How do users find the discounts and deals that make them buy a product from a specific vendor? While it's true that users compare brand opinions with their friends and contacts on social media networks, it's not the first (or most popular) way for them to find a deal.

ExactTarget and CoTweet recently did a study that compared social media effectiveness to email effectiveness. Both were more effective in certain situations, but email won the day for how people found promotions and deals. Of the survey recipients, 82% said that at some point they would search an online channel to find deals and promotions. How did they do that? For most of them (76%), their search began by checking a brand's corporate website. Of that percentage, over half (62%) would sign up for the brand's promotional email. 54% of survey respondents used search engines. So if you are counting on converting users who are looking for deals, you'd better offer them an email communications options.

And they'll convert from there! According to eDialogue's report Global Email Attitudes Survey, 58% of the 13,000 survey respondents had been driven to make a purchase from an email offer, either in-store or online.

We know that we sound like a broken record, but social media is not the answer to all things. It's important for brand saturation as well as customer relationship management and retention. It's not where people are going to look for the types of promotions that convert them!