Is the growing popularity of social networking sites like Facebook and Twitter slowly killing off email as an effective marketing tool?

“Death of email” articles like the one from the Journal assume that two methods of communication cannot coexist, each having a unique role to play. For decades now, television and radio have managed to survive — and even compliment each other — even though many media experts believed that TV would kill off the radio box. Likewise, the Internet was supposed to kill off everything — but it hasn’t (though I know some magazine and newspaper publishers who believe the Net gave them two shots in the hat).

Email and social media both have a specific utility. One does certain things better than the other — and that utility can and will change over time. Right now email works best for longer messages, communicating with more personalized, targeted audiences, and adding embedded content. Social networking offers greater immediacy, ease of use, a sense of personal empowerment, and potentially higher levels of frequency.

Email and social networking sites are used in different ways and communicate different kinds of information. One easily compliments the other. Like many of you, I tweet, participate on social networking sites, and send out and receive tons of email.  (I also blog, manage several web sites, and participate in various forums, but that’s another story!)  I don’t see the two as competing for my attention. I use them in the way that I need to and choose my tool according to the task I have in mind.

We’re also finding out that heavy social media users are also above-average users of email play. A Nielsen report back in September showed that social media use did not decrease email usage but actually increased it.

Says Nielsen’s Jon Gibs –

It’s perfectly logical that as people make connections though social media, they maintain those connections outside of the specific platform and may extend those connections to email, a phone conversation or even in-person meetings.

For marketers who worry that social media are making their email programs obsolete, nothing can be further from the truth. The strategy, as always, is to use media that mirror your target audience’s media behavior. In many cases, that means developing your presence in social networks and having a robust email marketing program.

The research data and chart come from Royal Pingdom, which used site demographics data for the United States gathered from Google’s Ad Planner service.

The study shows that many sites are heavily tilted towards one gender demographic or the other. A few, like LinkedIn and Delicious, are more gender neutral.

For marketers trying to match up their target audience’s gender profile with different social networking sites, the study provides a good starting place for segmentation analysis.

Some of the specific findings from Royal Pingdom –

* 84% (16 out of 19) of the sites have more female than male users.
* The social news sites Digg, Reddit and Slashdot have significantly more male users than female. The standout here is Slashdot which takes male geekdom to new heights with 82% male users.
* If we hadn’t included the three social news sites, all of the sites would have had more females than males.
* Twitter and Facebook have almost the same male-female ratio; Twitter with 59% female users and Facebook with 57%.
* The most female-dominated site? Bebo (66% female users), closely followed by MySpace and Classmates.com (64%).
* The average ratio of all 19 sites was 47% male, 53% female.

This presentation by Rory Sutherland humorously makes the case for selling the intangible benefits of our products and services.

Making the sale often depends on our ability to communicate product or brand benefits that transcend product utility. As marketers we tend to think in terms of “solutions” to customer problems — customers are thirsty, so we give them soda pop, they are ambitious so we sell them on college degrees, they want to escape reality so we give them reality TV.

There is another dimension in which needs and wants exist. I call them higher order needs and wants. For those who have memorized Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs, these are the social, esteem, and self-actualization levels. Whether or not a consumer believes that a product will actually fill those higher order needs is a matter of perception. It is not “inside” the product like an extra-powerful chemical in toothpaste that will make your teeth so white they glow!, but surrounds the product like an aura.

Making the aura real to prospects is the true challenge of service marketing and branding.

Nowhere is the necessity of communicating a service aura more important than in consulting and coaching. It’s true that our prospects and clients have real problems that they need help resolving. It’s also true that we cannot expect to make the initial sale or develop a client relationship unless we help solve that problem. But if we think that is all we are doing, we are seriously mistaken.

There are thousands of coaches and consultants who promise to help solve customer problems. However, the only thing that will compel prospects to choose you over all those other solution-providers is your ability to help them perceive the aura surrounding your service. Help them to experience that aura and they will demand that you — and no one else — become their coaching partner or consultant.

How are you going to do that?