Email marketing vs Social media marketing

When you think of online marketing, the word that comes to mind is social media marketing. It’s a buzz word among digital marketers. In the same circle though, is another powerful online marketing platform that is not explicitly mentioned – email marketing. Email marketing has been around a little bit longer than social media marketing.

Both social media marketing and email marketing do have commonalities but their execution are different. Communication differs significantly between the two channels. Social media marketing tends to employ a laid back, fun filled approach while email marketing employs a more direct approach. Let’s take a look at their key differences.

Social media is broad while emails are segmented

This is one of the major benefits of social media marketing. In social media, the entire audience receive the same messages and it’s difficult to segment them unless during sponsored advertisements. On the other hand, with a built emailing list it is easy to segment messages to different categories of people. Social media retains the reception of traditional media where a TV or Billboard passes a singular message to the target audiences. However, that might change with the adaption of messaging apps.

The algorithm on Facebook allows audience segmentation especially during campaigns. This type of segmentation is different in that the feature allows you to select a group of people that the ad won’t be served to. In order to refine the segmentation for better success more effort needs to be put in place in consistent experimentation. Not forgetting, as simple and interesting social media marketing is, be mindful of the common risks and laws to abide.

Emails are direct while social media is based on dialogues

One major advantage social media marketing has over email marketing is the one on one conversations brands have with their customers. That is why social media is replacing traditional forms of customer service. On the other hand, emails are direct. Emails can only trigger a specific response if they are effective enough to trigger one. One shortcoming is the fact that it is difficult to ascertain whether the target got the message. Examining social media analytics will help a business discover what their followers really need through the one on one engagement.

Emails are great for passing on critical information about a business while social media is great for creating brand awareness

Building a usable emailing list is not easy. It gets even complicated when businesses have to send cold emails to their lists. If the subscribers on your email list willingly joined, that means they love your business. Otherwise, they would be very much annoyed if you spam their inboxes with your discounts offers. Social media retains its customers through the fun filled, informative or even laughable content. It is a very great tool for creating brand awareness.

Each of the marketing platforms has its advantages and disadvantages. They are meant to achieve diverse goals for specific actions. You can’t choose one over the other; you can only allow them to run parallel of each other.