It’s a Twitter bird-eat-bird world out there, and companies that aren’t present on social media sites will be left behind.
Marketing consultants warn firms they need to “get social” or risk the consequences. To interpret the Internet as solely a sales platform has become an antique paradigm, and businesses are now under great pressure to adopt newer strategies involving Facebook, Twitter and other social sites.
But according to a new report from predictive marketing analytics platform Custora, one online tool still outshines its social counterparts when it comes to converting online sales: email.
Wired News reported a newly published survey from Custora, that indicated online retailers have quadrupled its percentage of acquired consumers via email in the last four years.
The Custora report analyzed the behavior of over 72 million online shoppers across 86 different eRetail sites. The study followed customer traction and reported which sources customers were clicking from (email, Twitter, Facebook) and recorded their online sales after leaving said source. The study was not based on one visit, but followed these participants for two years.
The results revealed that over 50 percent of online consumers who were redirected to online retailers through search engines were spending more money online. In terms of marketing efforts, 11 percent of customers that came from email were considered more valuable because they shopped online more frequently. Consumers redirected from Facebook and Twitter had only average figures, and were considered less valuable.
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“I wouldn’t necessarily say Twitter is inherently a bad way to do online marketing, but we haven’t seen a lot of good Twitter strategies right now,” stated Aaron Goodman, Custora’s lead data scientist.
Twitter strategies proved to be less influential and marketers rely on chance to draw in customer attention. However, email, has a greater advantage because of implied customer loyalty and relationship. If a retailer has email information, this is typically because the consumer has already shopped on the site or willingly submitted it.
Despite Twitter’s and Facebook’s lesser values in comparison to email, immediate clicks and purchases do not imply success or failure. Measuring consumer impact is difficult since consumers can decide to log on to the site at another time to make a purchase. Social media sites such as Twitter and Facebook remain effective tools for raising consumer awareness.
Don’t abandon these sites just yet.
To read the full article at Wired News click here.
