Email marketing is an effective way of directly contacting your supporters. Find out how eNewsletters can have the edge over social media.

Social media is a great way of keeping in touch with your supporters, but email marketing has some advantages over platforms like Twitter and Facebook.

Reach

Social media has been growing in popularity in recent years, but far more people use email than use Twitter and Facebook. In 2016, 2.6 billion people were using email, compared with 1.7 billion on Facebook and 313 million on Twitter.

Emails are more likely to be checked daily too – so your message has more chance of being seen.  Posts to social media can be missed by some of your followers (because they aren’t online when you post it or because of Facebook’s algorithm), and unless your email goes to spam your subscribers will eventually see them.

Find out more about how email compares to social media.

 

Lifespan

Twitter and Facebook content have short lifespans. It’s estimated that 75% of the reach of Facebook posts occurs in the first 1 hour 50 mins. On Twitter, lifespan is thought to be even shorter – it’s the fastest and most cutthroat platform.

Unlike social media posts, email doesn’t fade away – it has to be manually deleted. This isn’t to say that timing of your eNewsletter isn’t important, but it does mean that email has a much longer lifespan that social media content. Of course, just because your email has reached someone’s inbox. doesn’t mean that they will open it.

Content

An eNewsletter is an opportunity to share more in-depth content than you can on social media. eNewsletters shouldn’t be too long, but you can combine compelling examples of your work, photos and a call to action to encourage people to donate or get involved.

 

Read our other articles on Enewsletters – getting started and the do’s and don’ts.

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