The Power of Email Marketing
The first thing I want to ask you is, how big is your email list? Do not include your followers or fans on any social media platform. I am talking about people that have willingly signed up for what you offer. What would happen tomorrow if Facebook, Instagram, Twitter etc. were no longer around? I mean, this likely will never happen, but having your account hacked or inaccessible is a reality unfortunately. How would you get in touch with all your customers? You need to have a backup plan to secure all the relationships you have built over the years. If you lost it all tomorrow, would you really want to put all that work back into building your social media following again? In this article I am going to take you through 4 topics about email marketing you should know about and then leave you with some questions to consider and hopefully urge you to put list building as a top priority for your business.
Number One: You own your email list. There are no algorithms behind emailing like you have with social media. You can be confident that the message is getting delivered and seen. You don’t have to worry if it is getting lost out there in an organic feed. Have you ever opened Facebook and thought that it was like a screaming match? Everyone is trying to get their posts seen, saying “look at me,” hoping their message won’t fall on deaf ears. How great would it feel to write to people who are actually interested in you and have opted in to be engaged with your content? With email marketing, you don’t have to pay to play. Facebook & Instagram are businesses and monetize their platforms in order to make a profit. This means you have to advertise in order to get seen in peoples feed. With email, it’s free.
Number Two: People are opting in. They are already showing interest in what you are bringing to the table. People will join you when you peak their interests or offer them something of value. Maybe it is something that solves a problem, or simply adds joy to their life. If you are doing it the right way, people will gladly say “yes, I will give you my email in exchange for the value you bring.” After they opt in to your list, it then allows you to segment them into different buckets. I will cover this more in the next section.
Number Three: You have the ability to survey your audience. You may be thinking “What in the world would I even write about?” If you are unsure of what to create or offer to your audience, just ask them! They have already opted in and are interested in you and can provide you with the feedback you are looking for. Your email subscribers are your dream and perspective clients. Send out an email that asks “Which one of these topics are you most interested in? We just want to make sure we are getting you the right content.” Your survey results will allow you to segment your subscribers into different buckets so that your unsubscribe rate goes down and your open rate goes up as you refine the way you reach out. For example, we have some clients that we do branding for and some who seek social media marketing help. We can then evaluate our followers interests and then cater to them in a specific way, while only delivering info that people have opted in for. “We see you have showed interest in our branding strategies. Here is a guide to help you get started.” You want to serve content that is relevant so they trust you and think of you as an expert that is paying attention to them.
Number Four: Email allows you to serve your audience in a new way. Even if people have been following you for years they may be totally missing your posts because of the algorithms of social media. People aren’t always seeing all you are putting out there. Through email you can serve them directly. It becomes more personal. Your emails are getting mixed in with emails from Mom, best friends, business partners etc. So when they see your name in the emails it becomes a part of their subconscious. “I am hearing from Leviathan Design again.” Direct email is more intimate than throwing out a post on social media.
Now that we have discussed the benefits of email list building, you may be asking yourself, “What in the world would I send out to my people?” Chances are you are already putting out content daily or weekly through Instagram, Facebook, Blogs etc. You are already creating content for your followers. What would it look like if you were able to repurpose that content in order to reach more people? Don’t think of it as more work, just a new strategy.
One last point I want to make is that with email you will be in charge of the timing, delivery, images and the order of content they are receiving. When you try and run a series of posts on social media, person A is seeing post 1, person B is seeing post 2 and person A may not even know about Post 2. Your posts may not all be getting seen or even in the right order. You think you have a strategy but you may be losing people at all parts of the funnel. With email, you can plan your series and the order and timing you want them delivered in.
The goal of your email list is to have people excited to open your emails! If your serving them over and over with valuable content they will get use to opening your emails and then you can throw in an offer. It’s the jab, jab, jab, right hook logic. In other words, you need to give, give, and give some more before asking for anything. When you do ask after investing in your relationships, people will be more than happy to give back, because of the value you have created along the way. You have primed your list. They know you, they trust you, and they love you.
So ask yourself these questions:
- How big is your email list?
- How would you get in touch with all your people tomorrow if Social Media didn’t exist?
- What content are you serving your people? Is your content relevant to what they are opting in for?
If you would like to hear about specific strategies/campaigns that we offer to get in front of your target audience please contact us, we would love to hear from you! We want to see you win.
Written by: Kara Haan – owner/designer of Leviathan Design
