Lesson 2: Six reasons to get excited about email marketing

Like many solopreneurs, I started out doing consulting work. I did the networking thing, landed some nice (and not so nice) gigs and made a decent living.

But I’ve always had the dream of passive income, and when I came across email marketing I realized that this would be one of the key components of earning more while working less.

Now, some five years into my journey with online courses, I’m even more excited about email marketing. Here are the top six reasons why.

1. They come to you when they’re ready to buy

You can spend a lot of your life chasing early-stage or low-quality leads.

Or you can use your email marketing to keep you top of mind, build trust, demonstrate your expertise and announce new products or services.

When they do come to you, they’re ready to buy.

Think about that for a minute.

2. It gives your leads and customers a better experience

Think about the last 10 leads that showed up in your business. Did all of them get an equally good experience? Did you make each of them feel equally welcome and valued? Even more importantly, did the last 10 people who bought from you get the same high-quality experience?

If you’re welcoming leads and clients manually, the answer is most likely no.

But if you’re using email marketing, you can at least welcome every new lead and client, make them feel welcome and even onboard and deliver some (or all) of your products or services.

Automated systems are not replacements for being human and personal. But they can and do raise the bar when it comes to those critical first impressions.

3. It saves you time (lots of time)

Email marketing saves you a ton of time in a ton of places. Here are my favourite two:

• Staying top of mind: An evergreen newsletter goes out to tens, hundreds or thousands of leads, prospect and past clients at the same time. Compare that to keeping in touch with each of them individually.
• Qualifying leads: The worst use of your time is talking one-on-one to leads who are just checking you out. Let email marketing (and your website and content), do the heavy lifting for you.

I’ve almost completely banished coffee meetings and networking events because they’re such an inefficient use of time. Now, I let my content and email marketing do the heavy lifting.

4. Email marketing is highly effective

Most channels to market are noisy. Social media, for all it’s good and bad sides, is incredibly noisy - everyone else is out there and some days it feels like “they who shout loudest get heard the mostest”.

Contrast that with email. When you show up in someone’s inbox, chances are pretty close to 100% you’re going to get noticed. If you have a compelling subject line, and a history of providing compelling or useful content, your email is going to be read.

So email marketing is way more effective than most other forms (provided you can get them onto your email list first).

5. The ROI is measurable (and huge)

Over a century ago, John Wanamaker (1838-1922) said “Half the money I spend on advertising is wasted; the trouble is I don't know which half”.

While our tools and technology have advanced a bit since then, we still have the same problem with most channels to market today. It’s just darn difficult to know which bits of your marketing worked on LinkedIn, Facebook or Twitter.

Email marketing is different. Because you’re marketing to individuals, you can track exactly if and when they open an email, click on a link, visit your website - and when they purchase your product or service.

In fact, market research shows that email marketing provides an ROI of 3.,800% to 4,400%. (That’s not a typo.)

That means that for every $1 you spend on email marketing, you will get $38 to $44 in return. That beats every other channel to market hands down.

6. It’s personal

When I craft emails for my email marketing, I usually write it for one specific person. That person is usually a subscriber or client, and they’ve asked a question I need to answer.

When I write emails “to a specific person”, they always turn out to be more “personal”. My tone is different, the content is more practical and down to earth, and I use fewer terms than I would have if I were trying to “market by email”. And more people find it useful.

I can also use my email marketing system to personalize emails and craft content specifically for each subscriber based on what I know about them. This results in more engaging content that eventually results in more sales.

Here’s what you’ve learnt

As you can see, I’m excited about email marketing - and I hope you can begin to see the potential for your business as well. Here’s what we covered:

There are (at least) six reasons you should be excited about email marketing:

1. They come to you when they’re ready to buy
2. It gives your leads and customers a better experience
3. It saves you time (lots of time)
4. Email marketing is highly effective (compared to other channels to market)
5. The ROI is measurable (and huge)
6. It’s personal