Email marketing conversion rates beat social media 2-to-1

Thursday 27th May 2010

Email marketing is twice as effective as social media when it comes to conversion rates, it has been suggested.

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Mary Spio, partner at Gen2Media, which works with a number of high-profile music artists, suggested that many marketers at the company see double and triple the conversion rates with direct email compared to social media activity.

Speaking to Marketing Vox, she referred to two hypothetical artists, commenting: "One, let's call him/her Artist A, is a Latin musician with 20 million views on YouTube but little inclination to pursue direct contact with fans via email. The other, Artist B, has said from the beginning it was all about data collection and wanted direct access to the fans."

Ms Spio argued that by campaigning through email marketing, the second artist would make many more sales by offering highly personal, targeted messages that directly address customers, in contrast to social media posts that are impersonal and do not offer "that one-to-one experience".

Meanwhile, Marc Munier, commercial director at Pure360, wrote for Econsultancy recently that email marketing executives should look to retain new clients by sending targeted messages during the immediate post-sale "honeymoon period".