Battle Royale: Email Marketing Vs Social Media Marketing

First, an admission. The title — "Email Marketing vs Social Media Marketing" — is a lie. Social marketing and email marketing have not gone to war with one another. In fact, they're good friends, and they’re irritated that I'd try to create drama in their relationship. But my editor thought that "The Unique Benefits of Social Marketing and Email Marketing and How to Prioritize Your Email Audience While Socializing Productively" was unwieldy.

No one at beehiiv is a social media denier. Your social accounts are a useful tool, and your marketing strategy should take full advantage of them. People run into trouble when they start over-focusing on them. Social media is shiny and highly visible. You likely stalk your competitors' accounts, borrowing strategies that work. (And if not, you should.)

Email, on the other hand, is the solid backbone of digital engagement. We'd argue it's still plenty sexy. (Have you seen beehiiv's content suite?) But all the action takes place in the privacy of your consumers' inboxes. That’s where you interact with a high-converting target audience that wants to hear from you.

So here they are: the unique benefits of social marketing and email marketing and how to prioritize your email audience while social-izing productively. (Okay, fine. It is a mouthful.)

Email vs Social Media Marketing: The Advantages of Each

As promised, a look at the strengths of each. Let's start with email.

Advantages of Email Marketing

There's a saying in the beehiiv community: email is an audience you own–social is one you rent. When you show up in someone's inbox, most people take some sort of action in response, even if it's to delete the message. In social, you flicker in and out of their feed. You can also use beehiiv's referral program to turn your subscribers into a growth channel or post newsletters as articles on your website.

Email marketing is great for targeted campaigns and tactical messaging. You can use segmentation and automation tools to send more personalized messages–content that's directly relevant to their interest–increasing loyalty and trust. That's especially important when 71% of consumers expect companies to personalize interactions.

Timing also matters, and you can use triggered campaigns to send messages immediately in response to an action taken by your customer. Trigger campaign statistics reveal especially high open rates and click-through rates, along with low unsubscribe rates.

With email, you have total control over your communication and its reach. Nurture your audience with carefully written and crafted communications that get opened, read, and clicked on.

Advantages of Social Media Marketing

You can grow your email audience through your website and current subscribers. But social media helps you build brand recognition and expand your reach. Plus, social ads connect you with prospects who may not have heard of your business before.

You can also engage people in real-time and enter into conversations that interest you (and your target clientele), gaining exposure in the process. Find out what products and conversations also engage your target market and use these insights to inform future content and campaigns.

Social Media vs. Email Marketing: Expenses and ROI

This is the area where it really makes sense to pit email marketing vs social media marketing. Where should you put your dollars?

First, there's a lot that you can do for free with both channels–or at least, for no more than the time or expense of developing strategies and content. Several email marketing services (including beehiiv) offer free plans to customers with fewer than 500 subscribers. As for social media, it never costs anything to post organic content on your accounts.

Paid email plans come with more features and allow for more subscribers. Paid social marketing involves boosting posts or creating specific ads to reach your followers.

The average ROI for a social media campaign is 280%. The average ROI for email marketing is 36,000%.

You can draw your own conclusions.

However, you should be aware that both email and social also bring hard-to-calculate returns. Someone may not respond to one email or post, but by staying on their radar, you make them more likely to see and respond to the next one.

Email Marketing AND Social Media Marketing: Better Together

And so we come to the obvious conclusion: the absolute best strategy is to use them together to maximize your reach and engagement.

For example, you can use social media to give people a quick look at new products or services, while using email campaigns to provide more detailed information. Or, you can focus email campaigns on generating conversions, but social media campaigns on generating brand awareness.

You can (and should) also use each to grow the other's audience. Include social follow buttons in your emails for people who want more contact with your brand than they can get through email alone. And use social posts to convert people to email subscribers, turning them into a more profitable audience.

A few other tips for combining the two:

1. Keep branding consistent across channels - create a recognizable look and personality for your brand and a unified experience for customers.

2. Get calendars in sync - make sure your campaigns support each other for maximum visibility and engagement.

3. Follow competitors and influencers and sign up for their lists - keeping tabs on what others are doing can give you ideas to adapt and help you identify gaps that you can fill.

4. Include mutual CTAs — inform your audiences of the other channels you frequent.

In short, leverage the strengths of each platform, taking advantage of what they do well.

Make New Friends But Keep the Old

Email marketing is a powerful tool for businesses to prioritize when building digital marketing strategies. It's how you retain old customers, build long-lasting relationships, and generate a steady stream of conversions. Both cost-effective and scalable, email marketing yields the highest ROI of any channel.

Social media marketing lets you meet new people and start–or join–new conversations. Use it to explore the field and grow your email list.

So start work on your next email marketing campaign and develop proven-to-be-effective content. Then think about how you can use your social accounts to bolster it.