What does this mean?
In an interview at the 2010 Marketing Sherpa Email Summit in Miami last week, conference attendees were asked: “Is the Efficacy of Email Going Down in the Face of SMS or Social Media?”
Campaigner’s product marketing manager said “absolutely not, email marketing is a private channel for communications whereas social media is public”. http://blog.hubspot.com/blog/tabid/6307/bid/5527/Is-Email-Dying-in-the-Face-of-Social-Media-and-SMS.aspx
Melanie explains in the interview that social media is a terrific way to broadcast your content at large and to reach out to others who like minded. As such, social media is most commonly being used to share opinions, or to chat with friends and family.
But when it comes to B-to-B or B-to-C transactional conversations — a private channel is necessary. Using email is great for this kind of communication because the sender can be extremely selective in who receives the initial message and can control the timing of delivery. Email is also highly customizable on a one-to-one basis – something that social media does not have – excluding private messages.
Furthermore, email has the great advantage of being highly track-able. Social media is the first online marketing tool that does not offer precise numbers. As such, its benefits relate more to the public awareness effect – and the benefits of email relate more to targeted (and private) direct marketing capabilities.