Look, I’m not trying to sell you anything in this blog, but I am trying to convince you to utilize email marketing much more than you are.
Even if you have a list of two people (your mom and best friend).
Even if you’ve never sent an email before.
Even if you have no idea what to write.
All these things will come, but you have to decide whether email marketing is important first.
Let me tell you: email marketing is worth it.
In 2014 (when I first started tracking statistics around email marketing), email marketing had a return on investment (ROI) of $44 for every $1 spent. This dropped over the next few years to $39 for every $1 spent and in 2020 was brought back up to $42 for every $1 spent.
Three years later and email marketing has an ROI of $40 for every $1 spent.
Okay, a lot of numbers, here's what it means. The money spent on building an email list and creating a relationship with those on your email list results in more sales for your business.
It is true, in 2014 you got more sales from your email list than in 2020 - or even today -, but the general monetary value you can have from your email list is unmatched from any other digital platform.
Here's a recent example. A client I worked with wanted to have a paid webinar but didn't have an active audience in place, but they did have an email list they weren't currently doing anything with. In August, we started sending a monthly newsletter to this list to help reactivate it and help these contacts connect my client with quality information each month.
We decided on a webinar date for February, 6 months later. I had a small goal for the number of people we wanted to register and planned 4 emails to send out to this list as the only promotion for the webinar. After the first promotional email was sent out, we were halfway to our goal. The second email exceeded the goal entirely and by the time the webinar was held, we had almost 3x the number of people registered than our goal was set for.
This was all from an email list that was inactive 6 months earlier.
So, what’s the deal? How can you recreate this?
First step: collect email addresses.
Whether you have an automated newsletter subscription option, a lead magnet with the option to subscribe to your newsletter, a blog you allow people to subscribe to, or just a pad and pen people can write their email addresses on.
Collect 👏🏼Those 👏🏼 Email 👏🏼 Addresses 👏🏼
Second step: send a regular newsletter.
That example above? It was only successful because the email list was being “nurtured” with regular, beneficial content.
By sending a newsletter just once a month that included information (just like this one!) they received for free, the people on the email list associated emails from my client with the information they wanted. This, in turn, made it easier to promote a paid event to this list and then enthusiastically purchase it.
I send my newsletter once a month. You can see it right now (seriously, if you register for it below, you'll immediately get my latest one), it’s nothing fancy, just me sitting down and writing about something I cannot shut up about. Can you commit to sharing something you’re obsessed with once a month?
If the answer is “yes” and you’re just not sure where to go from here, comment, and let’s chat!
If the answer is “no”, comment and let me know why. I’m honestly curious and completely judgment-free.
So, I should be hearing from you *almost* either way (unless this was the swift kick in the butt to start a newsletter and you feel confident you got it from here!).