“The news of my death has been greatly exaggerated.” – Email (maybe)
Email marketing is more important now than it ever has been. There was a time when pontificators predicted the eventual death of email. Social media platforms were gaining a stronghold as adoption among the general public was expanding exponentially. Shortly thereafter smartphones began finding their way into the palm of consumers. People had the ability to connect in a completely new and unique way. Surely this combination would sound the death nell of email.
But that was the 2000s. Ah, simpler times. (gazes off into the middle distance)
They were wrong.
What have we learned since then?
Social media platforms come and go (MySpace anyone?) and people still check their inboxes.
The cool kids aren’t on Facebook anymore and it seems like a new social media platform is coming out every other month with some gimmicky feature to lure the masses. How long have you had your Facebook account? Seems like ages now, doesn’t it? Do you scroll your feed as often as you once did? Probably not. But I bet you still have the same email address you used when you created your Facebook profile. Am I right?
If you’ll allow me, I’d like to set out three reasons you should be using email marketing to Amplify Your Brand and ultimately grow your business.
Your email address has staying power. You could move on from Facebook. Give MeWe or X a try. (Are they still tweets or do we just call them posts now?) But I bet you will sign up with the same email address you used for your other accounts.
The same is true of your customers.
Your (potential) customers are tied to their email accounts. So much of their lives are organized and even facilitated through their email account. Online banking and credit cards. Clubs and memberships. Travel planning. Online shopping. It all touches their inbox. The pain of switching an email account is greater than switching your online destination for socialization. Don’t believe me? We still see a few aol.com email accounts floating around our database.
That means having permission to send messages directly into that inbox carries weight. People guard their inboxes diligently. They unsubscribe when messages are no longer relevant. They tag spam and phishing to keep the good separated from the bad. They want to keep their house in order and free of clutter. If you’re still allowed in the front door of their digital world (ie their inbox), you should be carefully taking advantage of that opportunity.
Most email users check their email every day…strike that…multiple times per day. Consider this. Chances are you have notifications on their phone every time a new email arrives. Conversely, what do your social media notifications look like? I bet you’ve dialed them back or turned them off altogether. What a distraction, right? “I need to focus. I can’t waste time thumbing around on Instagram,” you tell yourself. But your emails…you can’t dare miss one of those.
The emails in the inboxes of your customers have greater visibility than social media posts on their algorithm-driven social media feeds.
Social media platforms, and some search engines for that matter, have dialed in their proprietary algorithms to show their users the kind of content they think their users will enjoy the most will earn them the most money. It’s the simple truth. Users on free social media platforms like Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, etc, are the product. The content is not the product, it’s the users the advertisers want to reach…but I’m ranting getting off topic. The point is, social media users have less control over what they see in their feed than what they see in their inbox.
If you’ve earned a spot in someone’s inbox, you’ve captured a bit of real estate in their mind. This achievement cannot be overstated. Even if a user doesn’t open the email you sent to them, they still saw your brand in their inbox. You might not always be front of mind, but you also aren’t a long-forgotten contact. Consider that a win. Perhaps your product or service is not one they have frequent need of – you sell coffins, not coffee (bad example maybe, but you have to applaud the alliteration) – but if they haven’t unsubscribed from your email marketing, they still trust your brand to the point that they want to hear from you.
Leverage that visibility by sending consistent, yet relevant email messages. Your contacts may just be waiting for the right promotion or new product to come along before they ring your register again. What better way to tell them about your new offerings than in an email.
Unless you slept through the past four years, you know that censorship and the battle against certain truths (read “dis/misinformation”) has resulted in more than one brand falling by the wayside. When your messaging strategy relies upon standing on someone else’s soapbox, you run the risk of having your messages shut down. It’s not your soapbox afterall. What’s your backup plan?
If the COVID era has taught us anything it’s that just about any topic can become political and therefore open for censorship.
The safe play is to own a direct line of communication with your audience. Email marketing and text messaging (more on that another another day) offer some of the best ways to get your message to your audience, unfiltered and unfettered.
This doesn’t imply that email marketing is the Wild West and rules don’t apply, but as long as you follow the current conventions set out by any reputable email marketing platform, you’ll find success getting your message across.
While a longer article is warranted here, I’ll give a quick run down of the steps you should consider if you’re not yet leveraging email marketing to its full potential.
If you’ve been looking for the right time to engage in email marketing and have questions on where to start, we’d love to be a part of the conversation. We’ve got a tool we believe serves as a good starting point that can also scale with you as your capabilities and needs grow.
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