Which is More Important: Social Media or Email Marketing?

by John Haydon

If you work for a small nonprofit, chances are you feel the pain of limited staff, limited budgets and the limited hours in your busy schedule. On top of that, no one seems to understand these challenges. They expect miracles.

So it’s natural that at some point you’d ask, Which is more important: social media or email marketing?

Alas, you need both.

In the 2-minute video above, I briefly explain the difference between social media and email marketing and why both are critical components in your marketing arsenal.

Social media and email marketing serve different purposes. How is email different from social media?

1. Privacy. Email is imbued with a degree of intimacy. People invite you into their in-box for a specific purpose.
2. Segmentation. You can divvy up email recipients through their interests. Are they more interested in sea turtles or climate change?
3. Conversion. You can determine how many of the people you reach out to complete the transaction. That’s harder to do with social media.

In short, email is transactional. You can tailor your message to different recipients. Social media is relational. It’s a way to induce people to share your message.

John Haydon delivers social web strategy solutions for “the quick, the smart, and the slightly manic.”Curious? Then connect up: Contact John by email, see his profile page, visit the John Haydon blog, or follow him on Twitter and Google Plus.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 3.0 Unported.