If you have time for just one content marketing channel, make it this one

What’s the hottest marketing channel that all the content strategists are buzzing about? Get ready to be underwhelmed: It’s email.

But how is email — the boring, old, inbox-clogging, antiquated technology that predates the social web — stealing the spotlight from every other [social media buzzword] thing?

With all of the publishing channels available to us, and all the hype surrounding social media and virality, email still refuses to die. And it’s not just that email is holding its own in this day and age. Email is outperforming every other publishing channel available, in every metric you can choose: engagement, traffic, and most importantly, conversion.

“But Jordan!” You’ll say. “Email campaigns can only preach to the choir, and can never go viral or take advantage of network effects!” And I’ll have to grant you that. The statement is true. But we are not here to discuss those rare unicorns, those viral successes that can’t be planned or predicted. We are talking about the meat and potatoes of your B2B content efforts. And when it comes to spending your budget and resources, if you could choose just one channel to dedicate your available time for the best marketing results, which would you pick? If you asked me this question two years ago — heck if you’d asked my just one year ago — I’d have told you to put all your eggs in the Facebook basket. Another year or two before that and I was all about Twitter. So why am I, one of the biggest fans of app-based communication and time management tools (Hello Slack, Facebook Messenger, Facetime, Google Calendar and the rest on my home screen) celebrating that stuffy old stalwart that is email marketing, with so many other flashy options on the table?

For one, because I’ve accepted that I’m probably too old to understand the Snapchat phenomenon. I’m not even trying anymore. And the other reason? Precisely because it is the stuffy old stalwart in your marketing armada. And because email comes out ahead on performance every time.

Am I saying that we ignore all other channels and go all-in on email? No, not exactly. You will still have to so a certain amount of promoting of your content to your communities. What I am saying is that if you fancy yourself a content marketer, save your best stuff for (and invest your time in) your email campaigns. And when it comes to how you invest in audience growth and engagement, place your bets on email every time.

By the numbers

Why email and not Facebook or Twitter or Instasnapchaterist?

Virtually all of my clients are B2B, and and many have rolled their eyes at how pro-Facebook I have been for years. But let’s take a look at some industry averages around the metrics that matter, and you’ll see why I’ve switched, and I’m pro-email these days.

Facebook is bigger than ever, but ain’t what she used to be. Once upon a time, an average of 20% “Reach” (the Facebook measurement metric) to your Facebook Page “Likes” was what one could expect, and even then we complained about it. I mean, after you’ve invested in growing your Facebook audience, now you have to pay to get all of them to see the content you publish? Well, yes. Yes you do. To protect Facebook users from being flooded with content from any one Page, their algorithm is designed to distribute content based on a number of factors — among them are affinity, engagement, and time decay — and give every user a good overall experience in the News Feed. And that is fine by me. I don’t want to see a noisy News Feed any more than then next Facebooker. But the days of 20% organic reach are long behind us. Now that every brand, club, and media outlet have active Facebook Pages (now that the secret is out, if you will), your messages have to share space in the News Feed with all the other “Likes” that a user has opted for. Facebook has acknowledged this too, so it’s not exactly inside baseball.

The current average organic reach for a Facebook Page is ~6%. Some will be popular and get much more, and others will be duds and be seen by very few. And bear in mind we are only looking at impressions. Not views, per se. And certainly not clicks. Engagement is key, so only genuinely interesting content will bubble up.

Now, let’s take a look at the industry averages for email campaigns. Mailchimp maintains a publicly available list of email campaign performance by industry. Here’s a snapshot of a few categories, but click through to see the whole thing.

Bear in mind, these are the industry averages. Now ask yourself: If you understand your audience well and publish high value content, can you outperform the industry average? I know I can. The last two email campaigns I sent got open rates of over 70%, and clicks rates higher than 10%, though most fall into the range of the high 30s and 40s. Excepting those rare viral successes, Facebook (well, the sole use of Facebook as a distribution channel for original content) will rarely, if ever, give you that kind of performance, to say nothing of the value of “owning” that email list — which is exactly where I’m going next.

Which of these two companies would you buy?

When I make this case to clients, if I don’t already have buy-in by stating the figures above, I use an analogy:

Imagine you are evaluating two companies, deciding which to buy. They are both priced the same, and both have the same number of “subscribers.” Except in one company’s case, they are opt-in email subscribers, and in the other company they are Facebook “Likes” (Or if you prefer, Twitter followers, it makes no difference to the story). The question is: Which would you rather buy?

Most CEOs and marketing leaders immediately see the wisdom in that comparison. When they don’t, I bring up things like email nurture campaigns, or offers, and they see the light. To put it briefly: When done right, emails sell.

So what’s the solution? For B2B marketers, a value-first, inbound marketing strategy with email at its core should be priority #1. You can still house your content on your blog and promote on your social channels, but the path to glory will be paved with so many iterations of landing pages and subscription forms. Another way to say it is: since you’re going to be paying for Facebook reach anyhow, use that budget to drive traffic to pages and articles that convert subscribers, and then keep delivering value until you’ve converted them to customer.