• by Ray Schultz , Columnist, July 5, 2017

Surveys can be skewed any way you like. So it doesn’t pay to get too excited about studies that show email is the top marketing channel. Take the infographic from PayFort, revealed to the world yesterday by Customer Think. It shows that: 

• 82% of companies use email marketing technology and 92% of adults use email 
• 72% of consumers prefer to receive content through an email vs. 17% who favor social media
• 39% of online retailers send personalized product recommendations by email
• 81% of online shoppers who receive emails based on buying habits consider making another purchase
• A message is five times more likely to be seen in email than in social
• You are six times more likely to get a click-through from an email campaign than from social media 

There is no source for these statistics, but they are all probably true, give or take 20 percentage points. But here’s the key finding: That email delivers an average ROI of 3800%.

We’ve heard that stat so many times that we’re starting to believe it.  And if you accept that, it follows that email is 40 times more effective at acquiring new customers.

But the return may be even better than that. In an article on Business2community titled “Four Compelling Stats that Show email Marketing is Alive,” Marco Mijatovic reports that email delivers an average ROI of 4400%!

Well, which is it, guys -- 3800% or 4400%? Let's say your CEO is a stickler for small details and demands to know the source of these numbers -- and the amount of the ROI -- before investing in an email platform. Get it wrong, and you might be joining the parade of past CMOs out the door.

But that’s not the only discrepancy between these two vague studies. PayFort states that 53% of emails are opened on mobile devices; Mijatovic says it’s 55%.

Of course, Mijatovic offers some additional findings that also help to make the case:

Email marketers get a $44.25 return for every $1 spent. Mijatovic also stated that:

U.S. consumers interact with an average of 11 brands via email each day, compared with nine on Facebook and eight on Twitter. 

There sill be 4.9 billion active email accounts by the end of this year, compared with the 1.71 billion now being boasted by Facebook. 

Does all this convince you that you should silo email off, and stop trying to use social media? Hopefully not. For PayFord ends with the main point: “It’s pretty clear that email marketing is effective at driving business, but it doesn’t nee to be in direct competition with social media.” To quote the infographic, you can: 

• Encourage newsletters to share your email in social media (and offer incentives). 
• Put blurbs in social media about your email newsletter or update.
• Put your email and social media marketing plans on a common calendar.
• Deploy an email list signup on your Facebook page. 

Why couldn’t they have just said all that without prefacing it with stats?