Strategy+Design

For B2B companies, email is considered the number one B2B Marketing platform. Why? Email was designed for business, unlike social media platforms like Facebook and Pinterest. That being said, savvy businesses are integrating email into their social marketing strategy, using social tools to boost visibility, SEO ranking, and customer engagement, and using email to nurture leads and close the sale.

When email and social are working together, wonderful things happen. Social media is fantastic for getting traffic, generating leads, and customer service. It totally sucks as a sales channel. That’s where email comes in. Email gets the sales job done. Here’s why:

Bnonn Tennant (@bnonn), the Information Highwayman, recently shared 5 reasons why email is trumping social media when it comes to driving B2B sales:

1. Email has nearly three times as many user accounts as Facebook and Twitter combined (that equals 2.9 billion). Together, Facebook and Twitter make up just 0.2% of the number of emails sent each day.
2. Email is personal. Business people don’t go to Facebook for private conversations, they send email. Email is still, to this day, the #1 online activity.
3. Email is business-minded. If you care about building lasting relationships and communicating with partners and clients in the most serious and grown-up way, you’re going to use email.
   
4. Email gets way more love. You’re more likely to get face time with your prospects if you use email because your prospect’s inbox is not competing with all the posts and tweets from their followers and friends.
5. Email is transactional. People are already familiar with email offers and upgrades. Compare that to social media where people are engaged in conversations, not transactions. Enough said.

“Don’t get me wrong. Social media is great, and you should use it in your marketing if that makes sense for your business. But you should NOT put it ahead of email marketing.”

D. Bnonn Tennant, Copywriter, Web Designer & Conversion-Rate Optimization Coach

In short, use social media and email in tandem, but use social media for what it was designed for: a communication/broadcast platform to help you generate demand and leads. Think of social media as a networking event. You don’t sell at networking events, so don’t use social media for sales either. Use email (and the phone) as a sales platform for nurturing the leads you get from your social activities so you can build relationships that eventually close sales.

Included below is a fantastic infographic from MediaBistro that takes a closer look at the respective pros and cons of email versus social media marketing.

What do you think? Is email going to eventually succumb to social media and go away? Or is email going to remain the driving force for B2B sales? Let us know below or on Twitter (@SterlingKlor).