Steve Rubel over at Advertising Age revealed some statistics:
According to an eConsultancy study of 1,400 U.S. consumers, 42% said they prefer to receive ads for sales and specials via e-mail compared to just 3% who said the same for social-networking sites and 1% who preferred Twitter.
I was shocked at first, until I thought about my own online habits. I’ve clicked maybe 5 ads since I started using FaceBook heavily 2 years ago. On Twitter, the only advertisements I ever click are for cutting-edge web sites. I’m not going to be on the lookout for a great deal on a new barbecue. I contrast that with my personal account with Yahoo (which folks I trust to keep SPAM in the junk folder where it belongs). In email, I get to decide when I receive the information.
Looking through the newsletters I subscribe to, they uniformly give me a great deal (usually one that makes me think, ‘how can they afford to do that?’) and/or keep me up to date with the very latest professional information. Another species email I enjoy is from designers or companies doing work that excites me.
Only those companies that have successfully earned my trust by delivering me more value than value proposition will earn a check in the opt-in box on their subscription form.