Organic Search is #1

According to a recent study, customers acquired through organic search are worth more than customers acquired through all other means, on a lifetime value basis. 

The study, compared organic search to everything from CPC to Email to Facebook and Twitter.  I'm a bit surprised that Twitter ended up 23% below the average CLV. Honestly, I thought most Twitter advertisements were more about brand building than about CLV, so I'm not sure how accurate the study is. 

The lesson here, is that optimizing your website, which moves you up the search rankings for "free" is a better value marketing than many of the paid marketing routes.

From the article, the growth of email marketing is significant, as it has grown over 4x over the last 4 years.  However, it is still dwarfed by Organic Search, which is twice as prevalent.