In the marketing world, it’s our job to create excitement and buzz around topics. But, we should know better than to start drinking our own Kool-Aid.
That’s exactly what I think we’re doing with social media.
Sure – it’s great. We’re able to reach people in a way we hadn’t before. We have the opportunity to show our personality and to gain brand exposure by being active and engaging instead of traditional routes of “advertising”.
But, I’m not sure at what point everyone decided that social media was somehow “better” than other online marketing methods. Has email become “boring” because it’s been around for so long?
Since I started learning and playing in online marketing in 1997, email has always been the top performer for me. I get more clicks, higher conversions and longer-living active relationships than I have with any other medium.
So, I’m a little worried that presidents, CEOs and boards are calling on their marketing managers to make social media their #1 focus. Is that really the best idea?
Digging into a Coupon Campaign
Let’s take a look at an example. I found one that I think relates well to our deal niche…
A friend of mine has a specialty food product that you can buy at the grocery store. Each month, the company executes a campaign in which they invite people to come to their site, fill out a form and print out a coupon (usually around $1 off the product) to take to the store with them.
It’s a nice, clean campaign that really relies on “marketing” not “advertising”. They don’t buy placements or pay for ad spots – they just use the tools at their disposal to get the word out.
They were nice enough to let me take a peek at their stats for a month and what I saw was a pretty compelling argument for the power of email.
Stats to Set the Stage
In March, the company had:
Email Subscribers: 36,659
Facebook Followers: 5,268
Twitter Followers: 658
Pinterest Followers: 150
The company has a decent social media engagement strategy in place. By posting recipes, pictures, related health facts, etc, they average a reach of about 1,000/day on Facebook and 800/day on Pinterest.
The landing page they use has a conversion rate that has hovered just over 63% for a year. It’s actually closer to 75% at the start of a campaign, but they limit customers to one entry per campaign, so many try returning to print again later in the month, and are denied the opportunity to convert a second time.
The Campaign
The landing page was launched and announced on March 1st. This was a Saturday, which is typically a good traffic day for the company. The theory is that before heading to grocery store, “mom” checks to see if there are any coupons.
The campaign hit Facebook, Twitter and Pinterest each 4 times that month in text and image formats.
It was mailed (by itself) to the list once. It was also included as a reminder (“If you haven’t grabbed your coupon yet this month, click here!”) in a weekly mailing that goes out to a smaller sub-list of about 5,000 subscribers, and again as a reminder in the company’s monthly email newsletter.
The Results
The page received 4,807 visits and converted 3,033 of them.
Here’s what the traffic to the campaign landing page looked like for the month:
You’ll see some obvious spikes. If you believed the hype around social media – you might think that the campaign “went viral” that first weekend – being shared by moms across the country helping one another save a buck.
But… that’s just not true.
The Social Media Results
Facebook sent a whopping 24 visits to the landing page from 18 unique visitors. Neither Pinterest nor Twitter sent a single visitor to the campaign.
The site receives a few hundred visitors a month from Facebook and Pinterest (each), and a dozen or so from Twitter. These visits usually land on the company’s blog filled with recipes, health tips, etc. Since the company is smart, they try to to convert the visitors into subscribers for more recipes and tips.
But, the followers just don’t jump when they see the promotions for the coupons. The campaign was actually announced socially on March 1, and wasn’t sent via email until the 2nd. So, the social channel got a headstart, and still didn’t keep up.
The SEO Results
The campaign brought in more organic search visitors than social media visitors. 156 unique visitors found the page when searching for “brand name coupons”.
The Referral Results
Several sites referred visitors to the campaign. The page received 415 visits from a variety of deal sites, coupon blogs and sites sharing recipes and shopping tips.
The company doesn’t have an affiliate program, but I did recognize many of the referring sites as affiliates – even a few that use our coupon datafeed.
One site in particular sent 171 visits over two days. We got in touch with the site owner who told us that she had highlighted the coupon offer in her daily email newsletter. So, even the referrals were powered in large part by email.
(Note: My gut says that if they did have an affiliate program, there’d be more examples like this one in the mix.)
The Email Results
Simple math will tell you that not even a quarter of the traffic is accounted for in the numbers I’ve disclosed so far. It’s obvious that the spikes and the bulk of the traffic came from email.
The coupon promo was mailed to the list on the 2nd where you see the first big spike. Subscribers were reminded of it on the 20th when the newsletter was sent. It was “teased” again every Sunday in the mailing to the smaller sub-list, which you can see with little bump-ups every 7 days (except for the bump on Wednesday the 12th which is when the referral partner had sent her email newsletter.)
Why Email is Working SO Much Better for Them
The subscribers opted-in to get coupons. It’s really that simple.
If you’re running a deal site, or if you’re a retailer that offers deals – you should be asking your visitors to signup to get more deals via email. And you should be sending them those deals. Again, it’s really that simple.
Sure, you can ask them to follow you on Facebook, Twitter and Pinterest (or any other network that’s caught your fancy this week). It certainly won’t hurt – it can definitely help. But, it won’t have the long-term performance that email will.
Since I Know You Want to Argue With Me…
Yes… the example I showed is just a slice of the bigger picture. But, for this site and many others I’ve worked with and analyzed, these are pretty typical results.
Yes… social media may be better than email at, say, new customer acquisition. The campaign I studied was meant to get people to print a coupon, take it to the store with the intention of buying the company’s brand instead of a competitor’s. But, if they were trying to get new customers to try their brand, maybe a social media ad buy could’ve done it. Their social followers didn’t seem to care much about the promo – so, they’d have to consider purchasing reach beyond those followers, or bribing them with prizes or goodies to get them to share.
Personally, I think that falls outside of “social media” and becomes media buying. And… where would the customer’s lifetime value come from? That initial ad buy or the emails you send them week after week getting them to come back??
Yes… if you’re doing well with social media, keep doing it. If you want to start doing social media, get going. I don’t think you should abandon this channel. Build that following and engage the people that are connecting with you. Just, don’t do it instead of email.
In fact, if you’re doing well with social media, you’d probably be KILLING IT with email. Tack it on to your strategy and see what happens.
The post Social Media or Email? Which One Deserves the Hype? appeared first on For Me To Coupon.