The Impact of Email Marketing on Business Growth

Email Marketing vs. Social Media: Which is Better for Your Business

Many believe email marketing took a step down to social media as a good marketing tool. While social media is a place to show up in business, it is not meant to be your ONLY  marketing tool. 

Here’s why: Social media is a ‘rented’ platform. When you create your profiles and collect followers throughout those platforms, there is no ownership in those for you, it is space you “rent” and someone else controls it. 

People may choose to follow you, but your posts are not always shared with each of them.

They control who sees your posts, which some stats say is around 6%, and encourage you to spend money to increase that by boosting posts and doing ads. 

And if you pay that money to those deep pockets, your follower number might increase, but it will not necessarily be with contacts fitting into your ideal audience – it can include more of those without a true need for what you offer. 

If you know me, you know how I truly feel about ‘subscriber’ numbers – I go into that spiel here – but the short of it is that I believe they are not worth the focus, they are just a number that are not worth spending money on.

Social media of course is another time commitment to your day. Between graphics and good photos to reels and videos, you need to create the content and push it out in a series of ways from posts to stories, and then start over to the next day. 

Yes, you can plan it out and make it easier and batch your content, but regardless it is still a lot of time on something that offers a low return on investment. Views & likes do not generate dollars. 

Social media is a great place to get your brand out there and recognized, and you can make great connections. If you sell a product, there is the opportunity to gather sales through the platforms as well. 

The big barrier for the ROI on socials is the wrong audience. 

And let’s not forget, social media can go away at any time. We have experienced the days when it is down and not working, and that can be tough if you are relying only on those platforms to communicate about your business. 

A step further is if your account is hacked and gone, you will lose any connection you have with some customers if that is your only marketing platform. Now you have to start over.

Should you be on social media? Yes! But it is not wise to put all your ‘eggs’ in the social media basket. 🪺

Unlocking the Power of Email Marketing 

Email marketing is not a step down from social media, it is a step up. ⏫

What makes email marketing a higher marketing tool is the ownership. 

You OWN that list of contacts. You create the emails and send it on your schedule; you control it. 

When I talked earlier about those who are ok with an inbox full of emails and those who are not, that is the direct connection you get with email marketing.

People will either sign-up to receive them from you or they won’t. It is a choice. 

You are not forcing anything on anyone, they sign up to receive your email, they WANT to hear from you. 

And what makes this so great is that is your ideal audience, contacts that have a need for your product or service. 

This is a step above the followers on socials who just click like or follow, but may never really see or understand what you offer as they don’t see all your content.

If people sign up for emails and then learn the information is not a fit for them, they may choose to unsubscribe  And that is OK. Let’s say that again … it is OK. 

This relates back to the ‘subscriber number’ and there is no need to focus on that. 

Where should your focus be for email marketing? 

CONSISTENCY. Focus on sending emails consistently and continuing to grow your list. Do not worry if people leave – if they are not your ideal audience, you don’t want them there anyways!

Instead of viewing unsubscribes as a bad thing, I encourage you to change your perspective and LOVE the unsubscribe, as I talked about in this prior blog. 

When you have people sign up for emails, you should email them. Am I right? 

I often hear people tell me that they do not email very often because they don’t want to annoy people.

Do you want to know what will annoy those who have signed up? When you don’t send them emails. 

As I have mentioned, they signed up to hear from you, they have an interest in what you have to offer, they want your emails. 

What a powerful business tool that is. An audience waiting to hear what you have to tell them about your business. 🪫

A Guide to Email Marketing Success

If you are ready to start your email marketing or increasing what you currently have, here are a few things to keep in mind: 

• EMAIL PLATFORM. 📧

It is best not to send emails from your personal or business email. You want to look into a good, solid platform that can give you an eye appealing email format and stats you can track after.

My favorite is Flodesk but there are many you can use that will work, research what is best for your business. Some point of sales like Shopify also allow you to work email marketing through the platform. 

• CONTENT. 📝

No matter if you offer a product or service, email marketing is a good way to build loyalty and connection with your audience by sharing more than what you offer.

One of the best ways to do this is to build a newsletter format to inform your audience about your business. What would the reader want to know? What do you want them to know? Maybe more about how you got started, who you work with, if you host events, etc. Be open to sharing small details about your business with your readers. 

• WHEN TO SEND. 🗓️

This is the big thing to consider so you can be consistent in sending emails. Look at your schedule and decide when you will be able to send your newsletter emails. You can always schedule emails to go out, but make sure you have a timeline to get them done and ready consistently.

A good example is a retail clothing store that gets new arrivals weekly. They have emails go out each week on Tuesday at 8 PM showing what the new arrivals are and sharing more about their week. Customers look forward to this email each week to see what is new, and if the store won’t have new arrivals, they email the list so they know and include other information in their weekly email. The ROI is strong on the weekly email. 

• HOW OFTEN YOU SEND. 📆

If you are a product based business, you may send emails more than a service based business if you have new products often, sales or events. However, you should always have a ‘newsletter’ style email that goes out consistently. You can always sprinkle in other informational content they need in between the newsletter.  If you want your audience to know you and be expecting your emails, it is good to send them more often. 

Here are a few things to consider when deciding how often to send your emails:

Sending a once a month email doesn’t give them much to remember you by, they may wonder each month “who is this?”. If you can do bi-weekly emails, it gives them more of a chance to get familiar with you as they see your brand every 14 days. And if you send weekly, consistent emails, that would be the icing on the cake as then they really get to know you and expect to see your emails. A good way to get it into routine would be to start with what works best for you and increase it as you can. 

Overall, remember to treat your subscribers as your business VIP’s. Tell them about anything new in business first before sharing on social media. They are there for this information and it is good to inform them first, and they will help spread the word. 

If a friend tells a subscriber about a sale you had and they never got an email from you about it, you are dropping the loyalty card. Tell your subscribers information first by sending them emails more often.

• SIGNUP OFFER. 🆓

Lastly, consider adding a special signup offer for when someone joins your list! There is no rule that says you have to do this, but if you want to grow your list, you can give them an offer like a discount or a free download of exclusive information when they sign up for your emails to incentivize them to join

Email Marketing is the Ultimate Tool for Business Success 

Overall, email is a great marketing tool for business growth, no matter if you are a product or service-based business. You own it. You control it. It has a good ROI. It connects you directly with your ideal audience. 

And the connection with your ideal audience is a powerful tool for business growth. 

Using email marketing to connect directly with your audience gives you a platform to share your direct message with them, telling them what you want them to know about your business, and they want to hear it. 

This connection builds loyal customers and clients who will help grow your business. That is the ultimate tool for your success. 

Start by focusing on sending your emails consistently to your subscriber list. If you don’t, I know who will … your competitors. Get a system going for CONSISTENCY. ✔️

I not only love email marketing as a full-time shopper, I love it for small business growth. 

Email marketing is something we can all do, but if time is a problem in your schedule, let’s chat. I can help you find the right platform, create a newsletter template, help with content, and plan a schedule so you can stay consistent, and a step ahead of your competitor. 

I invite you to join my email newsletter, click here to be a VIP.  🥇