Email Marketing vs Messenger Marketing, Which is Better? | EP 461

How to Create a Mobile App from Your WordPress Website

1. Social media became mainstream and businesses started to use it as marketing tools. Email marketing continued to be the biggest revenue generation for businesses. 01:08
2. Whenever there’s a new platform that marketers jump on, it’s always really effective in the beginning.  01:50
3. The biggest advantage of email marketing is you own email list. 03:50
4. Use them together! 05:01

Read the full episode transcript below:

00:28 David: Hey, everybody. Welcome to another episode of WP the Podcast, brought to you by WP Gears. I’m David Blackmon.

00:36 Tim: And I’m Tim Strifler.

00:38 David: Tim, today we’re going to talk about Email marketing versus Messenger Marketing. Which is better? Obviously social media is huge. You need it for your business in this day and age, but, hey should I … Let me say this as nicely as I can, Tim. Should I shit can email marketing and go with Messenger Marketing? What say you?

01:02 Tim: Yeah. So I’m going to say no. Email marketing, David and I, we just had a talk at Word Camp Phoenix on email marketing. It’s still very much alive today. Any time there is a new marketing medium I should say, everyone is like, Is this the death of email marketing? It happened with social media. Social media became mainstream and businesses started to use it as marketing tools. Everyone is like, “This is going to replace email marketing.” And it did not. It complements email marketing well, but email marketing continued to be the biggest revenue generation for businesses, especially online businesses.

01:40 Tim: So I think that principle holds true today even hearing from some of the big marketing gurus out there that are always testing everything and comparing, and trying out every new platform that comes out. And they’re saying while Messenger Marketing definitely has a large amount of open rates and can generate a lot of traffic, it’s quickly declining. And so it will probably level out and still remain effective, but whenever there’s a new platform that marketers jump on, it’s always really effective in the beginning. And then people kind of get blasted from every angle from all the different marketers, and then it becomes a lot less effective.

02:18 Tim: So we’re seeing that with Messenger Marketing. Again, it will probably level out and continue long term to be somewhat effective. But not to the point where it’s ever going to replace email. Email is still used. People still give out their email addresses to download stuff. They still use it as their main source of contact, whether that’s with businesses or whatnot.

02:41 Tim: So Messenger is still huge. I’m not by any means trying to put down Messenger. But in terms of the two, I think it’s not one versus the other. I think you should do both, and you should figure out strategies to have them work together.

02:55 David: Yeah. And here’s what I’m going to say. I agree with everything that Tim said. I didn’t realize that he was going to get to cover the whole topic for us.

03:02 Tim: Sorry.

03:03 David: I am going to jump in here with a couple of things. One of the benefits when we talk about this versus that, is the benefits of the email list … and we preach this all the time … is you own that list. We have a perfect example of one of these Messenger bought services, MobileMonkey, who was a new player that came onto the scene, was a Facebook Messenger chatbot that exploded. Did really well, did an AppSumo deal, and as a matter of fact we bought it.

03:34 Tim: Yeah. I bought it too.

03:35 David: And we used it. Liked it. Facebook decided that, you know what? We’re blocking you. Banned their pages. Did whatever they did. And that’s the risk that you run. I don’t want to really get into why he did, or he got blocked, or whatever. The point is, is that your email list, you own. If you’re tied to a third party platform that you do not own and all of your eggs are in that basket, well, you run the risk of losing that audience really, really fast.

04:08 David: So just keep that in mind.

04:11 Tim: And to be clear. David was referring to the founder, Larry Kim, the founder of MobileMonkey. And it was his personal Messenger accounts that got banned, I think temporarily. I think he already got it turned back on. But to be clear MobileMonkey is awesome. It wasn’t all MobileMonkey users or anything like that.

04:30 David: Exactly, yeah. Sorry didn’t mean to make it sound like that.

04:34 Tim: Oh, yeah. It didn’t. I just wanted to make sure no one thought that. But that’s such a valuable point, and that’s why email marketing continues to be worth the investment. Because you do own it. And you’re not relying on any third party that can at any time ban you, or change the algorithm which Facebook does a lot. Their ads are a lot less effective than they used to be on their ad platform, and so forth.

05:01 Tim: So with email marketing, you own that. Now, as I mentioned, using them together, great idea. Drive people from your Messenger, have them subscribe to your email list and visa versa. And you can find ways to really reach them in multiple places. So it’s not that your email marketing is separate from your Messenger Marketing, but you kind of have some really good marketing synergy going on.

05:26 David: Absolutely. All right. Well, tomorrow we have another great topic, how to fix the establishing a data base connection error in WordPress. It’s not as hard as you think. Until tomorrow. We’ll see you then.

05:42 Tim: Take care. Bye-bye.