According to part two of eCircle’s European social media and email marketing dtudy, email and social are a powerful combination for marketers. The study reinforces the message that a cross-channel marketing strategy is crucial for success.
Email boasts an impressive reach with 90% of respondents in Germany, Italy, France and the Netherlands subscribed to newsletters. The percentage of subscribers in the UK and Spain was lower at 70%.
People are checking their email too. In fact, emails are checked daily in every single country surveyed. Also, the vast majority of people in all these countries are checking their email multiple times per day with percentages ranging from 95% to 96%.
As for email connections via mobile, the report found that this was most common in the UK, Italy and Spain with roughly a fourth of consumers checking email once a day on their phone.
Survey authors found they could split the six biggest online advertising markets in Europe into two segments. Germany, France and the Netherlands are email oriented where more than a third of the users can only be reached via email. Countries where social network usage is higher were the UK, Italy and Spain.
A conclusion from the report by eCircle (which is removed since eCircle became part of Teradata, also owner of marketing automation platform Aprimo) is that each of the six countries surveyed, 50% are subscribers to email newsletters as well as being social network users. So, at least in these major European markets, email and social marketing provide marketers the opportunity to reach practically the entire online community.
It’s no surprise either that the survey found that accessing email via a mobile device was on the rise as well. In countries such as the UK, Italy and Spain, a quarter of email users are reading their email on the go several times a day.
Morning has dawned on a new world where people effortlessly navigate multiple channels. Consumers don’t see any barriers and they certainly don’t expect companies to create any.
People are not going to pound their virtual fists on your locked doors or wait around for you to show up as if you’re a late arriving bus. If you aren’t on whatever channel they choose, they’ll find someone else who is.
With email you have an established and extremely effective marketing channel. Social is new and while also powerful, still has some kinks to work out for marketers. Combining these two channels should be a no-brainer, but it’s not just a matter of dipping a chocolate bar into peanut butter and coming up with a winner.
It’s a cross-channel world so start cross-promoting all the channels you currently use to reach out and engage people with. Email, social networks, blogs and optimized landing pages should all be brought into play here. Take a good look at your marketing strategy and knock down any silos which are impeding your ability to really leverage all these channels via an integrated strategy.
