In the internet marketing world, things have really come down to three main options–social media, search, and email. Of course, social media has become the most popular choice, due to high traffic levels and the successful results people usually find with the networks. However, what is starting to happen is people are putting far too much focus on social media, and much less on the other two options. Email and search are much more helpful for advertisers in some areas than social media, but people tend to think that social marketing can do it all. So, to prove that more focus should be directed to these other options, Monetate, a company that specializes in marketing technology, has released a helpful infographic showing what email, search, and social media bring in for results in different areas of marketing.

The entire infographic focuses more on email marketing, but I want to focus on the very top of the image. It shows three different areas, each of which is not led by social media. To begin, Monetate demonstrates results from research on average “Add-to-Cart” rates per session. In this area, email leads the way with an Add-to-Cart rate of 10.91%. This is followed by search with a rate of 7.09%, and then social media with 2.28%. So, clearly it is email that tends to cause people to go through with purchases of advertised products, rather than search or social.

Next comes something that all advertisers are constantly working on–conversion rates. During the session of April 2012 to June 2012, it wasn’t social media that brought the higher conversion rates, but it was email leading the way once again. Email had an average conversion rate of 4.16% during the session. That beats out search by almost 2%, and social media landed very low conversion rates at .48%.

Finally, the third area that Monetate covered was average page views per session. Going in, I figured that this area had to be a win for social media, but once again social marketing came in last on the list. During the session of April to June 2012, search led the way in page views at 10.58%. Next came email marketing with a 9.64% page view rate. Social media wasn’t as far off in this category as the others, landing a 5.49% page view rate. Sure, it is easy to understand why search would lead the way in page views, but social media just seemed like it would be the winning candidate, because of things like traffic levels and advertising technique.

Anyway, the point of Monetate’s infographic is to ensure that advertisers aren’t spending all of their time and money on social media marketing while these other valuable options were bringing in better rates in certain areas. The company shows that the projected spending for email marketing by 2016 is $2.5 billion, that is of course if people begin to take advantage of it more often. If you’re interested in improving your email marketing, the inforgraphic continues on to give advice and tips on how to increase email marketing conversions and create successful email marketing campaigns.

Written by Michael Levanduski

Michael Levanduski is a news reporter at Performance Marketing Insider. He’s been a writer at one level or another for the past 15+ years. He has three kids and lives in Grand Rapids, MI.

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