In the last year I have seen a big euphoria about the opportunity that social media is for companies as a marketing tool. There are a ton of articles and posts out there lately about how to use Twitter, Facebook, Myspace, etc, to build your brand, establish relationships with your users, and much more. Within that euphoria, I have heard voices claming that social media y the new king, and that email marketing is dead.
However, since the moment you need an email address to sign up for any social network, that is completely false. Email and social media are good friends and not enemies. Both of them have an important and different role within our online marketing strategy.
I see social networks as a party, where you meet a lot of people and get in a lot of conversations. That is a really good way to build a community and to find an audience. But, the people that really care about what you do, is the people who are going to sign up to your email list, and the people you are going to start a more direct and personalized relationship with, engaging them with the value given through your emails.
What do you think?
Tags: email marketing, facebook, myspace, social media, twitter
José, I love how you point out the irony that if email marketing is “dead” why do you need an email address to sign up for any social network…. Surely the email for need for signup is not only to recover lost passwords….
And if email is dead, why is MySpace developing user email accounts?