When you want to get more views, engagement, clicks and ultimately conversions—both email marketing and social media marketing can get the job done. 

But as with all digital marketing techniques, email and social media are not the same thing. Understanding their strengths, differences and nuances is how to get ahead when growing your business. 

To help you decide where to invest your time, energy and money in 2025, here’s an overview of email vs social media. 

User Count

Email has 4.48 billion users.

The top 5 social media platforms have around 1.5 billion to 3 billion users each.

An important point here is that email is not associated with a particular platform or entrepreneur like social media platforms. Therefore, the reputation and also the user count of email isn’t as vulnerable to whatever is going on with the wider company. 

Email just doesn’t have that problem, because our relationship with email is different.

As we’ve stated on multiple occasions email is king. The average ROI for email is $42 for every $1 spent. 

Reach

Email marketing is 40 times more effective at getting customers than Facebook and Twitter (X) combined. That’s according to a study by McKinsey & Company.

Social media content can be shared, meaning posts can go viral if they hit the spot with your audience. This includes users being able to see your posts who aren’t subscribed to your pages. 

However, there is always the real possibility that when you post content on social media, it won’t be seen by all of your followers. 

This could be due to:

• Social media algorithms

• Users hiding your content from their feed

• Users scrolling past your content without engaging with it

• Inactive followers

• Social media platforms prioritising paid advertising over organic posts

In contrast, the average professional checks their email 15 times a day according to the Harvard Business Review. 

Not only do people check their emails very regularly on multiple devices, but they often get notified about new messages as they are sent. 

Practicality

Email addresses are required to sign up for most products and services. Therefore, if you don’t have an email address, it’s not really possible to use the internet, including to sign up for social media platforms! 

In contrast, you don’t have to sign up for any social media platform. Sure, you might have to for work, but if you delete your social media account you can still sign into your other products and services. 

The essential nature of an email account is one of the many reasons why email has and always will be so valuable. 

These days, you need an email to do things like book an appointment or access online banking. So, it can be extremely valuable for marketers to send promotional content to these same email addresses that get used multiple times a day. 

Personalisation

If marketing content doesn’t feel like it’s addressing the unique wants, needs and preferences of the user, it’s unlikely to convert. 

Emails can be customised to each unique user in terms of the name and overall content. 

Segmentation can further increase the sense of personalisation by sending the right message to the right user at the right time. 

Social media posts go out to everyone and are designed to be public. This can be useful in getting traction for your campaigns, though does make it more difficult to address all of your followers as individuals. 

Read more: What Are The Different Types Of Emails?

Owning Your Customer List

You can build an email list using sign up forms on your website. So long as you build your list in a GDPR-compliant way, that list of customer data is yours to store and use for your marketing activity. 

In contrast, many people are shocked to learn they don’t actually own their social media pages or any of the content on them. 

Social media accounts can be accessed or deleted at any time. Even if you have good control of your social media pages, you are up against a constantly changing algorithm. 

If your social media pages get deleted for any reason, you won’t be able to get those followers back. 

That's why it's time to build an email list if you haven't already.

Sustainable Marketing Campaigns

Here’s a thought: How are your social media campaigns contributing towards the digital carbon footprint of your business?

In a previous post, we shared the carbon footprint of social media platforms including TikTok, Instagram, Pinterest and Snapchat. 

The problem is that few businesses realise that their online activity has a carbon footprint, including marketing campaigns posted on social media.

Email is leaps and bounds ahead in that regard, with EcoSend offering sustainable email marketing to reduce the carbon footprint of your email campaigns. 

Email Vs Social Media: In Summary 

Both email marketing and social media marketing can be used to grow your business. However, how they do so is very different. 

If you’re able to build your social media followers and retain high levels of engagement, then social media platforms can be extremely powerful. In particular, content which has the potential to go viral because it connects easily. However, such success not only takes time to achieve but can also be very difficult to do. 

Sure, email is a little old school compared to some of the shiny new social media platforms. But with over 4 billion users and incredible ROIs, email marketing remains an essential way to grow your business and perform customer engagement. 

EcoSend - Win At Email With Our Sustainable Email Platform

Now you’ve been reminded about the incredible potential of email, are you ready to give it a try with EcoSend?

EcoSend gives you all the features you need to succeed at email including marketing automation, drip campaigns, an email template builder, segmentation and much more. All of our features are powered by renewable energy to reduce the carbon footprint of your campaigns.

If you are new to EcoSend, we’d love to welcome you onboard with a free trial.

Our plans start at just £15 per month and we have a plan to suit every business!

Want to talk to us about your email marketing needs first? Please drop us a message and we’ll be right with you.