A few years ago the official word out of Facebook was that Facebook Pages reached, on average, about 16% of their followers with each update.
That’s not too bad and that was Facebook actually posting that information, but you can see that the article they were linking to is not live anymore.
Later on we get some insight from AdAge that gets a little more detailed about the organic reach of updates on Facebook pages. It seems to fit the 16% number and steadily goes down into 2014 and probably continues right now even if it’s leveled off at some point.
That’s frustrating. It’s hard to have something and then have it taken away.
But that’s life.
And the point of this article is not that email gets amazing results or that social media is worthless.
The point is that email marketing and social media marketing are different. Both can work. One or the other may work better for different businesses, but in general you’re going to find a better ROI from email than with social media.
Here are the main reasons of why email marketing is more important than ever.
Reason #1. You’re In Control Of The Reach
The first reason email marketing to love email marketing (vs. social media) is control.
You control the channel. There really isn’t an entity that cuts back on your reach.
Obviously if you start getting a reputation for spamming people you’re going to raise flags and email and Internet providers will start penalizing you and you won’t be able to reach your audience.
Reason #2. You’re In Control Of The Design
You also have more control over the design with email. Yes, you can do some really creative things on Facebook, but for the most part you get the same box that shows up in a person’s feed and that box matches all the other updates that a person sees.
That’s done on purpose and really Facebook has a goal of providing the content they think people want to see the most while filtering out the noise. And that’s a good goal, but it’s different from email and that brings us to another big reason.
Reason #3. Permission
This one is similar with social media and email.
In both instances a person is giving you permission to provide them with content. A person on Facebook chooses to Like your page. And with email a person chooses to subscribe.
The subtle difference is what we talked about earlier in that people know, even if it’s just in the back of their brain, that on Facebook they’re probably not going to see all your updates. Facebook is helping to filter that out.
When someone gives you permission to enter their email inbox it’s a pretty big deal. Yes, there are people that subscribe to so many emails that things get lost in the noise, but for the most part people hold their inboxes pretty tight to their chest. They don’t let just anybody in there.
That’s why it’s so wonderful for companies when they get an email subscriber.
Next Steps
The point here is that email and social media are on different levels when it comes to marketing. I think it’s wise to invest in both, but I would invest more time, energy, resources, money or whatever into email for the reasons above and for others.
And they can work together as well. Social media can very much be an early stage of the sales cycle way to communicate with your followers. You can share articles, GIFs, jokes and things to build a relationship. Then you can earn their trust and provide them with unique content via email. And once that is established you can send sales emails.
I think with all the focus on social media marketing over the last few years the focus on email marketing has been lost and it’s really a critical component of a successful marketing effort.
So don’t overlook email. Find strategies to get more subscribers. Test different messages and sending frequencies and really put in the energy because the payoff is there.
Photo credit: Visualhunt
