Email Marketing Vs. Social Media Marketing: Which Path To Choose?

Which marketing medium is the best? Social media marketing or Email marketing? A lot of thoughts have been shared on this particular topic with different opinions. Not to mention, there are more other marketing ways available such as affiliate marketing or SEO. Which one to choose for your business?

Social media has become the centre of attraction of marketers. More than 3 billion people worldwide use Facebook, Instagram, or other social platforms. Because of the popularity of social media platforms, people think email is lagging in the race. But in reality, email marketing is one of the best and effective ways of growing your revenue. More than 270 billions of email interactions take place every day. 

Both marketing techniques have advantages and disadvantages. For example, you can easily find anyone on social media by searching their name, which is advantageous. But you don’t know if the profile is real or fake. Whereas in Email marketing, finding the email address of your audience needs some techniques to use. But even if the process could be lengthy, you get authorized email accounts of your targeted users. 

The above example brings us to our main topic. Let’s get into details of which marketing method could fit best for your business.

Email Marketing Vs. Social Media Marketing

To be honest, both the marketing methods co-exist and can also be used together. But the question is not just which one is better. The question is: Where is your primary audience? 

You need to know where you can find the majority of the target audience for your business. Yes, over 40% of the world population is on social media. There is a high chance that you will find your target audience on Facebook or Instagram. But, nearly the same number of users use email as it’s one of the methods to sign up for social media. A person who has a social media account also has an email account. There are lot of Instagram followers app and Instagram tracker available in the market that you can use.

If your business is more targeted towards youth, teenagers; then social media could be the best way to market your products. But if your business has a broader user base of different age groups, email marketing would be the most trusted option.

Email Marketing 

It’s pretty much common and essential that every internet user has an email account. Email marketing is a way in which you can reach your audience to showcase your products and share your offers. 

Advantages of Email Marketing:

Revenue: Email marketing can return you average $42 on every $1 you spent. This is a huge revenue if you consider a big picture. 

Cost-effective: The amount you pay for email campaigns and marketing is way less than it is for social media. You can send bulk emails and expect a good outcome. 

Content-driven: Emails are content-oriented. You can make users open your emails by using a catchy headline. Once the user opens the email, the detailed information will be available under one mail thread. This means only one email can gain lots of attention. 

Finding Audience: It is easy to reach your audience via email marketing. Firstly, you can send follow up emails to your already existing customers with offers or benefits. Happy customers sign up for your newsletters and even share it with others. Or you can find authorized email IDs of customers using email finding tools such as AeroLeads. Setting up a campaign and sending bulk emails is more comfortable via dedicated software. 

The email goes straight to the user’s inbox, which has a high rate of getting opened. But Email marketing has some cons as well. 

Disadvantages:

1. Unlike social media, you cannot send more than one or two emails per day or week. Users will get annoyed if you fill their inbox with your promotional emails. 
2. You have to be very creative in writing a headline of the mail to get attention. Otherwise, the email would not sound interesting enough to read.  
3. Emails could be lengthy and boring to read. You have to make newsletters eye-catchy yet maintain the limitations of the email platform.
4. Even though it is easy to use, you might need more training to set up campaigns or strategies. 
5. Growing your Email list might require extra effort. 

As email marketing boosts up the revenue, some tools will successfully help you run and Email Marketing Campaign to increase the customers.

Social Media Marketing

Social media has become an integral part of people’s lives. Targeting audience on Facebook or Instagram by ads, posts, or stories has become an easier way to attract more customers. 

Advantages of Social Media Marketing

1. Audience: It is easy to set up your business account and follow users on social media. You can find your target audience by following the hashtags or similar business accounts. 
2. Reach: Hashtags play a vital role in social media. With the most followed relevant hashtag, your post could reach more audiences. You can check insights and find out the most active hour of the day. If you upload a post at that hour, the more interactions it will receive. 
3. Graphic-oriented: Unlike emails, which needs a good headline to stand out, social media lets you upload an eye-catchy image. You can upload as many posts as you want without annoying users. The post goes into the user’s feed without spamming. 
4. Easy to use: Social media platforms are easy to use. You can set up a business account and start posting content immediately. Handling your appearance and posting business deals with a pinch of humour could be beneficial to gain attention.

Disadvantages:

1. Social media ads are costlier, considering the revenue per ad. 
2. You need to generate an eye-catchy image, Videos, or stories to post. 
3. Not all accounts on social media are real; you might encounter fake accounts. 
4. The ROI via social media marketing could vary and may not be as good as you had expected. 
5. Not all the audience actively uses social media. Getting your post at the top of the feed and making it discoverable is not that easy. 

Conclusion:

Marketing needs a continuous upgrade in strategies. Even if you are using Social media marketing, there should also be email campaigns involved in your plan. Email revenue has been increasing every year. For your business to grow, pairing both methods could work amazingly. But again, you need to know who your audience is and where you can find the majority of them. Once you crack that code, you will find the answer yourself.