Social media does not mean end of email marketing

Concerns over social media's potentially negative effect on the email marketing industry are unfounded.

This is the view of Econsultancy research manager Aliya Zaidi, who suggested that social media, rather than making emails obsolete, actually bolsters email marketing initiatives.

She said: "The perennial question is whether social media and other new, emerging channels are signalling the death knell for email. However, the signs indicate that the era of email is far from over, as email is utilised as part of a wider campaign."

Ms Zaidi highlighted the results of the recent Econsultancy 2012 Email Marketing Platform Buyers Guide, which revealed that the email marketing sector in the UK grew by 15.5 per cent over the course of 2011. In her opinion, the discipline is very much an "essential" part of advertising efforts.

The key, according to destinationCRM.com's Kara Trivunovic is to allow a firm's social media and email marketing teams to share information, since this means they can co-ordinate initiatives across the two platforms.

As well as providing a much more fluid customer experience, this type of collaboration will also open the door to more advanced analysis, since a person's interests or product preferences reported via social media can inform the content of the email marketing message they receive.