A study found that 58% of people start their day by checking their email.

Think about that.

More than half of people who sit down at their computer- the first thing they do is check their email. What’s my point? While social media is all the rage in the news, business magazines and conferences, e-mail still is relevant.

If 58% of people start their day by checking their email, as a business, you should be there …in front of their face …consistently.

I’ll be the first to admit, I drink the Kool-Aid. I’m a social media evangelist. I’m in love with this stuff. With a strategy, +good execution and lots of hard work, social media can do powerful things for people and businesses. However, from a digital marketing perspective, this statistic reminds us there is more to this online ecosystem than the all-mighty shiny objects like Facebook and Twitter.

The bottom-line?

Make sure you have effective e-mail strategies and tactics in place. E-mail is easy to measure. There is no questionable ROI when you talk about email. You can measure it. Your customers either opened the email or they didn’t. They clicked-through or they didn’t. The purchased something or they didn’t. And the best part about all this? The tools to measure and track this are not hard to put in place. Many advanced techniques and testing strategies exist like A/B testing, multivariate, and segmentation.

So before you invest in a social strategy, make sure you reflect on all your digital strategies. The pie chart tells you the sequence to follow on what to consider:

• First, do you have effective email tactics in place?
• What about search engine optimization and PPC?
• Then after that …what about social media? Facebook, Twitter, etc. etc.

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