Because the number of emails – even excluding spam – outnumbers Facebook posts, tweets and webpages four to one. Take a look at the image on the left (original image from ReadWrite).

Most of your competitors are lousy at email. Because email is free, the same incentive doesn’t exist to carefully segment your lists.

Making intelligent use of customer data you already have can both automate your email marketing efforts, and make the messages you send out relevant to your recipients.

The bottom line on new media advertising

If your customers are keen Twitter users, then Twitter as a marketing medium may be a great opportunity for you. Unfortunately, unless you have a passionate ‘tribe’ of customers who talk amongst themselves about your products, share links with each other or post reviews, you may be wasting your time.

Facebook advertising can provide you with cheap traffic, however you need to be careful of advertising ‘wear-out’, as depending on your demographic targeting your ads appear on the same people’s walls again and again.

Also, remember that getting people to click on a Facebook ad to your Facebook page is far easier than getting them to click on a Facebook ad that links to your website. Nobody appreciates being whisked away from the sanctuary of Facebook to an external website. This makes the job of your Facebook page much harder.

Google Plus looks promising, but is barely out of nappies.

So what to focus on?

Regardless of industry what is the only medium your customers ALL use?

Email.

Pay attention to new media. But focus your efforts on what works.

If you’ve found that Email Marketing has stopped being effective for your business, I highly suggest taking a look at our Email Marketing. The thing that makes it different is that a CRM (Customer Relationship Management) system runs in the background, linked up to your accounting system. This allows you to:

• Email high value, lapsed customers with a special promotion
• Segment your lists based on previous purchases
• Segment your lists based on email behaviour: do they open and read emails about Email Marketing or CRM, for example
• Identify your most-interested prospects, and pass this list to your sales team
• Much more

By making sensible, timely use of customer information, you can produce better returns on investment using email.

Learn more here.