Social media has been making big headlines lately, and no doubt, it has a certain more glamorous allure. For many smaller companies, particularly family owned and operated companies, or smaller B2B’s…email marketing can be the real internet kingpin. It might seem old fashioned, but sending an email directly to your customers quarterly can make a bigger difference than waiting for them to come to your Facebook page or Twitter page and “like” or “follow” for information about your company.

While many small businesses are clamoring to the free opportunities on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and Pinterest, many might benefit from the “real life” ROI of maintaining a great email marketing campaign that goes out to their customers and contacts, instead of maintaining a under visited social site, and then incorporating social media into that email marketing campaign selectively.

Email marketing facts and figures:

• 60% increase in email marketing budget in 2012
• 4000% ROI for email
• 93% of all internet users send and read email. Email is the most popular activity online.
• 75% of adults prefer interacting with brand and businesses via email

Social Media:

• 61% of internet users use a social network
• ROI is difficult to track over a broad spectrum
• Small to medium-sized businesses projected to increase their social media budgets by 100% in 2012.

Email Marketing and Social Media:

• 18.3% of email marketers who shared links in their emails
• 91.3% of those links were shared on Facebook, 46.1% on Twitter, 8.5% on LinkedIn

From a strategy standpoint, perfecting what is good about your marketing campaign and then growing from there is wise. Spreading your marketing strategy too thin can lead to people getting confused, the wrong people getting your message, a general feeling of “who cares” and a waste of time and money for your business. If you are currently shopping for an effective way to start marketing to your customers, first take a look at your audience, who you want to reach and where and who they are and decide where you should start from there. For instance, if your customers are in the 18-25 demographic and you are selling something that can be made to seem alluring and “cool” then by all means start using social media to leverage sales. If however, you are a Probate lawyer in a small geographic landscape who is well known in your community, and your demographic is usually people who are Baby Boomers, proceed with a little more caution. Maybe in this case, it would be better for you to start out with an email marketing campaign to keep up with your customers, and put social media on a more “trial-and-error” approach.

For more information about email marketing and social media marketing, or any web related questions, feel free to contact WebConnection