Twitter, undoubtedly (real word-I checked), has become the most talked about social network on the planet.
Twitter’s growing by the second and nearly doubles in size every week …but does it have the guts to beat email?
Email has been the most popular way of syndicating content for the past 15 years…
Many have tried to conquer it, but even RSS feeds didn’t make it obsolete-Email has proved to be the best way of electronic communication and plans on sticking to that title for many years to come…
But ever since Twitter has stepped onto the scene, many internet marketers have realized how powerful it really is and started using it with, and sometimes instead, email.
IM community got hooked on Social Media and many experts now claim that Email marketing is dead…
…but is it?
I’ve done some research to compare Twitter vs Email to find out which one to use more of, which one is the most effective and maybe even how you can combine both to bring your online business to the next level.
Twitter VS Email
So, how do we go about comparing Twitter vs Email?
I came up with several criteria, which I believe to be the most relevant to internet marketing and stacked them up against each other:
|
|
|
|
|
Deliverability |
100% |
95% |
|
Format |
SMS-like message+link |
HTML/Plain |
|
Size |
140 characters |
No limit |
|
Response |
~1-1.5% |
30% on average |
|
Speed |
Instant |
Instant |
|
Spam |
None |
A lot |
As you can see from the comparison above-on paper Email beats Twitter, however, there are some things I don’t mention in the comparison chart:
- Twitter has 100% deliverability while email can be blocked by spam filters, if you don’t pay attention to the way you craft your subject lines.
- While email doesn’t limit the number of characters you can use, Twitter limits you to 140 characters to get your message across. 140 characters doesn’t seem like much space to work with, but if you learn to use Twitter effectively-often it is enough to spark interest and to get people to visit your website.
- Twitter response rates seem to be much smaller then Email’s, but you have to consider one important fact here: If you have more than 1000 followers on Twitter and you get ~1% response rate-then you get approx. 100 people to visit your site immediately. Email, on the other hand, even if opened, doesn’t guarantee that your links will get clicked on…
- Your tweets are being syndicated in real time, while your emails can be held up in your client’s queue prior to going out-something you can’t control…
- Your tweets will never get blocked by Spam filters, unlike emails that often do-which costs you money and ruins communication with your clients.
Bottom Line
Twitter is real-time, has 100% deliverability and never gets blocked by spam filters …However this doesn’t mean that Email should become obsolete.
Email is still a much greater way to communicate with your clients on a personal level, getting your messages across and getting them subscribed to your newsletter.
So, my recommendation to you is this:
Use your Twitter to get people sign up for your newsletter or blog and use email to form a personal, warm and intimate relationship with your clients which is much more important then getting your links clicked on!
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Great article, but I somewhat disagree on 2 points:
1. Deliverability… Twitter is down a LOT, so if you want to send a Tweet at a certain time, if Twitter is down, you won’t be able to. At least with email, it will sit in your Outbox until you have restored connectivity.
2. Spam…. Twitter is full of spam. If you tweet about wanting to lose weight, you will be bombarded with @ replies from people trying to push their product on you. People have Tweetdeck search columns just for that kind of thing.
All of that said, I would rather look at Twitter all day than an email client
Adam,
1. I only get “Twitter’s down” messages when I use twitter.com to tweet. When I use an application-everything’s always working fine…
2. True, but Twitter spam is a different kind of SPAM-you can easily ignore it-email SPAM is more “in your face” kind of SPAM.
Igor