Social media is important but email is still number one, says new survey

Marketing services firm, Epsilon, released findings from a recent survey into consumer behaviour at last week’s ADMA Forum. The APAC Customer Experience Marketing Study 2010 uncovered that while social media is an important marketing channel, consumers still prefer to receive information via email.

“Email is so far from dead,” said Michael Kustreba (pictured), vice president at Epsilon ANZ. “Social Media is absolutely playing an important role, but you can’t ignore that people want to receive this information via email.”

Direct mail was another preferred medium for communication—another statistic to prove the myth that ‘print is dead’ to be short-sighted. When asked “What channels do you recall seeing before you made your purchase?” in the insurance category, the vast majority of new customers remembered direct postal mail over television commercials, print ads (newspaper or magazine) and online display ads.

The study surveyed 3,253 respondents in six markets and the presentation focused on three of these categories: airlines, insurance and CPGs (Consumer Packaged Goods).

Aside from the preference of email communication over other channels, some other key themes for marketers were:

• focus on consumer experience
• consumers listen to recommendations made by friends and family
• develop a multi-channel strategy
• listen to your consumers
• focus on relevance

While these findings are not anything earth shattering in the marketing world, they do support that multi-channel is the best option when reaching out to consumers. “You can’t ignore multi-channel,” Kustreba said.