performance of Social Media Optimization
Stickiness and virality
The content on social media is much stickier and provides engagement in the long run.
If you have 1000 Facebook fans and Twitter followers, maybe 10 will see it and 2 will click on it.
This might sound bad, but the real situation is quite different.
Your social media content was shared by a few people having 10,000 followers. And they reached 100,000 followers and then they shared the content. This way your post can reach millions of people.
Most people don’t open emails more than once and they rarely share it with others. But the content on social media can easily go viral and reach more audience.
Better for branding
Companies are investing more in social media optimization to create an image or leave an impression.
The logo, name, your face is more visible on social media channels as compared to emails. In emails, people can see the name of the sender, but that’s it.
3rd party data for advertising
In social media platforms like Facebook, paid ads generate better results than organic ads.
The reason behind that is that social media channels use 3rd party data that you can use for highly-targeted or personalized advertising to reach your customers.
It lets you target any type of demographics, interests, and behaviors.
Conclusion
Email marketing and SMO are parallel to each other. We suggest email marketing when you need reach, traffic and direct conversions, and social media optimization when you need more engagement and increase your sales.
There is no reason to deny the importance of email marketing and social media. But it is important to identify and be sure to allocate the resources in the right way.