Monetate’s Ecommerce Quarterly Report came out today with some staggering stats. In essence, when it comes to ecommerce, email still rules. Monetate saw email as achieving a conversion rate 8x that of social and 4x that of search. 

Although social media is referring traffic to online shopping sites 77% more than last year, few users actually buy anything. E-commerce sites are rushing to fill the Internet with their social banter and engagement, but the real winners are those emails campaigns reminding us of sales, previewing new items, and offering free shipping. Converting at a rate of 4.25%, email deals are converting people to sales eight times better than social.

Monetate CMO Kurt Heinemann said “It just means we should be very careful of the hype. You want to factor in that it doesn’t convert as high as a typical source.”

The report also states that e-commerce companies aren’t factoring in mobile and email enough when looking at products head-to-head, and that tablet shopping is not something to be ignored.

But the real key takeaway for ecommerce marketers – build your list!