Email Marketing: Why Businesses Need an Email List

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Ah, email marketing.

Tried and true, email marketing is still one of the best ways for small business owners to communicate with customers.

Similar to social media, we are all pretty much always plugged into our inboxes because it’s so accessible. We have it on our phone, on our computer, on our refrigerator…yes, you read that correctly. I’m the queen of unnecessary purchases and I bought one of those Samsung refrigerators with the tablet in the door…no regrets, it was extremely nifty.

BUT ANYWAY!

There are so many good reasons why your business needs to implement email marketing, but these are the top few:

1. Your list belongs to you.

2. Email marketing is a direct line of communication from you to your customers.

3. You can automate and schedule your emails, saving yourself SO. MUCH. TIME.

4. Email providers generate analytics reports that are extremely useful.

5. IT’S FREE TO START (so why not!?)

Your list belongs to you: Social media in general is great. Just about everyone is on some form of social media, and while it may make you look super popular to have thousands of followers, it really doesn’t do you that much good because you have zero ownership over those followers. Have you ever thought about that? Zuckerberg could decide to throw in the towel tomorrow and your followers could vanish into thin air, with you having no say in it whatsoever. Basically, having a page on social media is just renting space from that platform. You don’t own it.

Email marketing on the other hand, is the opposite. The email addresses that you collect belong to you. You can download and archive them so that they will never be lost, even if something were to happen to the email provider or if you decided to switch providers.

Email marketing is a direct line of communication from you to your customers: Long gone are the days when you could post a status on Facebook or a photo on Instagram and all of your followers would see it. Now, thanks to algorithms that aren't very business-friendly, a very tiny portion of your followers are able to see what you post…unless you pay for it.

For years, social platforms have been moving towards pay-to-play. They incentivize business owners to pay for boosting posts or running ads by giving those things better engagement than non-paid posts. And that becomes a slippery slope.

With email marketing, you don’t have to pay extra money to send an email to your entire list and you don’t have to wonder whether or not people saw your email…because email providers tell you!

Email marketing is truly a direct line of communication between you and your customers, making it invaluable for businesses.

You can automate and schedule your emails, saving yourself SO. MUCH. TIME: I send out an email to my list once a week with updates, announcements, business advice and tools for business owners, and I don’t want to miss weeks when I have other things going on.

And let’s be real, I always have other things going on…we all do!

So my saving grace is scheduling and automation. I can pre-write a month or even a year’s worth (or more) of emails and schedule them to go out whenever I want them to.

“Set it and forget it” is one of my favorite descriptions because that is truly what it is! You put in the work initially, and then you let your email provider take the reins from there. To learn how to grow your email list with content upgrades through Mailerlite forms, go here!

You can also set up automation for your emails which is SUCH a time saver. Let’s say you want to send out a welcome email when someone joins your list. Whether it's in the middle of a random Wednesday or on Christmas morning, they'll instantly receive an email from you while you're fresh on their mind.

You can set up triggers and pre-design emails within your email provider software that automatically send out when someone subscribes to your list, purchases your product, etc. etc. etc. Read about how to use Mailerlite automation here!

Email providers generate analytics reports that are extremely useful: On social media, unless you’re paying to run an ad, you really have no idea who has seen what you posted. You don’t know how many of your followers read what you post and you don’t know who clicked and who didn’t. It’s frustrating, but it is what it is. Another reason why email marketing is amazing: the reports!

This is a report from an email that I sent to a segment of my subscribers – and it’s a great overview of typical email analytics.

• Total Emails Sent: This is exactly what it sounds like…the total number of emails you sent in that campaign. In this particular campaign, 352 subscribers received it.
  

• Opened: Also exactly what is sounds like…this is the number of people who opened the email out of the total number of emails that you sent. Opening rates vary from business-business and industry to industry – for me personally, my average open rate is typically anywhere from 30-40%. Average open rates vary a good bit by the type of business, so if you want to see how yours measure up, do some research on your industry.
  

• Clicked: Again, exactly what it sounds like. This is the number of people who clicked on links within your email. This particular email didn’t have a specific link, just one going back to the main page of my website. So I wasn't expecting a lot.
  

• Unsubscribed: Number of people who unsubscribed during this campaign – only 1! I get unsubscribes on every email I send - it's part of it and not something to take personally. In reality, it’s a good thing for people to remove themselves from your list if they’re no longer interested in what you’re offering.

  
  

  I would rather have a list of 100 dedicated readers who are interested in my products than a list of 100,000 that will never buy from me. So let them weed themselves out and don’t worry about it! It keeps your list healthy and your open rates high.

  I didn't have any of the following for this campaign, but I want to also cover these common analytics:
  

• Spam complaints: Uh-oh. If someone flags your email as spammy, it will show up here. If you send emails constantly or if every email you send is trying to sell something, you may end up with spam complaints here and there. Focus on providing value and you should be in the clear.
  

• Hard bounce: A hard bounce means that the email was not delivered and “bounced back” for whatever reason(s). Two common reasons are: the email no longer exists or the email server blocked your content. Typically, larger companies (especially banks and law firms) have pretty strict email servers that filter out anything that seems spammy. Regular email servers such as Yahoo or Gmail are usually a little more lenient and aren’t so quick to tag things as spam.
  

• Soft bounce: Like a hard bounce, these emails were not delivered, but for different reasons. Usually those reasons are: the inbox was full, the email was too large or the email server was down…something like that. If your email provider records bounces repeatedly from the same email addresses, it may “clean” those email addresses from your list.

It’s FREE to start: There are multiple email providers that are 100% free to get started with. When I first started my business, I used MailChimp, then I used (and LOVED) Mailerlite before ultimately landing on Kit. Both MailChimp and Mailerlite are completely free to start an account with. After you’ve reached a certain number of subscribers, you'll have to move into a paid plan. But with Mailerlite, even the paid plans are affordable…starting at just $9/month!

Email Marketing: How to get Started

Because of the features they offer and the pricing, Mailerlite is what I recommend for business owners starting out with email marketing. They’re always a step ahead of the competition in terms of automation, templates and just about everything else. It’s FREE and incredibly easy to get signed up – you can start by going to their website here.

👇 Ready to get started building an email list for your business? Check out my FREE Email Marketing Starter Guide! 👇