Email vs. Social: There’s No Competition

A recent piece from Bloomberg argues that email outperforms social marketing in driving retail sales. While we agree that email is an awesome channel for generating revenue, we don’t think you can make an apples-to-apples comparison to social.

 For starters, the social function sits at the top and middle of the sales funnel, helping marketers acquire a bigger audience and engage consumers. Meanwhile, email is a bottom-of-the-funnel function. It can’t help you expand your audience, but it’s ideal for converting customers.

 In fact, social is incredibly effective for acquiring emails. Brands that use Offerpop collect 15,000 email addresses a campaign on average – for 2% of the average email acquisition cost, according to industry standards.

 Plus, data from social media actually powers the targeting that makes email marketing so effective. Social data is constantly refreshing, providing email marketers with the most current information about consumer interests. And social data provides unique insights into which consumers are engaged with your content, loyal to your brand, and influential in their social circles. All of this information can be tied to email addresses, enabling targeted offers and campaigns.

Ultimately, it doesn’t make sense to view email and social as competitors. The channels best when they’re working together – helping marketers improve performance across the sales funnel.