There is a debate in the marketing world about whether or not email marketing is on it’s way out. With the rise of social media, chat bots and and text marketing, some make the argument that email is obsolete.
In my group coaching program, one student asked if email marketing is still effective. She has a fear of coming off a sleazy. She also worries about people’s inboxes being inundated and getting lost as a result.
I’m here to tell you email marketing isn’t going anywhere. Here’s why.
You don’t control social media.
As much as I love and use social media, I don’t control it. I woke up one morning and couldn’t post in my own Facebook group because Facebook was making changes. At the time of writing this, Instagram has been buggy for days. Not only that, but social media can change their terms and algorithms whenever they want.
So what does that mean for a small business owner? It means you need to focus on building your email list. Use social media, but use it to build your list. Simply put, you can control an email list. Your whole website could go down and you would still have your list.
Email marketing still makes money.
I’ve never had anyone directly buy a course or sign up through coaching via social media. On the other hand, I’ve made thousands offering the same things to my email list. Just last week I earned a few hundred dollars with one email.
Don’t just take my word for it though. It turns out that for every $1 you spend on email marketing, you can make a return of $38.
Even if you’re using Facebook ads, people usually have them running to an opt-in first. That’s because they want to use their dollars on people who want to hear more information. Then they can retarget those ads using their email list. Or, they have direct emails they can market to.
The point is, if someone is on your email list it’s because they want to hear more from you. That’s much better than trying to sell to a freezing cold lead that found you through a hashtag on Instagram.
More people are using email more often.
According to 2016 stats curated by Optin Monster, 2.6 billion people use email. Compare that to Facebook which only has 1.7 billion or Twitter which has far less. Email also has the largest user base of any age group so it doesn’t matter who you’re targeting because they probably have email.
Additionally, people use email more often than they use social media. They usually check email first each day. And email is also a more daily practice than social media.
What’s even more interesting, is survey respondents preferred email as a channel for permission-based marketing. Of course they do! They literally opted in to hear more!
Final Thoughts
If you’re thinking about giving up on email marketing, stop. I can tell you from experience that email marketing makes more money than posting on social media and the stats back it up.
