According to Chris R. Keller of Profitworks, all this fuss about the importance of social media and how this is the way forward, just may turn out to be somewhat inaccurate. Everyone whose anyone has been making such a fuss about how social media is the way forward for marketing purposes, but now this theory is being questioned in a recent article by Keller, who claims that “email marketing is currently superior to social media at attracting and getting new customers.”

Boast Marketing Efforts

So in an effort to really boost your marketing efforts, the message seems to be, stop trying so hard. Send an email as that “directly” reaches the consumer. The Inbox is the first place people look at. Social media is great, but more as a browser than an information collector. Keller points out that this is why Facebook developed its message center as Zuckerberg understood that people first go to check out messages. Further, delivery is better with e-mail as it can use an HTML code so provides more flexibility. Keller concludes thus, “given the flexibility and tracking features of email marketing it has a far more superior delivery method than social media.”

More Likely to Read

Keller’s study also found that the “average email marketing open rates are anywhere from 10-20%,” whereas with FB or Twitter this is around 2-4%. Where social media is good however, is that users spend more time on such activities, around 22%, as opposed to 8% for e-mail. Keller also commented, “I do not have any figures but my estimate is that the amount of time spent on marketing related pages when on social media sites is low compared to the amount of time spent reading marketing emails.” Further, “58% of internet users check their email when first going online versus only 14% checking social media sites first says something about which gets the higher amount and level of attention.” Bottom line? Email is still the main source of Internet communication and is thus still “given the most attention.” This may not be the case forever as more and more tools are developed and tactics learned for how increase interaction rate, but right now, Keller believes, “email wins hands down.”