If you want to use the interwebs to build your business, you have some decisions to make. What do you want your potential customers to do when they get to your website?

You want them to either buy now or come back later.

Let’s talk about the come back later option. You have a couple of choices–get them to like you on Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, etc. or join your email list.

Everybody knows social media marketing is hot. It’s where the cool kids hang out, right? Not so fast.

The Importance Of Email Marketing: Reading The Signs

So you’re a small business and you don’t have the discretionary resources to do your own testing to find out whether building social media fans or building your email list is the best use of your time and money.

The beauty of the interwebs, of course, is that you can watch how the businesses who do have the resources to do that kind of testing go about it. And if they all happen to be doing the same thing, you can bet your marketing dollars that one thing is working a lot better than the other.

I took the unscientific approach of checking a bunch of major retail sites to see what they are up to, and I was so surprised at the uniformity of results, I am convinced there must be $cience behind it, which makes me think my unscientific methods are, therefore, scientific. 🙂

I’m leaning on the market to tell me what’s working and the market is screaming one thing over and over again: email marketing is beating social media like nobody’s bu$ine$$.

12 Big Brands Using Popups To Snag Email Addresses

I captured screen shots from the home pages of a bunch of retail stores for your perusal below. What you’ll see is that companies are offering big incentives through pop-ups to get an email address and market to the inbox. Not once did I see a large call-to-action to get the visitor to follow a social media account.

American Eagle

Coleman

Crate & Barrell

Gap

Gymboree

Lands End

Old Navy

PacSun

Pottery Barn

Under Armour

Wayfair

Zulily

B2B Companies Pushing Email Subscriptions Over Social Follows

That’s fine and dandy for retail outlets, you say, but what about business-to-business companies with longer buying cycles. Surely there are marketing companies who know that social is the better play for engaging with your customers and prospects. Again, let’s look at the importance of email marketing vs social in terms of real estate on a few websites.

Notice that in all of these cases, email subscriptions are given top priority over social follows. These are Inbound Marketing companies who study what works in the digital marketing arena. The results are, as above, strikingly uniform.