The Importance of the E-mail List to Possibilities
No lie, I often write my monthly letter to subscribers from this perch in Sleep Bear Coffee, near the Lausanne train station. You, too, could get a letter from me here. March 27, 2019.
I only send an e-mail to my Observing Leslie subscriber list once a month, though I suppose I could send one more often if something big came up that I had to share. I just don’t spam people.
Also, each of my e-mails so far has taken the form of an actual letter, with information that subscribers get that people who simply tune into the blog from time to time do not. My letters have a more intimate tone, reveal more about actual happenings, and encourage people to respond directly to me by hitting “reply.” I try to make my letters personal and engaging.
Yet I realize that I need to put more emphasis on building my e-mail subscriber base. (And you might, too.) I know from years in marketing that the e-mail list has ultimate importance when it comes to opening possibilities and opportunities—and that it has the highest value of every possible communications channel.
No hyperbole here—e-mail subscriber lists predominate when it comes to the health of an enterprise. Why?
You own the channel. When you only share your thoughts on social media, you work for the social media platforms. And the social media platforms decide what “content” to show to people and when to show it—and if they show it at all. Yes, this goes even for people who have subscribed to the group, channel, page, and even “friend” or “follow” someone directly. Social media makes money through advertising. It will show you only what it needs to show you to keep you on the platform as long as possible so that it can show you as many ads as possible. If it can keep you on the platform by showing you only paid content (also known as “ads”), it considers this a win-win scenario. Further, social media platforms can decide to cut people and businesses and websites off from distribution at any moment. When they do, you’ve lost all those subscribers and fans and followers. With e-mail, you own the list and the distribution.
You can stay in touch more easily. E-mail comes directly to a subscriber’s in-box. No one needs to go anywhere or do anything to see it. And, if you do it correctly, you can make it personal and authentic. Of course, all these qualities make it possibly invasive—so people and companies need to take care in how they use their lists and in what they send to their subscribers.
You get the highest response rate. E-mail gets the highest engagement from your subscriber base—far higher than social media platforms do. Through e-mail, you’ll receive more clicks, responses, and—if you have a selling component to your business—sales than you will through any other digital medium. I get my biggest bumps in pageviews when I send out an e-mail. And the more website traffic I receive, the more website traffic I will receive, as search engines and the rest of the digital universe “reads” site traffic as site validity. Even better: As I write to engage with you, sending an e-mail and getting a response gives me the emotional fuel I need to keep creating.
E-mail lists open opportunities. The number of people subscribed to your e-mail list often determines who will work with you and how they’ll work with you—and on what terms. For businesses, it means licensing opportunities and comarketing partnerships and even company collaborations. For more creative types, it can determine whether you get a book deal or whether someone pays you for your work.
If you have a business and you don’t have an e-mail list—more common than you’d think, as we see it at FrogDog all the time with new and prospective clients—get an e-mail list put together. As soon as possible. Really. I mean it.
Fortunately, you have the components already to hand. After all, every business has e-mail addresses from customers, prospective customers, venders, partners, and general contacts. Consider these disparate pieces of data your starting point, just needing compilation. (Yes, I hear you: It will take time and tedium. As someone who has done it, I feel your pain. Yet I promise that you will find the effort worthwhile in the long run.)
And as a final ask, which you may have seen coming:
Subscribe to my e-mail list, if you haven’t already. And if you have subscribed and you like what you receive in my e-mail messages, forward them along and invite other people you know to subscribe. Further, if you like an article you read, share it with people via social media or via forwarding it along in an e-mail. (Hint: I even have little buttons at the bottom of each post, to make sharing easy for you.)
After all, people rely a lot on social proof—evidence that others like or do something—when it comes to taking actions and making decisions.
Including me: I rely a lot on your support and encouragement as I work on this site. (Thank you.)