Email > Social Media

Try this simple experiment to measure your time lost on Facebook, and learn why doubling down on your departments email newsletter, and reducing the desire to chase ‘likes’ may be a smarter strategy.

In a world where social media platforms dominate the landscape of digital marketing, it’s easy to forget the power of email marketing within local government.

A Practical Guide to Understanding Email vs. Social Media Marketing in Parks & Recreation 

I have the pleasure of serving as Deputy Director of Parks and Recreation in a department that has over 13,000 followers on Facebook.

From mid-December to mid-January, we posted:

53 times, with 36 posts on Facebook and 17 posts on Instagram.

During that period, we held a beloved community event attended by thousands of people, in which our engagement is usually higher than normal.

Let’s look at the metrics over the last 28 days.

FACEBOOK /INSTAGRAM TOTALS:

• Reach, or unique users who saw our content: 13,117

• Engagement, or anyone who liked, shared, commented or clicked a link: 1,585

• Link clicks, or the number of clicks, taps, or swipes: 187

Screenshot below to prove it:

Not bad.

But, lets take a look at our email metrics over the same period (4 emails sent):

EMAIL TOTALS:

• Unique email opens: 42,675

• Open Rate: 37%, 39%, 40%, 38%

• Unique clicks: 3,405

EMAIL AVERAGES:

• Unique email opens: 10,669

• Open Rate: 38%

• Unique clicks: 851

There is a lot of nuance when comparing the two channels (i.e. sample size of one department, etc.)

BUT… 👀 at the difference:

We engaged an additional 29,558 accounts, while publishing 49 fewer pieces of content.

While metrics like Impressions, Reach, Engagement, and Open rates provide valuable insights, understanding what truly drives community interest hinges on one critical factor:

The Click.

It reveals not just community members current interests, but also what they desire more information about.

By analyzing these clicks, we can gain a deeper understanding of our communities preferences and can tailor our efforts to meet their specific needs and interests more effectively.

In other words:

• They are often telling you what they want

• What they are interested in

• What they want more of

And the number of unique clicks taking people to our call-to-action was +1,720%

It’s even more shocking when you extend the timeframe to look at the past year.

FACEBOOK /INSTAGRAM METRICS:

Jan. 1, 2023 - Jan. 14, 2024

EMAIL METRICS:

Jan. 1, 2023 - Jan. 14, 2024

Lets take a look at the comparison:

We had 49,783 more unique clicks from our email newsletter than posting on Facebook and Instagram, with 441 fewer pieces of content.

So why do we continue to go down the social media rabbit hole, spending countless hours of time trying to please the ever-changing algorithms of:

• Facebook and Instagram Meta

• NextDoor

• Twitter X

• Snapchat

• and TikTok (whereas employees from 34 out of 50 states are prohibited from using it on government devices)?

I hope its not:

Your primary objective as a modern marketer in Parks and Recreation is to gather email addresses.

Algorithms change. What was working in 2017 doesn't reach the same amount of eyeballs as it used to.

I created this simple graphic to illustrate how to capture more emails:

How to analyze your own marketing metrics

For Facebook/Instagram:

1. Login to your page

2. Click the menu and navigate to ‘Meta Business Suite’

3. On the left navigation panel, click on ‘Insights’

4. Under ‘Overview’, you can choose your timeframe in the top right corner

For e-mail, it will depend on who your Email Service Provider (ESP) is. Examples of ESP’s are GovDelivery, Constant Contact, Mailchimp, Klaviyo, etc.

For GovDelivery:

1. Login to your account

2. On the left navigation panel, click on ‘Reports’

3. Under ‘Bulletin Reports’, click on ‘Bulletin Analytics’

4. Enter date range, then click ‘Show Report’

5. It defaults to ‘Summary’ view, but you can also click on ‘Details’ to filter different metrics.

   • Pro Tip: If you don’t see the metrics you want to track such as Open Rate, Click Rate, etc.

   • Click on ‘Columns’, select the boxes you want to track, and then click ‘Apply’

   

6. You can then export via .csv or PDF

If you are interested in learning more about industry benchmarks for email and SMS, visit the 2023 Public Sector Digital Communications Benchmark Report from Granicus.

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