Millenials may have pioneered social networking, but new research from the Pew Internet and American Life project indicates that Baby Boomers are jumping on the social bandwagon in ever-increasing numbers. In fact, in only the past year, the percentage of people over the age of 50 who use social networking sites has almost doubled, going from 22% to 42%. Among baby boomers, the rate of adoption of social networking sites is also increasing much more quickly than it is among younger adults. The study reported that the growth rate for social networking use was 88% among adults aged 50-64 and 100% among adults aged 65 and older, compared with a measly 13% for adults aged 18-29.
Clearly, adults over 50 are finding the allure of being able to connect with old friends and distant family irresistible. For grandparents, easy access to pictures of grandchildren don’t hurt, either. However, if you’re trying to reach this demographic with your marketing campaign, don’t let the growth of social media adoption among the boomer set blind you to the important role that email still plays in their lives. From the Pew Report:
While email may be falling out of favor with today’s teenagers, older adults still rely on it heavily as an essential tool for their daily communications. Overall, 92% of those ages 50-64 and 89% of those ages 65 and older send or read email and more than half of each group exchanges email messages on a typical day.
Fortunately, email marketing and social media marketing are not mutually exclusive. By combining the two, you can drastically expand the reach of your marketing campaign by harnessing the power of social sharing. In fact, in our campaigns we’ve seen what an amazing difference social sharing can make in response rates for both email and direct mail.
This entry was posted on Tuesday, August 31st, 2010 at 9:31 pm and is filed under Social Media and Marketing Tips. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
