I was just reading this post by our friend Beth Kanter when I saw a surprising statistic: for every 1,000 email subscribers, the average nonprofit has only 110 Facebook Fans and 19 Twitter Followers.
While the eNonprofit Benchmark Study also points out that the average nonprofit loses 18% of email subscribers annually, you can’t help but think that perhaps the importance social media marketing has been overstated.
The same goes for the private sector. In an interview with Chris Brogan on WebProNews, Chris points out, “93% of people have a daily opt-in relationship with at least one consumer brand. 15% on Facebook. 4% on Twitter. …and there’s no age skew in that. It starts at age 13, I think, in the study. And it’s young people just the same…maybe don’t want to be friends with Coke, but they do necessarily want the deals…”
On the other hand, this AdAge article shows that the amount of time people spend on social media versus email is climbing: “Nielsen revealed last week that e-mail’s share of time declined 28%, putting it in third place, while social networking, the leader, climbed 43%.”
The takeaway? Nonprofits and brands should not forget about email marketing, since the vast majority of their subscriber base still receives and prefers to receive updates via email. At the same time, people are spending increasing amounts of time on social media sites, so it’s also important for you to be there, if only to better understand your target market and connect with them on a human level.
At the end of the day, email is a form of social media. It’s what many people use to start conversations, connect with old friends, and, according to the research mentioned above, keep up to date with the organizations they care about. While Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube have stolen the marketing spotlight in recent years, the numbers don’t lie: integrate email into your design thinking strategy, and you will go far.