Start Building Your Email List

Is email marketing still important today? I get that question a lot. I know that businesses feel that they should focus on building a social following – collecting Facebook likes, Twitter followers, and what not these days. In response to that, I invite you to watch this video made by Derek Halpern of Social Triggers. I would have recorded my own but Derek was wordy and on point here, so there was no need.

Today’s businesses cannot commit a graver sin than underestimating the power of email marketing. Even though we all take it for granted, email should be (and often is, thankfully) a part of everyone’s marketing mix.

However, why is email still so popular? We did all expect it to shift with the emergence of social media. After all, that’s where we all hang out constantly, right?

Nothing shifted, actually. Email is still the cornerstone of your communication with your customers, only you now have to do extra work to cover social media as well. Here’s why it’s going to be extremely difficult for something to top email as your primary communication tool for interacting with customers.

• Email is personal – even though everyone pretty much knows these days that emails from businesses go out predominantly in bulk, people still perceive it as something personal. We read it in private and we’re not subjected to other people’s comments and opinions as we are when we’re hanging out on Facebook or Twitter.
• Email is direct – from you to them, and there’s no one in between. Social media sites will censure what businesses can or cannot say most of the time. With email, you can be sales to a fault, raunchy, and even vulgar if you want to be (not something that I recommend but it all depends on people you are emailing).
• Email is customizable – you can address everyone you’re emailing by their name. Try starting a Facebook post like that; you would soon have a riot on your hands and close to 0 engagements. Because email is customizable it can also be personalized and this goes a long way towards building quality relationships with your potential customers.
• Everyone is used to email – while, on the other hand, not everyone with an Internet connection is even on any of the social media. Email is an older and more adopted tool and people expect to get correspondence there, especially when they’ve opted in for news or information.

That’s why it’s going to be difficult to dethrone email anytime soon. Even though we spend much more time on our social media accounts we put more trust in our email and most of us check it at least once a day (or 20 times a day, as it may be in my case).

So here are the 7 reasons why you can’t go without an email list, even today. If you’ve managed to do it up until now, you’ve missed out on hundreds of opportunities and it’s time to go back to the basics.

A Bigger List Equals More Sales…

I really wanted to start with something obvious. It’s so obvious that most people don’t even get it! The larger your list is the more sales you get. Think about it. You can sell the crappiest product or service in the world and your conversion rate can be 0.01%. If you have a list of 10,000 emails, you will get one lousy sale. However, if you have a list that 100,000 large you will get 10 (still lousy, though) sales! It’s simple math!

…It Also Allows You to Build More Stable Relationships

Emails are pretty much one on one conversations. Because they can be personalized and customized, you can use emails to reach out to specific segments of your lists with things you know they will be interested in. You can also engage in a conversation with people and offer them actionable advice that they might otherwise miss if you share it exclusively on your social media accounts. In a nutshell, if you’re unique and helpful people won’t mind getting emails from you. You will build a stronger relationship that is much more likely to lead to a sale eventually.

Email Communications Are Easy to Track and Evaluate

There’s a ton of email metric out there that will help you perfect and tailor your messages. From opt-in rates, to open email rates, and all the way down to click-through rates and conversions. One thing you definitely want to keep an eye on is whether or not your email list is growing steadily. If it is that means that your business is growing, too. If it’s declining or stagnating then you might be in trouble and it’s time to look for an underlying cause.

A Large Email List Creates More Overall Opportunities

Your email marketing is mostly about your customers, but not exclusively. Your business partners, other businesses, and even your competitors might be receiving those emails -maybe even journalists or writers. Email marketing creates a wealth of opportunities for PR, press, and even joint ventures. You might be contacted by a company that wants to partner up with you on a project. There’s no telling what might happen.

It Positions You as an Expert in Your Field

If you’re doing your job right and sending out pointed emails with solid content, actionable tips, and you’re generally engaging and valuable to your subscribers, you will soon establish yourself as an authority in the field. Or you will to them in any case. When that happens, everything you say and write will have more value. Other people will hear about it eventually and they will want to be looped in as well. This way, your email list will grow and so will your sales!

It’s Easy to Collect Feedback with Email

Customer feedback is of utmost importance these days. If you’re not collecting it then you’re probably not in tune with what your customers want – you run a risk of offering things that they are not interested in. With email, it’s easy enough to send a survey to all your subscribers and ask them brief questions about whatever you want. Sure, you might not get thousands of answers but you can probably get hundreds, depending on your list size. And a couple of hundred responses is a decent enough sample to see what the majority of your subscribers and customers think about a specific offer, product, or service. Also read our brief guide on business thank you card message

In the end, I’ll let you chew on this little tidbit of information: there are now over 4 billion email accounts in the world. This number is expected to surpass 5 billion by the year 2017. That’s just a few short months from today. Don’t you want just a tiny piece of that gigantic cake? I know I do! Don’t wait a second longer and start building your email list right away!