Email and social networks: which channel do you think is more desirable for consumers
Between email and social media, which channel do you think consumers prefer for promotional materials?
Two companies shared their findings and the results may surprise you.
Eversave, a daily deal site, conducted research in March 2011 to find what the top activities of female social network users were. Out of the respondents, 75% said that Facebook is useful for learning about promotions and deals from their favorite brands. Seeing friends’ photos and videos was the only activity that ranked higher with 90.6% of respondents citing it.
Results for email
The research firm ForeSee Results also collected data in December 2010 on the preferred promotional channels of online shoppers.
When it came to the preferred method for receiving information on sales and promotions, 64% of respondents cited promotional emails, which was the most popular channel.
Postal mail was second on the list with 25%. Social media was fifth on the list; with only 8% of respondents saying websites like Facebook, Twitter and YouTube is their preferred channel for promotional information.
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Of those respondents who did prefer social media sites for retail communications, Facebook was the most popular social media site with 40% of the vote.
According to an article from eMarketer, ForeSee Results’ “confirmed earlier research showing email still drives more shopping and purchasing than social media.”
This “earlier research” was covered in a different article from eMarketer that cited information from CrossView. This data was from April 2010 and stated that 37% of respondents preferred email for retail promotion while 9% of respondents preferred social media for such promotions.
Conclusions
Email is a trusted channel for communication. It has been utilized for over a decade and users feel a sense of security with it.
Although social media isn’t new to Internet users, sites like Facebook and Twitter are. The trust may not be there yet for a lot of users. Plus, social media is primarily for entertainment and communication with friends and family members. Although females reported using social media for deals, they still may not be following brands as closely. With email, it’s personal and delivered directly to the subscribers inbox.
For more on these topics, check out of the two articles from eMarketer: Are Consumers Interested in Finding Deals on Social Sites? and Email Still Driving Shopping over Social.
