As technology continues to evolve, there is an ever-growing amount of channels through which you can communicate with your customers. But which of these channels do customers enjoy using the most to stay in touch with their favorite brands?
A survey by MarketingSherpa answered exactly that. The company conducted a survey of 2,057 American adults in early 2015 about their communication channel preference, and their responses certainly were eye-opening.
The question asked was simple: “In which of the following ways, if any, would you prefer companies to communicate with you? Please select all that apply.”
Here is the chart the company produced to display how responses were spread out:
As you can see, email is overwhelmingly the favorite way for customers to stay in touch with their favorite brands. Approximately 72 percent of adults prefer to use email in communication with companies.
What’s strange is that the general rule found in this survey was that the majority of respondents prefer traditional methods of communication versus digital tactics. Email is the main exception to that, and a huge exception it is, as it had nearly 25% more votes than postal mail, the next largest category. Other “old” media standbys like television ads (34 percent) and print media like newspapers and magazines (31 percent) also significantly outperformed text messages, social media and other forms of digital communication.
Email was also the most popular channel across almost every single demographic that responded to the survey, the only exception being females 65 or older, who just barely preferred postal mail (65 percent) to email (64 percent). Males between the ages of 35 and 44 favored email the most, at a rate of 87 percent.
It’s still important to engage in communications across a variety of channels, including those digital channels that are still outperformed by traditional media. But these results basically demonstrate that email marketing must be a part of the advertising campaign of businesses who wish to stay in touch with their customers. It’s what the customers want, and it’s relatively easy and inexpensive to accomplish.
For more information about how you can implement effective email and digital marketing for your restaurant, contact us today at That’s Biz.