Email > Social Media

Try this simple experiment to measure your time lost on Facebook, and learn why tripling down on your email newsletter, and reducing the desire to chase ‘likes’ is 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.

Over the last month, we’ve 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

If you need a refresher on what Reach, Interactions, Engagement, etc. actually mean, here’s a great article to refresh your mind.

Screenshot below to prove it:

Not bad.

I’d also objectively argue that our team is in the top 20% of all departments within our field for consistently posting engaging, quality content.

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

Each click is a clear signal of intent from your community members

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:

"Because that's what we've always done"

In a future newsletter, we’ll take a deep dive into how you can segment the customer journey and provide exactly what someone is interested in, whether that be:

• Summer Camps for 8 year olds
• Special Event notifications
• Commissioner vacancies on your Parks Board
• etc.

How to check 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.
6. Pro Tip: If you don’t see the metrics you want to track such as Open Rate, Click Rate, etc.
7. Click on ‘Columns’, select the boxes you want to track, and then click ‘Apply’

1. You can then export via .csv or PDF

Over the last week, the most popular recipe was:

Leadership Blueprint | Parks & Recipes

“I wish I had a blueprint of how my leader works”

‍

‍

"We usually stumble our way into figuring out our leaders quirks by trial and error, which isn’t fun and really inefficient. Putting together a 'blueprint’ could help your next direct report get to know you and what you value without any guesswork." - Luc Levesque

Forward this article to a friend or colleague who might enjoy it. It’s free to forward and I would greatly appreciate it!