Think about it. What would you do if TikTok, Instagram or Facebook shut down tomorrow? What about Google or Pinterest? Or maybe they didn’t shut down, but they crashed for two days during a launch week for you and you had no way to contact your customers except for those platforms?

That would kinda suck, wouldn’t it?

When you only operate on social media, you’re taking a huge risk. In 2024, when we’re busy fighting algorithms and trying to get our content seen – it can be a big thorn in our sides as business owners. Especially as too many of the social media platforms are becoming a “pay to play” space. So, what can we do? Email marketing, in my opinion, is the single most important thing to invest in for your brand besides a website. You can control the full experience AND you’re not operating on borrowed space.

Pretty cool, right?

 

 

5 Benefits of Email Marketing

If there’s one part of this article to pay attention to, it’s this. Here’s five benefits of email marketing that you may not have known:

 

1. You aren’t operating on borrowed space or fighting the algorithms

This is your area, your owned space, your corner of the internet for your business to operate. You don’t have to worry about your customers not hearing your message or trying to *beat* the algorithm. Especially when there’s usually more than one at play to pair social media users with content that would likely interest them most.

On Instagram alone, the average account is only seen by about 10% of their total following, but only 1-3% actually engage with the content you’re posting. Plus, when your content lives and dies in hours – it can feel a little draining to see all of your efforts turn into little engagement.

Email marketing really stands out when it comes to the effort you put in. It’s got the highest conversion rate of all social platforms (roughly 4%), and typically you can expect an open rate between 10-30% based on a near 95% deliverability rate. Not bad, huh?

 

2. You can personalize your communication and build relationships with your audience

When it comes to email marketing, YOU get to choose how you communicate. You can even personalize messages to your customers – which, if you didn’t know, can increase your open rates by nearly 30%. You don’t have to speak to the masses with countless hashtags and trendy audio to be noticed. With email, we as business owners can now communicate more directly to our audience than social media ever could.

I’ve always believed that you should serve your audience first before you ever go to sell. When you consistently show up for your customers and deliver value – whether it’s a story, advice or free content – you’ll be able to build the relationships you need to increase your sales and keep your customers coming back every time you launch. And you know what? They’ll be excited when you’re ready to launch a new product or service too! Because they’ve been on the journey with you the whole time.

 

3. A better ability to drive sales

When was the last time that you explicitly went to social media to buy something? My guess – you probably haven’t. Most people when they’re using social media, are scrolling through the platforms as a distraction, or maybe they’re looking for inspiration or entertainment.

If you think about it – social media is really good for getting attention. It’s almost like a handshake for your brand. The hello. Email is more of the 1:1 communication. It’s the relationship builder, the closer. Inboxes are where people expect to be sold to and also are more welcoming to promotional material.

I like to use these two platforms as a tag team effort. It’s not one or the other. The idea here is to try and serve your audience as best as you can on social media – while also giving them an idea of how you can serve them even better with email. When they’re on your list, you’ll be able to nurture them and educate them, eventually presenting them with an offer that is most aligned with the content that caught their attention in the first place.

 

4. Email marketing is cost-effective and comes with higher ROI

Do you know how much you’re thought to get in return for every dollar you put into email marketing? 42. $42 for every $1 spent. Social media is a bit less, sitting at about $18 for every dollar spent – assuming you run paid ads that convert directly for your offers or products.

So what does this look like for evaluating sales channels? The quick take is that 1) email marketing is double as effective as social media for increasing sales conversions, and 2) if you’re operating on a small budget OR you want to make your money go further – email marketing is the clear winner.

 

5. You can test new offers BEFORE you launch

One of the biggest benefits of email marketing is being able to test new ways to deliver content and lead-ups to offers before you ever go to sell. Basically, it’s a direct line of communication with your customers where they can help guide your product offers, and help you determine what type of content or messaging is actually resonating.

Imagine if you had a way to test an upcoming offer with an incredibly engaged and active audience. Wouldn’t it be nice to know that you had customers ready to buy before you even went to sell? Sometimes this can happen on social media – but with email, it’s an entirely different ballgame.

 

 

All in all, I’m a big fan of email marketing. No secret about it. And not just because from a budget-based decision, it’s a clear winner. I love being able better serve my audience before I ever go to sell, and knowing that when I am ready to sell – my offers have already been tested, and it’ll feel more like an invitation instead of a marketing campaign.

 

---

 

If you’re ready to give email marketing a try, try Flodesk!

Get 30 days free, then 50% off of your first year! BONUS: It scales with you as you grow!