We often recommend email marketing or social media marketing to business owners trying to grow their business – often a combination of both. Both digital marketing strategies allow customers to tailor their content to new audiences who know their brand and existing customers who may earn repeat business. But each strategy offers different digital media highlights, demographics, and CTRs as far as boosting sales goes.
Our digital marketing experts dive deep into Social Media Marketing vs Email Marketing, highlighting 9 crucial aspects to consider when you want to know where to put your budget and creative strategies. Dive in to see how we can help you with your digital marketing.
First Things First: What is Social Media Marketing
Social Media Marketing uses social media platforms like Facebook, Instagram, Twitter/X, Snapchat, Pinterest, TikTok, YouTube, and LinkedIn to promote your products or services to an online audience. Social media marketing allows you to reach a broad audience, engage with users in real-time, and build brand awareness.
The Benefits of Social Media Marketing:
- Real-time engagement
- Possibility for viral content
- Target specific demographics
- Earn referrals, reviews, and recommendations
- Be part of the conversation about your brand
So Then, What is Email Marketing
Email Marketing is sending emails to a list of subscribers who have signed up to receive notifications from you directly in their inbox. Email marketing is used to promote products, share news, and provide relevant business updates. You can also target abandoned carts, push reminders about products, encourage repeat customers, or offer bonuses for referrals.
Email marketing focuses on building relationships with interested customers through personalized and targeted messages. You already have a brand-aware audience engaged who are more likely to repeat business or refer you to friends and family. Through email marketing, you stay relevant and encourage that return clientele.
Email Marketing is Known For:
- High ROI
- Precise targeting
- Personalized content
- Engaged audience
- Timely offers and announcements with no delay
Email Marketing vs Social Media Marketing
Let’s dive in to what you should consider when choosing between investing in email marketing vs social media marketing. You may want to start off using both options to get more info on your demographic but our major pinpoints will help you decide where to allocate most of the budget, creative design, and frequency of output.
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Reach and Audience
Ask yourself: who is my audience? Will this platform of digital marketing reach the right people?
Social media platforms cater to various demographics and the platform(s) you choose will affect who sees your content. Instagram and Snapchat are popular among younger audiences, while LinkedIn is more suited for professionals and B2B marketing. This diversity in social media marketing allows businesses to choose platforms that align with their target audience and can offer multiple avenues for different content.
Social media also fosters interactive engagement through likes, comments, shares, and direct messages. This real-time interaction can significantly enhance brand visibility and customer loyalty, allowing you to push your reach further and possibly even go viral under the right circumstances and with a little bit of luck.
There are drawbacks, however. You are at the risk of the algorithm and sometimes your content may not be seen at all. Email Marketing, on the other hand, enables businesses to send tailored messages directly to their audience with a guarantee the headline will make it in front of them.
The targeted approach that comes with email marketing ensures that the content is relevant to the recipients, increasing the likelihood of engagement, click-throughs, offer redemptions, and more. You’re not bargaining with what’s trending, you have relevant data you can use as needed.
With Email Marketing, personalization also goes beyond addressing the recipient by name. It includes sending content based on past behaviors, preferences, and purchase history, making the communication more relevant and impactful. You’re catering only to previously bought-in audiences, but you know you have a captive audience.
Cost-Effectiveness
While creating an account on social media is free, running effective campaigns often involves paid advertising. More and more, business accounts can’t break through the algorithm without boosted posts or advertisements. The costs can vary based on the platform, audience size, and campaign objectives.
Email marketing can be free if done manually, but it is often a lot more legwork and tiresome for businesses. Email marketing platforms like Mailchimp or Constant Contact typically charge a subscription fee based on the number of subscribers and the frequency of emails sent. However, the cost is generally lower compared to paid social media campaigns.
Email Marketing boasts a higher ROI on average compared to social media marketing, primarily due to its targeted nature and the relatively low costs involved in maintaining email lists and sending campaigns. Email marketing is one of the most effective digital marketing campaigns you can run, with $1 spent returning $40 in investments. In fact, 4 out of 5 marketers say that they would rather give up social media marketing than email marketing (Luisa Zhou).
Content Types and Flexibility
Consider what media best suits your products, services, and brand when devising your digital marketing strategy. There are videos, photos, GIFs, and text.
Social media thrives on visual content. Images, videos, infographics, and stories can capture attention quickly and are easily shareable, making them ideal for engagement and brand promotion. Some platforms allow features like polls, live streams, and Q&A sessions to provide more interactive ways to engage with audiences, which can help give you feedback on exactly what your clients want from your brand.
In comparison, newsletters are a staple of email marketing, focusing on text, photos, and sometimes GIFs or videos. Newsletters provide subscribers with valuable content, updates, and promotions, helping to maintain regular communication with the audience. You can more easily include special offers, discounts, and calls to action that encourage recipients to make a purchase through email marketing content.
Engagement Rates
How important is engagement to your digital marketing? Are you creating content with the intent to spark a conversation or an action – or are you throwing content into the digital void and seeing what comes back? Know what engagement you’re hoping for when tailoring your content on different platforms.
Engagement on social media is often measured through likes, shares, and comments. High engagement indicates that the content resonates with the audience and can lead to increased visibility. This can boost you in front of new audiences. Poor engagement, however, can restrict who sees your content and can feel like a lot of effort for fewer results.
Social media does allow brands to build communities around their products or services, however. Engaging with followers, responding to comments, and sharing user-generated content can foster a sense of community and loyalty, bringing humanity to your business.
Engagement via email newsletters, by contrast, is more passive and less hands-on. The open rate of an email campaign indicates how many recipients opened the email. This metric helps assess the effectiveness of the subject line and the sender’s reputation, but you don’t get much more beyond that data. You’ll also need to add in tracking for landing pages, deals, and more that you promote through your emails to see how much engagement you’re getting.
Analytics and Tracking
It’s not just what you’re promoting and who you’re promoting to, but how well you can monitor your performance. This helps evaluate spend vs outcome, where you need to pivot, and how well audiences are responding to your branding.
Social media platforms offer analytics tools that track engagement metrics such as likes, shares, comments, and follower growth, providing insights into content performance. Conversion tracking allows you to measure how well your social media efforts translate into actions, such as website visits, sign-ups, or purchases. Most social media platforms offer even basic tracking for free.
Email marketing platforms, however, provide detailed analytics on open and click rates, helping businesses understand the effectiveness of their campaigns and identify areas for improvement. With A/B testing, which involves sending two variations of an email to different segments of the audience, you can determine which version performs better. This method helps optimize email content and design for better results.
Automation and Tools
How important is it to be able to set it and forget when it comes to your digital marketing? Are you ready to invest in scheduling tools, can you plan ahead for days off, or do you like to be online and engaged at all times?
For social media marketing, tools like Hootsuite and SemRush allow businesses to schedule social media posts in advance, ensuring consistent posting and freeing up time for other tasks. They also include analytics tools to help track and analyze social media performance, providing insights that can inform future strategies.
Keep in mind, however, that social platforms thrive on real time engagement. If you’re not online to engage with audiences with your content goes live, you can see a dip in engagement and reach.
Email marketing platforms also offer automation features such as email sequencing, which allows businesses to send a series of emails based on subscriber actions or specific timelines. These email marketing tools provide analytics features as well that help track campaign performance, including open rates, click rates, and conversion rates.
Mobile Optimization
If content is king, mobile is queen. How ready is your content to perform on smartphones?
Most social media platforms have mobile apps, making it easy for users to access content on the go. Optimizing content for mobile ensures better engagement and user experience. Creating mobile-friendly content is crucial for social media success. This includes using short, engaging videos, high-quality images, and concise text. Always check your content on a mobile view or develop it directly from your smartphone.
By contrast, emails should be designed to be responsive, meaning they automatically adjust to fit different screen sizes. This ensures that the content is accessible and readable on mobile devices. Mobile-friendly emails should have a clean, simple layout with easily clickable links and buttons, ensuring a smooth user experience on mobile devices. Make sure images aren’t distorted, text isn’t cut off, and buttons appear where they were designed for.
Building Relationships
At the end of the day, email marketing vs social media marketing is about relationship building with your audience. Where is that the most effective for your brand?
Engaging with followers through comments, direct messages, and interactive content helps build strong relationships and fosters a sense of community on social media. Consistent engagement and high-quality content can increase brand loyalty, turning followers into loyal customers and advocates and creating that human touch all customers want.
Personalized emails, however, can address the recipient’s preferences and past behaviors, creating a stronger connection and improving customer satisfaction. Regular communication through email helps maintain customer relationships, providing updates, offers, and valuable content that encourages repeat business. Customers can feel valued with a reliable stream of offers on a regular basis.
Security and Privacy
It is also your responsibility to safeguard both your data, and your customer’s data. Social media marketing vs email marketing has to consider the security of each platform and how well you can trust it to perform.
Social media platforms have faced scrutiny over data privacy issues. Businesses need to be mindful of how they collect and use user data to maintain trust and be aware that popular platforms (like TikTok or X) may see a huge change in leadership and regulations, or even go under all together. You want to use strong passwords, enable two-factor authentication, and regularly monitor account activity.
Protecting subscriber data is also essential in email marketing. This includes using secure email platforms, encrypting data, and complying with data protection regulations. Email marketers must adhere to regulations like GDPR and CAN-SPAM, which dictate how personal data is collected, stored, and used. Be aware of what happens if you’re flagged as “spam” too many times or if you end up emailing customers who never signed up to receive communications.
Ready to Choose: Social Media Marketing vs Email Marketing
Both Social Media Marketing and Email Marketing offer unique advantages and can be highly effective when used correctly. Social media excels in real-time engagement and broad reach, while email marketing provides targeted, personalized communication with high ROI.
Ultimately, the choice between social media marketing and email marketing depends on your business goals, audience, and resources. Many successful businesses use a combination of both to create a comprehensive marketing strategy that leverages the strengths of each platform.
Talk to Bimeo Digital Marketing to find out how to best allocate your budget and resources to maximize ROI and see your business grow with an audience you’re excited to engage with.
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Frequently Asked Questions
Which is better for small businesses: social media marketing vs digital marketing?
Both social media marketing and email marketing can be effective for small businesses, but email marketing is often more cost-efficient and easier to manage for businesses with limited resources.
Can social media and email marketing be used together?
Absolutely! Integrating both strategies can enhance your digital marketing efforts, allowing you to reach a wider audience and engage with them through multiple channels.
How do I measure the success of my digital marketing campaigns?
Use analytics tools to track key metrics such as engagement rates, open rates, click-through rates, and conversion rates to measure the effectiveness of your campaigns. Make sure every landing page on your website has tracking set up to see where clients are coming from.
What are the common mistakes to avoid in digital marketing?
For social media, avoid over-posting and not engaging with followers. You want to be present, real, and focus on conection, not selling. For email marketing, avoid spamming and remember to always personalize your emails.
How often should I send emails or post on social media?
The frequency depends on your audience and content. Generally, posting on social media a few times a week and sending emails 1-2 times a month works well for most businesses. Listen to audience feedback and use metrics to see how you need to adjust your marketing efforts.
