Without knowing the methodology of the survey, numbers can be interpreted in anyway the company sees fit or wants to promote.

The results, as presented, only allow for an insight as to what kind of communication consumers like and want from brands and service providers. And even these results do not allow for real conclusions since different demographics will have different preferences

Using the study as it stands to conclude that social media is or is not a good investment, is or is not worth the investment, will or will not deliver ROI is at best charlatanism and runs afoul of a number of other studies.

Who is right, who is wrong, hard to tell, brands and companies should conduct their own studies to learn about their own constituencies patterns. What is true for one company is probably not for another. The demographics have a lot to do with communication and relationship building patterns and as a result ROI

This article offers very interesting statistics. Recently we have been hearing a lot about to rise in Social Media marketing and some have shied away from email marketing because they find it less affective. However, as you can tell by this article it is important for businesses to have integrated multichannel marketing strategy to be most effective. I know here at Dydacomp, we continuously remind our clients (who are retailers) to effectively use personalized email marketing campaigns in combination with an effective social media campaign to interact successfully with customers. Thanks for sharing!

Social media is getting bad wrap for ROI because so many people hop on and start using it without creating a strategic plan. You can’t expect to use social media effectively if you don’t have a plan.

As to the survey results, well… it depends who you speak to. People who use Facebook on the odd occasion won’t want businesses to muscle in on their personal space. Avid Twitter users, however, expect businesses to have a social media presence…

It also depends how you define social media. Blogs and YouTube are very effective communication channels.

This article is just right, I think the fact that the reason why am reading this article is because I got a mail form webpronews justifies this article.

Bravo

Our web sites show statistics that reflect exactly this; our conversions do not originate from Social Media, despite huge investment in presence and tight focus – in fact our numbers are around 1 to 1.5% of traffic.

Similarly SM advertising is almost totally ineffective however you look at it, resulting in virtually zero business.

And yes, our business squarely fits the definition of a segment that should work with SM, and yes, we do know what we’re doing.

EVen before seeing this article, I had severe doubts about this particular bubble. I’m sure social media is useful for it’s designated purpose, but it isn’t commercial.

This points out the reality of social media: it’s a hot topic and a big deal among the digerati, but hasn’t taken off with the masses. In addition, positive PR, media coverage and promotional mentions in blogs can drive new customers to websites faster and with more impact that most other tools.

Direct Email is the most effective way of getting new customers. Google and Yahoo are the two best sources of generating traffic to my website.

Brand name is understood. But if email is the best method to promote a product then why is ppc and seo so popular and why are people spending millions on them rather than email?

If you try to put a squeeze page then google adwords account gets closed today or tomorrow.

Send more emails and the host closes your email account.

Someone feels your email is spam even though they have subscribed to it, you are fighting the legal hassle.

Buying email addresses is illegal. Using them is out of question.

Then how do people use email as a promotion method beats me.
I know I sound stupid.

It’s about time that someone actually has the courage and clarity to write an article countering the currently near-ubiquitous position that social media is holy, unassailable, and always results in a positive ROI. I cannot tell you how sick I am of this incessant hollow praise for social media.

We have run various internal experiments, and we have found social media to be a massive waste of time for a business in our industry (jewelry).

Sure, for SOME businesses, social media makes sense — I can see it being a terrific investment of time for restaurants, barber shops, or law firms, but for the average retailer, I just don’t see there being an ROI anywhere close to worthy of pursuing. One rarely to never sees this caveat, but it is critically important to say that SOCIAL MEDIA DOES NOT ALWAYS WORK!

Wow this a good news for email marketer

I’m not sure that 1-2% difference in traffic from email vs social media advertising makes that much of a difference for smaller companies like ours. Print media (magazine) still takes up the largest part of our advertising/marketing budget. I didn’t see that listed in the Preferred Communication chart. I’d be interested to see what those numbers are like. Or, do they fall into the “Other” category? (I hope not – we actually see the biggest return from print advertising). Thanks for the article, it definitely gives one food for thought.

social media is the product of media hype. it is not what people say it is, and far from it.

Spammers better you do it old way, email spam , than social media etc ?

Just thought I would mention.

On the other side of the coin, does anyone here think the comparison is a little unfair? Social is much more about increasing brand affinity than direct marketing. Different goals, different results.