What!  Could this be the end of an era?  Are email lists doomed?   Did the Facebook fan page triumph?

Well, not exactly.

Earlier this week Ben & Jerry’s shared in their customer email that they would no longer be sending emails to their list.  They are putting their efforts into their social media campaigns instead.

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Rather than engage in the whole discussion about whether this means that social media has in fact taken over the world and email marketing has met its demise I’d rather see this for what it is.

This isn’t about email marketing campaigns vs social media, this is about Ben & Jerry’s.

And hats off to the marketing team at Ben & Jerry’s for making a marketing decision.  Perhaps their marketing analytics told them they were getting better results from one medium over another or perhaps (as they say) they are responding to customer preference for reading Facebook activity.

In either event, all marketing is about trade off.  You have many, many channels and tactics to spend your marketing money on, you simply cannot do justice to ALL of them.

For many companies they aren’t even at the stage where email is part of their mix.  And many more can’t conceive of how Twitter can help them.

But for my money, the statistics that show that email marketing still returns the highest $ amount of any medium are not to be ignored.

Get your email marketing campaigns working properly.  Get that return.  Use the incremental revenue to invest in still further marketing and keep on measuring and investing your way to further success.

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