19 Mar Good old email still 40 times more effective than social media
It can hardly have failed to escape your notice that whenever you return back to your desk following a holiday one of the first jobs is to get rid of the several billion emails that has landed in your inbox whilst you’re away.
That is unless you haven’t really switched off and on the days at the beach you’ve still been on your mobile culling the unwanted intrusions into your holiday.
Despite all the talk in recent years of Linked In, Facebook Twitter etc it seems the deluge of emails seem greater than ever and the reason for this is it works.
Well it works in the US, as recent research has shown and if it works for them you can be sure it works for us on this side of the pond.
A news survey by a leading US management consulting company McKinsey and Co has shown that email, despite being an old boy in communications is almost 40 times as effective as both Facebook and Twitter combined.
It also shows that 91 per cent of consumers in the States still use email daily.
Author Madigan Pratt said: “While there is a lot of hype around social media when it comes to usage, email wins hands down.”
However, further research of emails show that nearly 45 per cent are now opened on a mobile device, so make sure those emails are user friendly.
Customized landing pages are also vital, sending the user directly to the offer. It can increase conversion rates by up to 25 per cent.
Google claims 61 per cent of users are unlikely to return to a mobile site they’ve had trouble in accessing, and what’s more disturbing is 40 per cent visit a competitor’s site instead.
This survey proves that email is very much alive and kicking. There can be a tendency to focus on other strategies and there is no doubt that social media is a wonderful way of influencing people. It should be seen as a companion of email and all part of your marketing mix.
Marketing is all about having a wide armoury and testing and measuring. There’s a science to it. It’s a numbers game and email remains as vital as strategy as it was five years ago.
