In Online Sales Arena, E-mail KOs Social

Do today's online retailers find more paying customers from e-mail or social media? It's no contest according to recent research from Custora, a marketing data firm. Over the past four years, online retailers have quadrupled the rate of customers acquired through e-mail to 7%, while Facebook and Twitter barely register, according to Custora data from 72 million customers shopping on 86 retailer sites. Of course, organic search remained the largest acquisition channel, followed by cost-per-click (Google). Meanwhile, e-mail also leads social when it comes to the lifetime value of customers acquired. E-mail customers are almost 11% more valuable than the average customer, while Facebook customers are about average in terms of shopping and spending. In contrast, Twitter customers were 23% less valuable than average. For more, see the recent article from wired.com at http://www.wired.com/business/2013/07/email-crushing-twitter-facebook/