Social media is definitely a great way to engage with people, build relationships with customers, and keep your target audience interested in the content coming from your brand. However, as social media has become the main marketing channel for a lot of businesses who rely on low-cost online marketing, many business owners and marketers have lost sight of how powerful an older form of internet marketing can be – email.
Email can be extremely good at catching the attention of your target market on a personal level, and it is still among the best ways to reach out to people when you have something very specific to promote a special offer or sale. Here, we look at just why email can be a better way to spread the word about your latest offer than social media.
Email Demands Action
When you see a post in your social media news feed, be it on Twitter or Facebook, it is passive unless you are keen to take action by clicking on a link, liking or sharing the post. If you ignore it or fail to see it at all, it will soon make its way down your feed as new posts appear, and it will be as if it never existed at all. An email, on the other hand, demands that you take action, even if it is deleting it without reading the contents.
Assuming your marketing email isn’t sent to the spam folder, every recipient will at least read the subject before deciding what to do with it. If the subject is engaging enough or they are already invested in knowing about things from your business, they will open and read it. However, if they do not, they will see at the very least that you are sending them an offer that can save them money – something that is usually welcome even if on this occasion they aren’t interested in taking it. This is good for your brand identity and also opens you up to more views from everything you send out than publishing on Twitter or Facebook.
Email Is More Private
Brand interaction on social media often leads to things that can be seen by their other contacts. Therefore, people can see that they like a given brand or commented on a post. However, not every business people interact with is one they want to be connected with their public online persona. Maybe a man doesn’t want to connect with a women’s clothing brand in a visible way but buys a lot of stuff for his daughter from them. Maybe a brand sells health related products that people don’t necessarily want their friends to know they need. With email, people feel that their interactions with a business are private, and so don’t have any concerns in their minds about brands they may not want everyone to know they like.
Sending Your Emails
If you already have a good set of subscribers who receive your emails or you can email past or existing customers, you already have a good set of people to send your new offer to. If, however, you want to target people on a B2B basis and want a wider reach, you can consider using services like this email address checker to find good potential new leads.
If you send emails that have interesting, to the point subject lines, you may well find that more people take advantage of your offer from an email campaign than one of social media.
