The email marketing vs social media statistics portrays email marketing as a historically effective tool with impressive results. However, some marketers perceive email marketing as less impactful with the ongoing evolution and dominance of social media platforms.

Social media is indeed evolving with pace and can be a great marketing tool, but that doesn’t mean it’s the only effective way to reach consumers, and email marketing has become ineffective. The reason behind this wrong perception is the lack of research and optimization.

In this post, you will get to know:

1. Six stats that prove why email still outperforms social media
2. How to create effective emails that get leads?

Stats that prove email marketing outperforms social media marketing:

1. For every $1 spent, $44.25 is the average return on email marketing investment.

Despite social media’s increasing trend, email marketing has a higher ROI of $44.25 for every dollar spent. If we convert it into a percentage, that’s a whopping 4400% ROI for email marketing. On the other hand, social media marketing has a significantly lower ROI of 28% on average.

That’s a huge difference between the ROI generated by email and social media marketing, proving the dominance of email marketing over social.

Not only ROI, but email also beats social when it comes to the number of global users.

2. Email has 1.5x the number of social media users.

As per Statista, more than 2.5 billion people around the globe use social media per month, so it can be a great tool for companies that they should add to their marketing mix. But this doesn’t mean that other channels or strategies have become futile, and it’s the only way to reach the target audience.

Also according to Statista, there are 3.7 billion active email users around the globe. Comparatively, email users are 1.5 times the number of active social media users per month.

So, marketers can reach a way larger audience through email than social media.

3. 72% of people like to receive branded content through email.

Branded online content can be a great way to access the target audience and get more leads. But as a brand, if you’re pitching your brand’s content via social media only, then a large proportion of your audience might be ignoring you.

The research compiled by Campaign Monitor indicates that 72% of consumers choose email to receive branded content from the company seeking their business, while just 17% of consumers choose to receive branded content via social media.

It seems to be a huge difference among both marketing channels. So, don’t forget to send an email to your customers while sharing branded content with your target audience.

4. 7 out of 10 consumers believe they need email for their everyday lives.

When the Saufter team surveyed a large number of consumers throughout the US, we discovered that email is a part of people’s everyday lives.

In our survey, a huge proportion – 72% of consumers reported that they use email because they need it for their everyday life. Even teens, who are supposed to spurn email over social media, 75% actively use email in their daily lives.

Another significant takeaway for online marketers – 6 out 10 consumers also said they use email because they shop things online.

5. 91% of consumers check their email at least once a day.

If you think email usage is not like it was a decade ago? You are wrong!

A large majority – 91% of consumers check their email at least once a day, while a smaller percentage – 66% of consumers use their smartphone to access social media.

Here also, teens broke the misconception that email is dead among teenagers. 3/4th of teens said they use their smartphones to access personal mail.

While a significant proportion of consumers use smartphones for checking personal emails, a large proportion of consumers also choose email when it comes to communicating with a company over other channels.

6. One channel to rule them all: Email!

Not only to receive branded content but consumers also prefer email to communicate with a brand or company. 74% of the consumers have a clear preference for email as a communication channel, even if businesses add other channels to the mix.

Only 1/4th of teens indeed prefer email to communicate with friends, but when it comes to business communication, teens outnumber every other age group. In our survey, we found that 3/4th of teens choose email to communicate with a business or company.

So, if you have identified that email can be as important as social media when it comes to marketing, let’s know how to create effective emails that get leads.

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How to create effective emails?

1. Triggered emails

People often ignore emails that they’re not expecting. Instead of randomly approaching consumers with promotional emails, send them emails triggered by their specific action.

For example, a trigger email can be:

• A welcome message with a quick startup guide and a brief summary of user benefits as they sign up.
• Re-engagement email.
• A follow-up to a transaction.

Or it can be any message based on the specific actions of your target audience. A triggered message can boost your email’s chances of being accepted. A Study shows that triggered emails receive 70.5% more opens than other types of emails.

2. Optimize for smartphones

“I delete the email right away that doesn’t look good on my smartphone.”

In our email marketing survey, 60% of consumers reported that they delete an email that doesn’t look good on their smartphone. Even worse, 39% of consumers unsubscribe to receive emails in the future after they receive an unoptimized email on their smartphone.

Using responsive and optimized email templates that look good on different screens can be a key to a successful email marketing campaign.

3. Consider their priorities and preferences

Marketers often don’t pay much attention to consumer preferences and priorities that can drive them to subscribe to receive emails, which can ultimately result in a profitable action for the business.

“Discounts and incentives” drive maximum engagement. A huge proportion – 70% of consumers sign up to receive emails regarding discounts and offers. Another significant proportion – 55% of consumers opt-in to receive product or service information through email.

So, pitching content that they prefer to receive can drive more engagement, and ultimately, more leads.

For example, as a marketer, you can embed discounts or offers in your emails along with other marketing or product-related information.

4. Follow-up emails

Follow-ups emails can be very effective to reach out to consumers you haven’t heard from in a while. Approaching such customers with a follow-up email can help in driving their response.

A follow-up message should be highly personalized. You can use phrases like – “We noticed that you purchased this [product] last time, how is it working out for you?” 

So, along with looking for new customers, reaching out to your old customers with a follow-up email can be a good strategy.

Email Marketing vs Social Media Statistics Bottom Line

The above stats have given us enough evidence that email marketing is still one of the most used online services, and social media has not turned it down in any aspect. In fact, email is evolving and growing in terms of popularity.

Furthermore, the above stats also prove that email is not dead among teenagers, indeed it’s a part of their everyday life.

So, email seems to be a key marketing tool that companies should definitely include in their marketing mix, and marketers should focus on optimizing and creating better content for their email marketing campaigns instead of calling them ineffective.