Instagram Ads vs. Email Marketing vs. Media: A Case Study

Instagram Ads vs. Email Marketing vs. Media: A Case Study

If you’ve been thinking a lot more about how Instagram fits into your marketing mix this year, you’re not alone.

Instagram has overtaken Twitter as the second-biggest social network and marketers are starting to take the social network more seriously. But, even if you’re already using Instagram for marketing, it’s hard to tell if the social network is actually doing anything for your bottom line.

Since Instagram doesn’t allow you to link outside of the app in any photos, analytics can be tricky. The only way that companies can send Instagram followers back to a landing page is in the bio. That said, your bio is a perfect place for a Bitly link. We’ve talked before about how Mashable uses Bitly to keep track of the clicks from Instagram back to stories they’re pushing for the week.

With Bitly Campaigns, you can actually compare the performance of Instagram to other channels like media and email marketing, whether you’re using Instagram Ads to track clicks from a “Buy” button or just tracking clicks from the profile picture.

Here’s how an eCommerce company used Campaigns to do that… and what they found out when it comes to Instagram Ads compared to email marketing.

The Campaign

When new arrivals came into the store, the brand wanted to promote across all the channels where the audience was most active. So, in addition to organic social like Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram, the company took out ads in industry-specific publications and ran Instagram Ads, too.

To track the results of all these different channels, the brand used Bitly links. So when a user clicked the “Buy” button on the Instagram Ad, the click to the product page was tracked. Likewise, media publications were handed Bitly links to share when they wrote articles or published information about the products. That way, the company could track how many people came in from different influencers and publications.

Here’s what that looked like with Bitly Campaigns:

Email v Instagram

Initially, the brand saw the highest number of customers engaging with Instagram Ads. This is surprising, especially for an eCommerce company that can traditionally rely on a loyal email database. In general, marketing execs still believe that email drives more revenue than display ads, website, and social efforts combined.

Instagram Ads delivered 30% more clicks than the email marketing campaign about the same products. With Bitly Campaigns, it’s easy to see that difference over time.

Overall, media placements have driven the most prospects to product pages overall. The company even broke down the Media category by each publication, so the team knows which publications are going to be the most effective for placements in the future.

With Bitly Campaigns, this eCommerce brand was able to analyze cost, spend, and content from a macro view. Just by using links in every campaign, the company broke down siloes and instantly knew where to spend in the future.