Should we spend more on email or social?

Most brands under-invest in email and over-invest in social content creation. If email drives 30-40% of revenue with minimal cost, it deserves proportional resources.

Does social media drive email signups?

Yes. Social is an excellent email list growth channel. Use social content to drive traffic to your site where email capture popups convert visitors into subscribers.

Can social media replace email?

No. Social algorithms control your reach. Email gives you direct, guaranteed access to your audience. If Instagram disappeared tomorrow, your email list would still be there.

What about TikTok Shop?

Social commerce is growing. But email remains the highest-ROI retention channel. Use social for discovery, email for conversion and retention.

How do we measure social ROI?

Track email signups from social, UTM-tagged traffic to your store, and social-attributed revenue in GA4. Acknowledge that brand awareness value is harder to quantify.

Channel Comparison

Email generates $42 per $1 spent. Social media organic reach is under 5%. One of these channels is undervalued.

Email and social media are both essential marketing channels. But they serve fundamentally different purposes and produce radically different returns.

Email is owned media. You control the audience, the delivery, and the data. Average ROI: $42 per $1 spent. Social media is rented media. The platform controls your reach, and organic reach continues to decline. Average eCommerce brand reaches under 5% of followers organically.

This comparison is not about choosing one over the other. It is about understanding the role each plays and allocating resources accordingly.

$42

Email ROI Per $1

<5%

Social Organic Reach

150+

Brands Managed

Gold

Klaviyo Partner

Every eCommerce brand needs both. But the budget and time allocation between them should reflect their actual revenue contribution — which most brands get backwards.

Email Marketing vs Social Media Marketing — feature by feature

Feature	Email Marketing	Social Media Marketing
Ownership	You own the list. No algorithm changes. No platform risk. Direct access to your audience.	The platform owns the relationship. Algorithm changes can cut your reach overnight.
ROI	$42 per $1 spent (DMA average). Highest ROI channel in marketing.	Organic social ROI is hard to measure. Paid social ROI averages 2-5x ROAS.
Revenue Attribution	Clear attribution. Klaviyo tracks revenue per email, per flow, per campaign.	Attribution is murky. Difficult to tie social posts to specific revenue.
Best For	Conversion, retention, lifecycle marketing, and revenue generation.	Brand awareness, community building, content discovery, and social proof.
Effort	Flows run automatically. Campaigns require 2-4 hours per week.	Constant content creation. Daily posting. Community management. Higher ongoing effort.
Personalisation	Deep personalisation based on purchase history, browse behaviour, and predicted value.	Limited personalisation. Same content shown to all followers.

Our recommendation

For revenue: prioritise email. Build flows, segment your list, and run targeted campaigns. Email should drive 30-40% of total revenue.

For awareness: invest in social media. Use it for content, community, and brand building. Drive social followers to your email list for monetisation.

The best strategy uses social to build the audience and email to monetise it.

Pick Email Marketing if...

Prioritise email when revenue attribution, retention, and customer lifetime value are your goals. Email is the conversion channel.

Pick Social Media Marketing if...

Invest in social media for brand awareness, community building, and content distribution. Use it to grow your email list.

Questions our best clients asked first

Is your email programme pulling its weight?

Free email audit. We will show you how much revenue your email should be generating and what it takes to get there.

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