Why Build An Email List & Why It’s Important For Business?
When I first started blogging, I didn’t consider email marketing and thought it was extra work. It was the biggest mistake and I learned from this lesson. After a year I decided to build an email list and become consistent on it. This definitely helped me get a ton of traffic and sales.
You might be wondering why build an email list when you have social media to share your posts. In fact, it is often considered that social media is the best way to gain a promotional edge.
RIGHT?
But it’s not true. Because email marketing is still one of the most powerful and thoroughly understood forms of communication. That’s why every social media platform requires you to have an email to log in or signup.
Let me tell you, just like you have followers on your Instagram, Twitter or Facebook account who always gets a notification when you post something and they are able to like, comment and share. Just the same way on a website you require subscribers who would get notification whenever you post a new blog post, and that happens when you have an emailing list to send your blog post to.
Why build an email list and why it is important for your business?
Your email list is where your biggest fans hang out, they remain the one’s who are keenly interested in what you do or offer them. They are not merely following you on your social media or pop over to your blog every once in a while. In fact, your subscribers are the ones who actually let you into their INBOXES.
If you grow your email list right, your subscribers will be the ones who support you, listen to you, and ultimately buy from you.
You might have googled something sometime, and end up on many pages that offer you a solution but do you really end up subscribing to them by reading just one article (I don’t think so you do). Something applies to the rest of the world, that’s why building an email list is important.
Let’s look at why build an email list? Why not just share your stuff on social media and be done with it? Over here are reasons that you need to keep in mind while building an email list.
Advantage of building an Email list:
First, it’s direct, meaning that every person on your list receives an email the same way that they’d receive a piece of mail. It’s considerably different from discovering a piece of content in a newsfeed, even if it’s personalized.
Second, email is necessary. You can go for a few days without checking social media or Video chatting with your friends and family, but most people check their email several times a day. This way, the majority of people will check your email first in the morning or before going to bed.
Third, it’s highly customizable. You can create an email campaign (learn more about the types of campaigns you can create.) on any subject and add any bells and whistles that you need to get the job done. It’s also incredibly inexpensive and well documented by email marketing experts.
Recommended: The Ultimate Guide: How To Start Email Marketing For Beginners.
Ok, now a warning!
Based on everything I’ve said till now, you might be wondering what is the fastest you to build a big list, the better.
Now don’t go and search for thousands of email subscribers for either a relatively small amount of money or for no money. I would like to stop you right there. Because it’s a bad idea, nearly 100 per cent of the time. You rarely get what you pay for.
Wanna know why?
Because most of the subscribers will have old or fake email addresses, and the few who don’t probably aren’t interested in your services. Add in the possibility of getting flagged as a spammer, and you can plainly see why it’s almost always a bad investment.
Why consider Email Marketing?
Even though these days most people don’t consider email to be very “exciting.” Email has been around since the beginning of the internet, so at this point many people consider it to be boring or even outdated, but it’s ruling the world.
Think about this, if you’re using social media to promote your blog, these platforms still prompt new users to sign up with an email account. This means if social media users have email, and there are millions of other people who use email but not social media.
Then it stands to reason that you are missing out on many potential readers if you are spending more time on social media strategy than email strategy.
Your email list will help you grow.
Ya! It’s true, your email list helps you grow. When you begin, you might only have a few 100 followers or maybe less than that too. But as you become consistent on updating with kinds of stuff that your subscribers love, that figure can turn from 100 to 1000 or 5000 or 10,000 or maybe more.
Picture this. A person land’s on your blog and loves your content, and wants to come back. What would they do? They might follow you on social media, or they could pin one of your pins on Pinterest. But the chances of them seeing your stuff again is actually pretty small.
So what do you do now?
If they sign up for your mailing list, they will get regular updates of your content into their inbox every single week or day they are definitely not going to forget about you.
Recommended: How I collected my first 500 Email Subscribers?
Why building an email list will help you have less competition.
Just think you have millions of followers on Instagram or Facebook or Pinterest, but do you know how many of them actually check your work? Or how many of them will help you increase your sales?
Not even half of them!
Every time you post anything on social media your audience is bombed by not only your content but of others too — from friends, from pages, from groups, from ads — and your update about your latest blog gets completely drowned out. Most of the time they never even bother to read more about your stuff. And then there’s the algorithm that keeps changing.
So, actually, your blog post is never reached most of your followers.
Email, on the other hand, gets delivered straight into your subscriber’s inbox. So your subscribers can easily see about your update and you are going to have a lot less competition for their eyes. In fact, you may even have the upper hand.
Often email is full of boring things like bills and letters. So when your email pops into their inbox, full of exciting and interesting things. Plus a tantalizing headline guess, which email your subscriber is going to open first?
Recommended: How To Build Email List From 500 To 2000 In 6 Months?
Your updates will be right in your subscriber’s hands.
Whenever you post a new article, people actually have to go to Facebook, Instagram, Twitter or wherever and actively seek out your stuff. And even more so on search engines. But with email, your latest newsletter (read how to create an impressive and catchy newsletter) just lands in their hands — Inbox — and most of the people check their email at least once a day because that’s where the important stuff comes.
Sure, they might not read your email, click on your links (that’s why you have to work hard on creating attractive newsletters, campaigns, headlines, and copy) but they will at least see your email. In fact, your subscribers actively have to do something if they want to get rid of your email. Unlike social media where your post disappears almost instantly.
Email marketing is better than promoting on social media.
First, let me tell you the difference between email marketing and social media marketing. Both are great tools for promoting your brand or business and generating awareness. And yet both works totally differently.
- Think of your email list as your traffic on-demand source, whenever you want to send out a campaign they are just a mouse click away. Whereas social media run targeted ad campaigns to people who are ideal for your product or services.
- When someone opts in (how to build an opt-in email campaign) to an email list, it is typically in the context of interest to learn more about the product or service. As a result, the relationship with an email subscriber can have a commercial intent from the start.
- Research shows that spending on email marketing campaigns increased by 60% in 2012, which result in a 4000% return on investment. Whereas to be effective in social media marketing, it is generally agreed that a less direct, more entertaining approach.
Now, this doesn’t mean you shouldn’t have social media accounts or shouldn’t share your blog content on it. But don’t neglect email marketing or don’t just get done with sharing your blog post on social media.
Why?
Truly speaking it takes a lot of time and works on sharing on social media. But it takes 5 minutes for a quick email and maybe 30 minutes for a longer one’s but the rewards from that are huge. For the same kind of quality traffic from social media, one would have to put a lot more effort into and a huge chunk of the time would be wasted on the wrong people.
But if you do it right, the effort you put in on your email list will be directed at exactly the right people. Who will be much more responsive to what you are doing and much more likely to buy from you?
If you do it right, you can also make a good amount of money from your list.
Do you know? One stat that says “for every person on your list you should earn about a dollar a month.”
Ya! That’s right. I mean imagine if you had 1,000 subscribers that would be pretty great. But then imagine if you had 5000 or 10,000 or more?
Isn’t it exciting, huh?
But then only if you do it right.
Now obviously that money doesn’t happen by magic. But it is very possible to make good money from an email list. And it is a much easier, less stressful and less time-consuming way than making money through leveraging social media, etc.
That’s it!
So, these are the reasons why building an email list is important? I hope you had recognized why you should build an email list for your business.
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