Email Subscriber vs Facebook Fan. Is there a difference?

I am the owner of a travel deals website www.insidertrips.com. I’ve been working to try and build our subscriber base, and i’ve just struggled to try and figure out the best way to do so.

On the other hand, i’ve had some success on Facebook and have obtained close to 500 “fans”.

So I wonder, is a Facebook Fan just as good as an email subscriber. I almost think that maybe a facebook fan is better and there is more opportunity for growth, and networking in such versus just a regular old email. Any ideas on how to grow both?

Facebook fan and email subscriber are two different things. While a facebook fan likes your site and follows you, an email subscriber may be a more in a “buy mood” when you email them promoting something. Because email subscriber opted-in and they are expecting an email from you. Of course it really depends on how you are building relationship with your email subscriber. With a facebook fan, you don’t need to build rapport with your fans, because they already like you, but it’s hard to monetize facebook fans than email subscribers.

I’d rather have 10,000 email subscribers than 25,000 facebook fans.

I think it’s pretty obvious that you can suggest they optin to email, the question that I see the poster raising is how to successfully manage both… or if you should use both. Are you suggesting running the same content via a newsletter, or something else?

Facebook fans can help you in alot of ways… after all, that’s alot of people that like and use your site!

The only issue I can think of would be if you started a newsletter series or wanted to focus on email marketing. You could ask your Facebook fans to opt-in to your newsletter series, but just because they’re your fans on Facebook doesn’t mean that you can send them emails. If you have an email list, they’ve already opted-in, so you can send them stuff whenever you want.

The person who wants email and the person who follows you on facebook may be different. While email is the most used tool, facebook is arguably more powerful for many demographics… people use facebook as a part of life and therefore see messages from any brands they follow while email is easily dismissed. In general it’s easier to message more with facebook but at the cost of length and creative control.

For these reasons many companies still use both aggressively but it’s hard to get each user down both paths, so plan to offer good value to convert people from one to the other. And realize that many people who get your emails may not want to fan you on their personal social networking site while many social users may not want more email.

Hi cdogstu99, email and Facebook are two very different marketing channels, so the possibilities for engaging your subscribers are very different, too. Have you tried measuring the return on sending an email newsletter to your subscriber list, vs sales generated by Facebook? The results from this will perhaps best help you determine a) the value of an email subscriber vs. Facebook fan/like, and b) where you should focus your marketing efforts in the future.

Perhaps you should consider promoting your newsletter on your FB page, too. You might also want to add on your page some details as to what’s going to be included in the newsletter. For example, do you send your newsletter daily/weekly/monthly? Does it include exclusive, email-only offers, or is it just a round up of new deals? And do you respect your subscribers’ privacy? Adding this sort of information will give folks a lot more incentive and confidence to join your list.

They are both very different, having email subscribers allows you to email them when ever you want to their personal email address while Facebook fans it only allows you to send messages to them are Facebook. Both are very important to have but subscribers are much better

They’re both equally useful but you need to provide incentives to encourage people to stay in touch and keep receiving information from you. Running promotions exclusively for email subscribers or having giveaways for Facebook fans are ways to gain initial interest (in maintaining that long term relationship with your brand) but you want to ensure you actually take the time to interact with your customers, find out what THEY want and then offer it to them (or perhaps get them involved in the site beyond simply subscribing for deals). When we get emotionally tied into brands, we’re more likely to purchase from them as you’ve invested time and energy into becoming a member of the group. Unlike what others have said above, it’s not all about cashing in on subscribers, it’s levering them to improve your services. :slight_smile:

Face book users are increasing every day, and there are more chances to make a strong network from Face Book. Face Book is now becoming important source of promotion, i think more then email subscription.