Social Media the only way to market, or is it?

Email and email lists, you heard it all before, the best marketing tool around.  Is email marketing a quick, easy, cheap, way to grow your customer base or is it an old technology, quickly being replaced by new social communication tools people are gravitating toward?

So, is the email format is too old school to use?

Before you answer, let’s take a trip down memory lane and review some of the unsuccessful social networks that encouraged outside advertisers.

MySpace – They enjoyed about 6 years of fame, and at one point they notably had more visitors than Google.  MySpace is currently active, you probably can join, but it is not the social media giant it once was.  The memory most people have of MySpace, it was hacked in 2016

BEBO outran MySpace and became the most widely used social network in the UK.  Eventually, it was purchased by AOL and went downhill from there.  AOL stated that BEBO platform was not competitive enough to continue.

Vine allowed members to upload short video loops,  attracting upwards of  200 million members.  It was purchased by Twitter, who disabled it in 2016.  You can still view Vine Videos for older content.

Friendster started as a great social networking site, attracting the attention of Facebook and Google; both wanted to purchase the platform.  Instead of selling, eventually, Friendster relaunched itself into a gaming site.  In 2015 it closed for “lack of engagement by the online community”.

About.ME allowed anyone to set up an information page for themselves.  AOl purchased About.Me, it was resold, still active, but not nearly as popular as it once was.

Then there’s Google+.  my businesses are on Google+, having hopes of great connections and higher ranking.  However, Google+ did not achieve what it set out to do, compete with Facebook, so it’s faltering.  Most users found, and still find this platform clunky, with a bland interface for sharing messages and images.  It’s active but normally not actively used.  By the way, Google+ this is their 4th attempt to create a good social Media platform.

Ping, short-lived, vague network launched in 2010 and closed its doors soon after in 2012.  It was run by Apple to promote social and music networking.  The cited failure “did not integrate with other popular networks.

The Hub by Hasbro and Disney was hailed as a misguided and confusing platform that poorly tied shopping to culture and social networking.  The intended user base was children, who probably didn’t even know about it unless their parents were involved

Somewhat popular is the social network called Stories, which allows members posts to remain on their platform for a short 24 hours before they disappear.   They, like the others, offer an advertising feed, to bring in the cash. 

These few examples show us that nothing lasts forever, so spend your marketing dollars wisely.   But, consider that the history of email runs so much deeper than Social Networking.  Through the years email continues to be first, the number one communication tool, surpassing the popularity of Facebook and all others – and interestingly enough, most, if not all these social network platforms require a working email address to access them.

Email marketing on its own yields the best bang for the buck overall social media marketing?  Campaign Monitor’s 2018 research found “For every $1 spent on email marketing $44 is made in return” and Salesforce states “Email marketing has an average ROI of 3,800 percent. For every dollar invested, the base return is $38” – that’s an average of $41 ROI between the two studies!

Email Marketing is successful because:

Looking down

Email is like first class postal delivery – it is delivered to the person it’s addressed to, sent to their inbox.  With personal in-box delivery, you know your message was received, you do not have to depend on your customer sorting through hundreds of posts to find your latest message or remember to go to a certain URL to see your latest announcement.

It’s a staple for communication.  Most people, (okay some people) can go for days without logging into their Facebook account or check the latest post on Instagram.  And when they do check their social media networks, they may never get to your post, just because of all the missed social media messages they are catching up on.  It’s been shown even when your “fans” are notified they missed, (for example) “40 Tweets” and 25 notifications waiting, few actually care.

Email can be entertaining or deadly serious. Email is very customizable.  You can use any Subject, add an image, color or sound.  You can use tools to customize your message to Mary, Dear Mary, Dear Miss Mary or any name you like:  because email allows you to personalize each and every piece of email that leaves your computer.  Target a specific group of people, based on their clicks, automate an email follow up, automatically send an immediate Thank you for their purchase and so much more.  With Dundee email list services, you can even prewrite Birthday greetings, or emails to mark those memorable dates, that will be sent on the future date you desire.  With email services by Dundee, you can even form a neighbor watch discussion group with searchable archives – so much easier to follow than Facebook postings.

Email is also s a fantastic sales tool.  Your list is yours, comprised of members who are interested in your services and/or product.  They opted-in to receive your emails, they want to hear what you have to say.  In fact, your list members statically speaking are 79% more likely to purchase from you before they purchase because of your Facebook page, posting, and advertisements.

Did I mention that Email is inexpensive, quick and immediate?

Email also tells you where you went wrong or right.  Dundee Internet email services produce detail reports with every email campaign.

List admins can view for example:

The Report Dashboard: displays a variety of information in a graphic format about recent mailings, member lists, server performance, and sales resulting from your email marketing.

Tracking statistics: Indicates how many people opened your message, clicked on a tracked URL, or who have gone from one of your mailings through to other pages on your Web site.

And you can test which message format your members are likely to be more receptive too, by changing Subjects, color, content, layout and images in your test emails.  In fact, with Dundee, you can test anything in your email before you make it an active campaign.

Keep in mind the success of an email campaign, may depend on the email marketer reading and analyzing the reports.  He or she knows that email marketing success is built on a list that has quality members, who are opted-in and familiar or getting familiar with your brand.  While social media allows you to advertise and talk about your brand, it may only be a temporary platform until the next best one comes along.  Email, the old technology is here to stay.