When Ads Alone Are Not Enough — Part 1: From Paid Attention to Customer Relationships

For decades, advertising was largely a game for companies with significant budgets.
Before social media became part of everyday life, businesses relied heavily on television, radio, newspapers, magazines, billboards, direct mail, and event sponsorships to introduce their products to the public. These channels helped many brands become household names, but they usually required substantial spending on production, media placement, printing, and distribution.

A company could spend a large amount of money creating a television commercial or placing an advertisement in a national publication, yet communication mostly moved in one direction. The brand delivered its message, while the audience had limited opportunities to respond, ask questions, provide feedback, or build a direct relationship with the company.

For smaller businesses, competing for attention was even more difficult. Reaching a large audience often required access to media channels that were simply beyond their financial capacity.

Then social media changed the landscape.

Social Media Made Advertising More Accessible
The arrival of platforms such as Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, Tik-Tok, and other social networks transformed how companies promoted their products.

Businesses no longer needed a national television budget to reach thousands of people. A small e-commerce brand could create a simple advertisement, choose a daily budget, target a particular audience, monitor the response, and adjust the campaign without waiting weeks for the results.

There is no meaningful percentage for companies advertising on social media before the social media era because the channel did not yet exist in its current form. A more useful comparison is how quickly businesses adopted social media once it became widely available.
According to Eurostat, 37% of businesses in the European Union used social media in 2015. By 2021, the figure had increased to 59%. These figures measure overall business use—not paid advertising alone—but they demonstrate how rapidly social platforms became part of everyday business communication and marketing. And still by Eurostat at 2025, 63.6% of EU enterprises with at least ten employees were using some form of social media. These figures measure overall business use—not paid advertising alone—but they clearly demonstrate how rapidly social platforms became part of normal business communication and marketing.

Social media advertising spending followed the same upward trend. According to DataReportal, based on Statista Market Insights data, global spending on social media ads rose by 15% between 2023 and 2024, reaching close to a quarter of a trillion US dollars. Social media placements consequently accounted for more than three out of every ten dollars spent on digital advertising worldwide.

This growth also created opportunities beyond traditional corporate advertising. Small business owners, independent creators, designers, photographers, copywriters, video editors, influencers, and niche communities could all participate more actively in the marketing landscape.

A creative idea filmed with a phone could sometimes generate more attention than an expensive commercial. Customers could comment, share, review, react, and even create their own content about a product. Marketing became faster, more interactive, more measurable, and more accessible.

This development has brought enormous value to businesses. However, it has also created a new risk: the temptation to treat advertising as the entire marketing strategy.

The Problem With Depending Too Heavily on Ads
Advertising is excellent at generating attention.
It can introduce a product to new audiences, bring visitors to a website, promote a seasonal offer, support a product launch, and help a growing brand reach people who may never have discovered it organically.

But attention is not the same as a relationship.
Someone may see an advertisement, visit a website, browse several products, and leave without making a purchase. Another person may buy once but never hear from the brand again. A third customer may genuinely like the product but gradually forget the company because another brand appears more frequently in their social media feed.

When businesses focus almost entirely on acquiring new customers through ads, they can overlook the people who have already shown interest.

They continue paying to reach more people while failing to create meaningful communication with existing subscribers, visitors, and customers. In some cases, a business may even pay repeatedly to advertise to people who have already purchased from it.

This is where email becomes an important part of a multi-channel retention system.

What Email Can Do That Advertising Cannot

Email should not replace advertising. The two channels perform different roles.
Advertising helps a brand become visible. Email helps the brand remain remembered.

When customers voluntarily provide their email addresses, they give the business permission to continue the conversation. This creates an opportunity to communicate beyond a single advertisement or transaction. This below are several advantages what brand can do by email channel.

Welcome new subscribers. Instead of immediately pushing for a sale, the brand can introduce its story, values, products, and the problems it aims to solve.

Help customers understand the product. A company can explain how to choose the right product, how to use it properly, how to care for it, or how to receive the best possible results.

Answer common questions. Emails can address concerns about ingredients, sizing, shipping, returns, product compatibility, or delivery times before customers need to contact support.

Recommend relevant products. Rather than sending the same promotion to everyone, the brand can introduce products that relate to what a customer previously viewed or purchased.

Support customers after a purchase. A customer-brand relationship shouldn’t stop after payment. The brand can continue by providing order information, usage guidance, care instructions, helpful reminders, and even opportunities to ask for assistance.

UGC & feedback Request. Businesses can also invite customers to share reviews, complete short surveys, suggest improvements, or explain what they would like to see next.

Recognize important moments for customer Birthday messages, anniversary notes, loyalty rewards, early access, and thoughtful thank-you emails can make customers feel valued beyond the value of their latest transaction.

Managing customer conversations in a human-centred way. When someone has not made a purchase or interacted with the brand for some time, an email is a politeway to restart the conversation, rather than immediately paying money to reach that person again through advertising.

Continue Building the Relationship

In conclusion, email can facilitate genuine, mutually respectful two-way connection between brands and customers. Because it enables customers to reply, ask questions, provide feedback, update their preferences, in a way that other advertisement can’t do.

The goal is not to fill an inbox with constant promotions. The goal is to remain useful, relevant, and present throughout the customer’s relationship with the brand.

However, building a lasting customer relationship requires more than simply adding email to an advertising strategy.

Brands must understand why customer loyalty carries significant business value, what happens when paid advertising is suddenly runs-out and how email, social media, customer service, and other communication channels can work together as one connected system.

In Part 2, we will look at how businesses can reduce their reliance on paid advertising and build a multi-channel retention system designed to keep customers engaged, remembered, and connected to the brand over time.

Continue reading: When Ads Alone Are Not Enough: Building a Multi-Channel Retention System — part 2

Source: Eurostat, Digitalisation in Europe – 2023 Interactive Publication, accessed July 17, 2026.

Tami Rahmilawanti.