Email vs Social Media: 5 reasons why email marketing is better
Lots of people want to talk about email marketing vs social media. But the truth is both email marketing and social media marketing can be powerful for any brand online.
But if you had to choose one, which is better?
In the simplest sense, even in a world of social media prevalence, there are now more than 4.7 billion email users worldwide, more than any single social media platform can claim, and a majority of consumers still check their email before they check social media in the morning.
But let's dive a little deeper. The following are five reasons why email marketing can be better than social media marketing.
You own your contact list
Unlike any social media platform, you actually own the contact list of your email subscribers.
You don't own your social media subscribers
In other words, this means that if a platform shuts down, gets sold, or gets restricted, you lose all those followers that you worked so hard to get. This isn't just a hypothetical. Vine shut down back in 2016, and more recently, TikTok's own future in the U.S. was thrown into real doubt by a federal ban and forced-sale fight before a deal to keep it running was finalized in 2025. Millions of brands built entire audiences on both platforms.
This is because social media platforms are third-party providers of connections. They are the ones who have control over your followers and even your account (whether you get banned or not for violating terms of service, for example).
You own your email subscribers
With email, your subscribers are yours. You have access to them as long as they want to be on your list.
Email marketing vs Social Media Winner: email marketing.
Email is more personal
In an overwhelmingly digital world, consumers are increasingly craving deeper connections with the brands they buy from.
Enter email.
Personalized email drives better engagement
Your message delivers directly into your recipient's inbox. And personalization can heighten that engagement and connection as well by including his or her first name, for example.
Audience segmentation allows you to break up your contacts into groups and adjust your message accordingly, whether it's customers you haven't seen in a while or contacts who have yet to make a purchase.
The sky's the limit when it comes to segmentation, especially when using DailyStory.
Social media is personal one-on-one
But with social media, you have to speak at large to your target audience with hope that your followers (and/or their friends) see your content in their news feeds and engage with it. This is in competition with everything else social media users see in their feeds.
Email marketing vs Social Media Winner: it's a tie.
Algorithms are not a factor
Many marketers have to spend a great deal of time considering (and strategizing against) social media algorithms.
Social media controls what is shown
An algorithm is essentially a series of calculations that determine what content a user sees in his or her feed on that social media platform. Its intent is to show what the user will most engage with and have a desire to stay on that platform longer.
One of the most talked-about is the Facebook Algorithm since the social network is the largest in the world, and it has shifted in recent years to prioritizing other user content (and now recommended content from accounts you don't even follow) over that of business pages.
Email has established best practices
Of course, while email doesn't have to contend with algorithms, you still want to use best practices in order to prevent ending up as spam.
Email marketing vs Social Media Winner: email marketing
Full control over your content
Social media has format restrictions
Instagram requires a properly sized image or video to post. X limits your posts to 280 characters.
Those are just two examples of how a marketer is naturally limited in what and how to post content on social media platforms.
Email is entirely yours to design
On the flip side, email is entirely within your control. You can use whatever best conveys your message to your recipients.
Email marketing vs Social Media Winner: email marketing
Check out our breakdown of a successful marketing email.
You'll get a higher ROI with email
Your return on investment should always be a major factor in your digital marketing strategy decisions.
Why open rate alone can mislead you
The average email open rate now sits around 40 to 44 percent, though that figure is somewhat inflated by Apple's Mail Privacy Protection, which can register an email as "opened" without a person actually reading it. That's part of why click-through rate, currently averaging around 2 to 2.5 percent, is considered the more reliable engagement metric today.
Email's return outpaces social media
Either way, email marketing returns an average of $36 to $42 for every $1 invested, the highest ROI of any digital marketing channel, comfortably ahead of what most brands see from organic social media, where Facebook Page posts now often reach only a small fraction of followers organically.
We have dozens of additional statistics that show the value of email marketing on top of that.
Email marketing vs Social Media Winner: email marketing
Conclusion
Of course, even though email marketing can be better than social media marketing, the best overall strategy is to use both for your branding, promotions and consumer relationship-building.
As you weigh where to invest your time, consider optimizing your digital marketing process, which includes automation, audience segmentation and enhanced email marketing capabilities, to name a few. DailyStory can help. Schedule your free demo with us today.