McKinsey has just published some research I wrote about last year on the ineffectiveness of social media for customer acquisition. While marketers have increasingly jumped on the social media bandwagon, the stats show the effectiveness of Facebook and Twitter as a method of acquiring customers has remained flat. In contrast, email’s share of customer acquisitions has shot up over the last three years by 700%.

% of customers acquired by channel

Source: Custora, E-Commerce Customer Acquisition Snapshot, 2013. McKinsey iConsumer survey

The tip for challenger brands here is to zig when the others zag. The more your competition and every other marketer swamp social media with activity, the less likely you will be noticed. Personally, every time I now venture onto Facebook I am actually getting rather tired of being targeted by advertisers for diets, wine and dating.

Facebook is out of favour for new business

In the quest to deliver Facebook shareholders a profit, marketers are being encouraged to spend big. Meanwhile Facebook users are beginning to move on. The statistics show us those marketers who continue using email can expect 40 times the customer acquisition than from Facebook and Twitter combined.

That's not to say I'm recommending mass email blasts. The frequency of spam in your inbox is why marketers now have to be more discerning in what they send and who they send it to. For instance, Qantas has a frequent flyer database of 10 million members, slicing and dicing and and segmenting offers with hundreds of individual creative executions.

When Email marketing, remember what’s in it for the customer

Most of us hate spam. Prospects and customers however generally appreciate receiving an email when it concerns something of value to them. Depending on your category, different days of the week achieve higher responses. And of course, research on brand recall has proven the more creative your message, the more your brand will be remembered.

So make sure your email campaigns are well crafted and you offer a real benefit aligned to a genuine customer need. In other words, smart marketing not spam.