The following article was featured on DIGIDAY:DAILY on March 15, 2011.
If you believe everything you read, social media is ready to take over the world. Facebook now has 600 million members, Twitter’s valuation is at $8 billion. You’d think this would destroy old-school communication vehicles like email. You’d be wrong.
Look no further than the current belle of the ball, Groupon. Sure, it uses social media in its group-buying service, but the main driver of its business remains email. There are many other examples of strong digital businesses built off this backbone: Daily Candy, RueLaLa, Thrillist and Gilt. Maybe they don’t have the sexiness of a badge like Foursquare, but what they have is mass…email mass. Only email has the proven ability to drive sales at meaningful, high-volume scale. It might be fashionable to declare email is dead; it’s also dead wrong.
Social media is influencing people’s buying behavior, no doubt, but its ability to generate sales demand is still suspect. For driving revenue today, it’s little more than a niche play — and looks like it will remain that way for some time. Email, however, is generating very real impact at roughly 10-15 percent of 2012’s $165 billion in ecommerce sales. That’s about $25 billion at the top end, just in this sector. Ask a retailer like J. Crew what’s more important to it, email or Twitter?
It’s not every day that a retailer encourages customers to try yard sales, thrift stores and comparison shopping to get their children ready for school, but that’s what