Email marketing is more effective than social media. Part 2.
If email marketing is so good, does it mean you shouldn't bother with social media marketing? Not at all.

9th March 2018

Email marketing is a stronger marketing tool overall, but social media is still important. Here’s four further challenges to get the best from email marketing. You can read the first three here.

Improve email personalisation

Without personalised emails that are relevant to your audience, it’s a struggle to engage, acquire or retain customers. The more relevant your content is, the more interested your readers will be and the more likely you are to get higher click-through rates. In order to increase engagement, personalisation of your email marketing is a must.

Personalise your email marketing to increase revenue — Personalisation increases open rates by 26%, source: Experian. Segmented campaigns drive a 760% increase in revenue, source: DMA

Increase brand awareness

Brand awareness campaigns keep your brand to be at the front of people’s mind. There can be a direct correlation between brand awareness and revenue.

Brand awareness is quite difficult to measure but you can try and find out with a “How did you hear about us” section on your sign up page or at checkout. You can also use analytics tools to measure where your online traffic is coming from. You should be aware of your competitors and their audiences.

According to the CEO of Squarespace, Anthony Casalena, brand awareness is their biggest challenge. He told PR Week, “You may have a better product, but if someone isn’t comparing you to other products, they don’t know you exist.”

Improve data quality

Having good quality data on your customers helps to personalise messages, engage in a relevant way, keep customers and find new ones. If you don’t know who your customers are, it’s almost impossible to talk to them in a meaningful way. When a new subscriber signs up for an email newsletter, how are you identifying them? Understanding your audience influences which content will be most relevant to them. For example, if a contact provides their birthdate, send them a birthday message or offer.

Having data like gender, occupation, location, marital status, age, industry, company size, revenue, etc. can help you segment the different demographics your brand appeals to, which can lead to targeted email marketing campaigns.

Return on investment on email marketing is 38 times — For ten years in a row, email is the channel generating the highest ROI for companies. For every £1 spent, email marketing generates £38 in ROI. Source: VentureBeat

Understanding which aspects of your email campaign drive engagement and influence purchase decisions is critical. Use analytics tools that shed light onto what your subscribers care about, which calls to action and links are driving engagement so you can improve campaign performance over the long and short term.

Automated email marketing increase open rate and revenue — Automated email messages average 70.5% higher open rates, source: Epsilon Email Institute. Automated email campaigns account for 21% of email marketing revenue, source: Direct Marketing Association UK Ltd.

Automated email messages average 70.5% higher open rates and 152% higher click-through rates than “business as usual” marketing messages. Over 75% of email revenue is generated by triggered campaigns, rather than one-size-fits-all campaigns. Automated email campaigns account for 21% of email marketing revenue.

Reduce marketing costs

A survey of marketing managers found that reducing marketing costs was rated as the least important goal and the least challenging aspect of email marketing. Marketing spend is a balance between staying within budget, while also spending money where it matters most, so that your brand continues to grow.

Email marketing effectiveness increasing — The investment that savvy companies are making on email marketing is paying off. A whopping 84% report that their email marketing effectiveness is increasing.

The investment that savvy companies are making on email marketing is paying off. A whopping 84% report that their email marketing effectiveness is increasing.

The bottom line

The premise of this post is that email is more effective than social media at delivering business results. Some say that it’s not a fair comparison, which is true in a way, but the most important metric for any marketing effort is ROI. You spend money on marketing to sell your products and services. Social media can help new leads discover you but in order to move your potential customer in the direction of making a transaction, one of the best vehicles is email marketing.

As a full service creative agency, Wavelength Media understand the need for a holistic approach to marketing. The need for effective, strategic email campaigns is a growing part of our clients business requirements.