Is Email Marketing Dead?
No! Is the short answer.
Did you know that (according to research carried out by McKinsey) your email marketing is 40% (yep, FORTY PER CENT!) more likely to bring you new clients than your social media?
The reason being is that your emails nurture those people who have said that they want to hear from YOU. They’ve seen your social posts, and maybe seen you in action giving talks at events, and now they want to get to know you a bit better.
Email is quite an intimate channel: it’s just you right now reading this. I get to talk directly to you in a way that’s basically “me talking to you”.
Out in social media land, we have to hop up and down shouting “HEY! OVER HERE! LOOK WHAT I’M ABOUT AND WHAT I HAVE TO OFFER!” (you with me on that one?!)
But with an email, I write, and you read. And that’s it.
Social media definitely has its place, but part of its role is to bring your potential clients into the relative quiet of your email list. Think of it as a balm for their soul. And yours come to that.
Instead of all that other noise that you’re having to content with out there in social media land, once your tribe are reading your email then you can speak to them in a calm and measured way, without any other distractions.
But that’s for the 25% of people who open your email.
Sad, but true.
The ‘noise’ with email is from the battle you have to do against the subject lines; that’s how you’re going to get your subscribers opening your emails.
How many emails do you get every day?
Hmm, thought so.
Now…go have a look (or maybe wait until you’ve finished reading this) at the list of your emails and their subject lines. Which ones are you drawn to open? Make a mental note, because you can model that for your own emails.
Using personalisation in subject lines increase your open rates by an average of just over 18%.
And I’ve just started playing with emojis in the subject line to see if that increases open rates: I’d noticed that the email subject lines that I was drawn to had grabbed my attention with emojis, so I thought I’d try it and see. Still early days so nothing to report yet, but I think it’s worth testing and seeing if it makes a difference for you. Do let me know!
With all of our marketing we are aiming to move our target market through various stages.
Stage 1: Attract attention
Stage 2: Nurture
Stage 3: Help them decide to buy or not
Stage 4: Look after them as clients.
We do the nurturing part with our emails. All of our social media, advertising, podcasting and other activities are to attract attention enough that people want to get to know us some more.
We do THAT on our email list.
In the old days (when I started out in my marketing career, email didn’t exist) we used mailing lists. Exactly the same principles applied: attract attention, encourage our target audience to give us their address, and we could then send them stuff in the post.
The battle was then how to get our envelopes opened and not go straight into the bin (no recycling in those days).
See, nothing really changes?!
Direct mail (as it was called then) is expensive for any solo business owner.
Email marketing, however, is entirely accessible and budget friendly — whatever your budget.
So, it’s very definitely something to use as an integral part of your marketing plan.
If you’re not, you are leaving money on the table.
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And if you’ve been sitting on the fence with your email marketing because you don’t really know where to get started, or it all seems far too confusing, then get yourself booked on to my upcoming workshops on email marketing.
Full info and buy tickets here for workshop via Zoom
I teach all aspects of marketing to coaches, consultants, course creators and B2B professional service providers (not to mention those hard working crafters) — so that they can go on to be recognised as a leader in their field and enjoy both financial freedom and the freedom to spend time with their family and on the things that they love doing.
I offer real world, practical and fun tuition pulled from my 31 years experience as a professional marketer both in the corporate world with ‘household name’ clients and through helping my clients in the small business world build six and seven figure businesses.
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