Why Everyone Should Have an Email List
How to get the most of starting an email list
If I asked you to contact someone right now, how would you do it?
If it was a friend or family member, you’d probably call or text. Coworker, client, or some other professional relationship, you’d likely email them.
Why is that?
Email is THE transaction gateway. It’s where the most important events happen. Even an outbound cold call salesman will email you an invoice to be paid.
One of my favorite new follows, Josh Spector, said in a recent podcast that email is how you provide value to people. That value can be a lot of different things - it can be a story, an important meeting, or even a sale.
Glancing at the most recent things in my inbox:
A back and forth with a prospective guest discussing podcast scheduling
Meeting notes from a peer group I’m in
Link to a recording on how to delegate properly
Podcast recommendations I made to a friend to check out
A value exchange is taking place in each of those.
So what does that mean for you?
If you’re a business owner already, getting someone’s email address is how you communicate new offers and how you understand what your customers want.
Example 1 - Let’s say you’re the local cookie shop in town.
You’ve just discovered a new formula for the perfect cookie and you’re going to launch a weekend special as a promotion. You want to tell your customer base, but how?
You could set up signs and banners around your business, but there’s a good amount of cost involved and only people who drive by will see.
You could run an advertisement in the local paper or news station, but there’s even more cost involved with the same chance of missing who your customer is.
By maintaining an email list of customers, you give yourself the chance to serve your existing customers better at no cost. If I visit your cookie shop once a month and I get an email about a new promo, that might push me over the edge to visiting twice a month! I would be excited to get that email.
If you’re a prospective business owner, collecting an email address provides a way to get ahold of your customers in the future.
Example 2 - I have a friend thats fired up about writing a cookbook right now.
She’s making her foray into cooking content by creating Tik Toks that are already doing extremely well with her first few videos getting thousands of views and 30+ likes per short.
One of her common complaints to me has been not knowing who would buy it. Creating a landing page that showcased her videos and offered to send out videos via email in exchange for someone’s email address would be the perfect way to find people who would buy.
Let’s say she made 20 Tik Toks and included a plug for her website at the end in every one of them. Each clip got 1000 views. Being extremely conservative, you could guess that 1% might visit the website (cooking videos are extremely sticky - people want recipes). 1% per video over 20 videos puts 200 people visiting the website. Maybe not all would want to give out their email, but I bet over half would.
With very little work, you have a vetted list of people who have come to her and expressed interest in hearing more from and potentially buying from her.
If you’re serious about providing value to friends, family, customers, and more, you need an email list. The catch is that you need to respect the privilege of having someone’s email address.
Every website you visit today has a popup asking you to signup for their mailing list. This makes people naturally more protective of their inbox, and they should be! It’s more important than a phone number!
Deliver value to people and earn the right to be in their inbox.
Action step:
If you haven’t already started an email list, visit Substack or ConvertKit and setup a free account. Get an email form on your personal or professional website immediately.
Experiment with having it in different places. Try different colors or phrasing. Consider what value you want to provide to people.
If you already maintain a list, consider if the content you put out is actually valuable and representative of your brand. Many companies treat emails like awareness advertisements - “Hey just a reminder we exist.”
Don’t do that.
Send them a discount code, a how to video, or checklist for something pertinent to your industry.
Deliver value to them and that value will be returned to you.
Have a good week
B
I’m working on my email list!!