Do I really need an email list?
Marketing is such a beast. As a business owner you’re spinning so many plates just to keep things going. But you know you need to do more marketing. Even when things are good.
Especially when things are good.
But you’re so overwhelmed by all the conflicting advice spouted by all the bros, you don’t know where to start.
“Post Instagram reels every day.”
“Get a chatbot to boost engagement.”
“Blog every week.”
“Start a podcast.”
“Insta’s dead. You need to be on TikTok.”
It’s bloody exhausting.
Maybe you’re slogging away on social media…
…posting every day
…exhausting yourself creating hundreds of reels and carousels
…crafting witty captions and then optimising them for search
…scheduling out your posts, paying attention to optimum posting times. All for…
…tumbleweed.
And then – out of the clear blue sky - someone mentions email marketing.
You brush it off. “I can’t be adding yet another marketing activity to my already overflowing to-do list can I?”
Maybe not.
But if you do email marketing right, you’ll be able to ditch a couple of the others altogether.
What are the benefits of email marketing?
Done well, email marketing has the potential to transform your business. When you:
Have a strong strategy
& you send personalised campaigns…
…email marketing knocks all the other channels out of the water.
Let’s take a look at the reasons for this…
Email has the best ROI of any of the marketing channels
It’s well known among marketers that email has the best ROI out of all the marketing channels.
Across all industries, for every $1 you spend on email marketing, you can expect to make an average of $36 back.*
And why’s this?
Email is the primary form of communication across the world.
The number of daily email users is already huge, and is set to rise to 4.6 billion by 2025. **
You can easily personalise your campaigns. So you’re only sending relevant content. The stuff people want to read.
Plus, email is totally scalable. It can grow with your business and set you up with a sustainable, long-term income stream.
Email has a better reach than social media
Did you know that – on average – only about 7% of your followers on Instagram will see any given post? With Facebook it’s even worse, at around 6%.***
Whereas, with email marketing, between 90 and 98% of the emails you send get to the right place.****
So, you can be sure that the messages you’re putting out there, at least reach your intended audience.
You own the audience
Unlike with social media, you own and control your audience with email marketing. You can access your email list at any time. That data is yours. You’re not held at the mercy of the social media platform.
Sure, many people run businesses solely through Instagram. But if that’s the only way you can contact your audience, you might want to consider also building an email list.
A whopping 85% of Instagram accounts have been compromised at some stage. In the worst-case scenario, you could be hacked and completely frozen out of your account.
If all your business comes through Instagram, this could be a serious issue. Also, these platforms do go down from time to time.
The most recent one being that Instagram was down for a few hours in early March 2024. But in 2019, both Facebook and Instagram were completely down for almost 24 hours for most users.
If your business hinges entirely on social platforms, that spells a significant loss.
You’re not blindsided by fickle algorithms
Okay, let’s assume, for argument’s sake that you’re never frozen out of your account. And let’s also imagine the platforms stay up and running. You’re still at the mercy of their algorithms.
These algorithms get updated all the time. Which means what works one day is not guaranteed to keep working.
You might devise a winning social media strategy. You start seeing huge follower growth. Sales and conversions go through the roof.
This could work for weeks or even months.
Until it doesn’t.
One day your reach just tanks and engagement falls off a cliff. So, you scramble to try new things. To please the algorithm. And get your stats moving in the right direction again.
It’s a constant game of cat and mouse. A game you don’t have to play with email marketing.
See, unless you use dodgy practices your emails will get to right place: your audience’s inboxes.
You can build a relationship with your audience
Email marketing is all about relationships. It’s a 1-to-many platform that reads as 1-to-1.
It’s an intimate communication method. And when it’s done right, it’s based on consent. Not only for the initial opt in. By engaging with your emails, your audience is making an empowered decision: To stay on your list and read what you send.
Personalised email marketing means more conversions and loyal subscribers.
They look forward to opening your emails. And you reward them by only sending them valuable and targeted content.
It offers you targeted marketing opportunities
Email marketing platforms give you a ton of great insights. So, you can personalise your campaigns.
It means you can put your subscribers into different subcategories. So, you can send them only the stuff they’re interested in. And you can target your promos and offers only at your warmest leads.
This is known as segmenting and tagging. And all the main email marketing platforms make this really easy to do.
Segmenting your audience is something you can get into once you get more confident with email marketing.
And there are many ways to segment your audience, including:
Location
Age
Income level
Buying habits
Actions
Segmentation helps you to personalise your customers’ experience. And deepen that connection by only sending them relevant offers and content.
You can increase your website traffic and engagement
Not getting enough website visitors? Email marketing can help you with that. With strategic calls to action links, you can shepherd subscribers back to your website.
Launching a new course or service offer? Create a promo sequence of emails for your list and direct them to your website.
Once there, they can land on your sales page for your new course. Which you’ve optimised for conversion with banging copy. And voila, your email campaigns have brought you more website visitor. Which you can then convert into paying customers.
It’s cost effective
Email is one of the most cost-effective ways to market your business. You don’t have to pay for ad space, printing, and postage.
It’s something you can start even if you have a tiny marketing budget. Most of the main email marketing platforms (Mailerlite, ConvertKit, Mailchimp, HubSpot) do a free plan up to a certain number of subscribers.
It’s something that can grow with your business. Once your list grows over a certain number, you’ll need to start paying for email marketing. But hopefully, by that point, you’ll be making enough money from your email list to more than justify the cost.
Don’t know where to start with your email marketing? I can help you with that. Book a free discovery call to talk through what you’re struggling with.
Sources:
*https://www.litmus.com/blog/infographic-the-roi-of-email-marketing
**https://www.statista.com/statistics/255080/number-of-e-mail-users-worldwide/
***https://www.socialinsider.io/blog/social-media-reach/
****https://agencyanalytics.com/kpi-definitions/email-delivery-rate
