Social media marketing can be very successful, although you will achieve a much better conversion rate with email marketing. Basically, any marketing expert will tell you that.

Please don't get me wrong. When used correctly, social media can generate more than just traffic. You can address your target group there selectively. But at the end of the day, you need a channel that you can use to bind your target group to you in the long term.

This is exactly what email marketing is for. Because even today, emails convert better than any social media post could. And that's what this guest article is all about.

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Reaching many people with social media

As I explained at the beginning, social media marketing is an excellent way to make people aware of a product or similar. Especially because hardly any other website connects so many active people.

Facebook alone has 1.82 billion monthly active users. (Source: Statistia 2020) But that doesn't necessarily mean that you have to be active on all networks come hell or high water. On the contrary Less is sometimes more in social media marketing.

However, in the networks where you want to publish social media posts, you should deliver high quality that excites the reader. If you want to be noticed among so many posts, you have to stand out.

That doesn't just mean creating great content. You need to write text that invites people to read and click. The post image should be appealing and of a certain size. Just as you should not leave out the time and the target audience.

Just take a look at the graphic below from Blog2Social. It provides you with 7 tips for better social media posts that attract attention. This will help you achieve a high conversion rate.

You should pay particular attention to the quality of your postings, the right image formats, the times and emojis. Because according to studies, content is also king in social media. Supported by impressive graphics and emojis, with which you appear more authentic / more human, you generate higher attention.

If you publish at times when your target audience is active, you will reach the largest possible crowd. By the way, you should test the perfect time. Although there are enough analyses on this topic, they cannot be applied to every website.

Your task is to find out whether your target group accepts other times better. For example, football fans are often active on Saturdays between 1 and 6 p.m., unlike another target group. Because most of the games in the German national leagues take place at these times. Business contacts, on the other hand, have Saturday off.

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Why look at the conversion rate in content marketing?

Content marketing or marketing in general is mostly aimed at increasing sales. No matter whether on the private blog, which was created with WordPress, or on a company website.

Most existing websites want to earn money on the internet. So whoever manages to generate as much income as possible with as few hits as possible is basically doing a lot right!

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What is conversion?

In this process the so-called Conversion Rate plays an extremely important role. Because the higher it is, the more likely people are to become potential customers. Which in turn can (not must) lead to more sales. Something similar also describes Wikipedia the term conversion.

In marketing, especially in online marketing, conversion refers to the transformation of the status of a target person into a new status, e.g. the conversion of a prospect into a customer.

Source: Wikipedia

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What are common conversion rates?

To say what average conversion rates look like, we should first show how the rate is calculated in the first place. You can easily calculate this with a formula. Multiply the "successes" (e.g. purchases) by 100 and then divide the value by the visitors.

Why not just divide the successes by the visitors? Because you have to take bots etc. into account. As a rule, visitor numbers are quite inaccurate. In online marketing, this formula has therefore become established.

A short example. You sell an e-book on a landing page. This has been bought 30 times a month. In total, you have ensured 10,000 visitors. Then your conversion rate would be 30 x 100 / 10,000 = 0.3%.

In this example, as you can probably already see yourself, you should urgently make optimizations. Take a closer look at the attached graphics. There you can see the common click and conversion rates in the various industries for Facebook advertising.

While click through rates vary from 0.47 to 1.61 percent, conversion rates from 2.31 to 14.29 percent are normal. The average is 9.21 percent for conversions and 0.90 percent for click through rate.

What does that tell you now? Let's assume again the above-mentioned 10,000 visitors per month. With the average values of 0.90 / 9.21 you would achieve 90 clicks and 8 "successes" (purchases / registrations etc.). Thus 0.08% of the people buy a product on your website.

You should try to achieve at least 5% as a conversion rate. More is always better, of course. Less is equal to too high costs for the achieved benefit. In addition, you need the highest possible click-through rates. This is the only way to achieve a long-term profit that would be acceptable compared to the costs.

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Email marketing is so much more suitable

According to HubSpot email marketing is the second most effective tool for building brand awareness in 2019. It also achieves the highest ROI ("return of investment") for small businesses. So, the money invested in advertising is used for sales.

According to Social Media Examiner social media generated 64% more leads in 2018, after all. But 73% of consumers prefer email contact With businesses. For professionals, the figure is as high as 84%.

Especially due to digitalization, we people today hardly get around an email account. Even the older generation doesn't. That's why email marketing is a great way to reach potential customers.

Compared to classic advertising, click-through rates in email's are much higher. Not only because of banner blindness on websites and ad blockers. But also because someone who orders a newsletter has trust in the author. Trust is, similar to the Affilate marketingone of the most important factors in selling products.

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Email's convert well but are a lot of trouble

The small downside to email marketing, however, is the hard work behind it. You have to build up a distribution list. This must be promoted via your website, social media or advertising.

In addition, there is the effort of approaching readers at regular intervals. The content needs quality and must build a relationship with the reader. Still, the reader needs to be encouraged to click in order to get value out of it. At the same time, you must not seem too annoying. Otherwise the reader will unsubscribe again.

Especially since you also have to fulfill many legal conditions. To send e-mails, the visitor must give his consent. This is stated in the new data protection regulation. For advertising you need a separate consent. If you do not comply with these rules, you make yourself legally vulnerable. This can quickly become very expensive.

On the other hand, hardly any other advertising medium comes close to such high values. According to Mailchimp. The average open rate is 20%, the click rate 2%. With personalized emails, however, you can increase this to 10%, as well as the conversion rate.

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How to improve your email conversion enormously

Analyze the performance

No matter what you want to achieve with a website. As a rule, it is important to measure your own performance in order to react accordingly. This applies to marketing, search engine optimization and, of course, email marketing.

Therefore, it is recommended to screen the newsletter accordingly. This is the only way to see how often your e-mails are opened or links are clicked. The conversion rate also plays a major role. Most applications in this area offer statistics on the dispatch anyway.

In my eyes, this should be supported with targeted landing pages that can then also be analyzed.

Personalized emails convert better

Shortly before I had presented you some statistics for email marketing. There, personalized emails had much higher conversion rates. Meanwhile, with newsletters you have many options to customize the messages for the masses.

I use an extensive WordPress plugin for this. There is the possibility to query first names and names of the recipients. These can then be used in the salutation and subject. I make extensive use of this and usually get much higher open and click rates. My open rate is on average 35% and the click rate over 10%.

Clear call-to-action

For this, however, the "call-to-action" must be clear. The placement should also be well thought out. Many experts advise placing it "above the fold" in e-mails as well, i.e. in the reader's visible area.

A placement above-the-fold has the positive effect that the reader sees the call-to-action directly when opening the email. This increases the probability of a click enormously. It should also offer added value.

Test the shipping times

As with social media marketing, sending times are very important in email marketing. This is due to the fact that the potential customer is not active at all times of the day. But you should address them precisely at times of activity. This way you can increase the opening rates.

The optimal dispatch times have been Mailjet for example. According to this, the following times are very good. Mailjet has distinguished between B2B (Business to Business) and B2C (Business to Consumer).

<span id="test" class="kool-class" " fs-test-element="test"><table class="customTable">
<thead>
<tr>
<th>Wochentag</th>
<th>B2B Marketing</th>
<th>B2C Marketing</th>
</tr>
</thead>
<tbody>
<tr>
<td>Montag</td><td>14 – 17 Uhr</td><td>7 – 9 Uhr 17 – 22 Uhr</td></tr>
<tr>
<td>Dienstag</td><td>10 – 12 Uhr 14 – 17 Uhr</td><td>7 – 9 Uhr 17 – 22 Uhr</td></tr>
<tr>
<td>Mittwoch</td><td>10 – 12 Uhr 14 – 17 Uhr</td><td>7 – 9 Uhr 17 – 22 Uhr</td></tr>
<tr>
<td>Donnerstag</td><td>10 – 12 Uhr 14 – 17 Uhr</td><td>7 – 9 Uhr 17 – 22 Uhr</td></tr>
<tr>
<td>Freitag</td><td>10 – 12 Uhr</td><td>7 – 9 Uhr 17 – 20 Uhr</td></tr>
<tr>
<td>Samstag</td><td>Wird nicht empfohlen</td><td>13 – 20 Uhr</td></tr>
<tr>
<td>Sonntag</td><td>Wird nicht empfohlen</td><td>13 – 20 Uhr</td></tr>
</tbody>
</tr>
</table>
</span>

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Conclusion

Many website operators want to earn money. Often this is done through products / services or their mediation. For this you usually need a lot of traffic, for which the social media are well suited. However, it takes a lot of work to reach enough people there. Although social media has the most active users and creates a good basis.

Nevertheless, in e-commerce, email marketing has established itself as a much better option. Email's enjoy much more trust and it is better suited to build a bond with the potential customer.

It is not less work than social media. The conversion process must be set up and optimized there in the same way. Getting the visitor to sign up is also not easy. In some cases, a lot of optimization of the website is necessary.

In the end, however, you will be rewarded with significantly higher conversion rates. With the above tips, you can further increase them. Personalization, clear call-to-actions in the visible area, as well as precisely coordinated shipping times are suitable for this. Ultimately, you can not only optimize your open and click rates, but also increase sales.