If you’re an influencer, chances are you rely on social media to boost your brand. From Facebook and Instagram to Twitter and TikTok, there are various ways to connect with your audience through your social accounts. As valuable as social media is to influencer success, there might be one important tool you’re overlooking: an email list.
An email list contains the names and email addresses of people who permit you to send them communications about your business. If you don’t have an email list, you might lose out on many potential business opportunities. Read on to discover how building an email list might benefit you.
More People Than Ever Are Using Email
Email might not seem as popular as social media, but the number of email users continues to grow consistently. From 2019 to 2025, the number of people that use email across the globe is expected to grow from 3.9 billion to 4.6 billion, according to Statista. What’s more, email users are active. Nearly 60 percent of Americans check their email at least four times a day.
You Can Focus On Your Most Loyal Followers
It’s important to reward loyalty, so people that add their names to your email list deserve special treatment. To make your communications as personal as possible, divide email recipients into groups based on their preferences. Then, send out group-specific articles, relevant promotional materials, and discounts on certain products or services. There’s a good chance this strategy will strengthen customer loyalty, improve your click-through rate and increase sales.
You’re in Control, Not Algorithms
On social media platforms, algorithms decide which of your followers will see your content, what content they will see and when they will see it. When you send out emails, you get to decide who views your content and when they receive it. Also, because you own your email list, it isn’t affected by things like policy changes you might deal with on social media platforms.
Email Marketing Is Cost-Effective
Unlike direct mailings, you don’t have to worry about printing or postage costs with emails. In fact, some marketers think that email marketing is one of the most cost-effective methods for reaching a broad group of people. To make the most of cost-effectiveness, it’s important to send out the right kind of emails. By signing up for your email list, your recipients have already shown an interest in what you have to say or what you’re selling. So, there are a few different approaches you can take:
- You can provide articles or newsletters related to topics of interest.
- You can send promotional emails for products or services that people have purchased in the past or product or service upgrades.
- You can send promotional emails for products or services similar to those that people have purchased in the past.
- You can use an automated email service to send welcome emails, transactional emails and abandoned cart reminders.
- You can ask people on your email list what types of communications they would like to receive.
Email Marketing Generates Great ROI
Email marketing has an average return on investment (ROI) of 4,300 percent, according to Campaign Monitor. If you want to know how effective your email marketing campaign is, you can measure your own ROI. The formula for measuring ROI is:
Earnings – Costs / Costs x 100 (to get a percentage)
Earnings are the revenue you received from your email marketing campaign. Costs are the amounts you paid to conduct your campaign. These could include the monthly cost of your email service provider, advertising costs, staff pay and so on. As an example, if your email marketing campaign cost $250 and your campaign generated revenue of $3,500, your ROI would be $3,500 – $250 / $250 x 100 = 1300 percent.
By measuring your email marketing ROI, you’ll learn if you need to improve it. If you do need to boost your ROI, take advantage of these tips:
- Grab attention with compelling subject lines.
- Test and optimize subject lines, CTAs and more to see what generates the best results.
- Make emails personal.
- Find an email design template that works for computers and mobile devices.
- Save time by using an email automation tool.
Emails Can Encourage Impulse Buying
While you may not always enjoy your own penchant for impulse buying, you won’t mind when consumers buy your products or services on impulse. To entice your customers to throw caution to the wind and buy, incorporate a tempting CTA into your email and include a link to your website. But first, you need to get folks to open your emails. Try these tips:
- Keep subject lines short and catchy.
- Put the recipient’s name in the subject line.
- Trigger urgency with statements like “limited offer,” “before they’re gone” and “today only.”
- Attract attention with dazzling design.
Email Marketing Is Easy to Manage
Email lists aren’t difficult to manage if you’re using good strategies. For stress-free email management, try these ideas:
- Choose an automated email service that focuses on people, not lists. By tagging email recipients with unique labels, they only appear on one list and don’t receive duplicate emails.
- Choose an email service that allows your email recipients to manage their own subscriptions. This way, recipients can decide what types of emails they would like to receive and how often.
- Make sure it is easy for your email recipients to unsubscribe.
- Scrub your email list every six months to remove inactive email addresses, non-existent ones and other unwanted contacts.
An Email List Is a Long-Term Asset
Social media platforms come and go, but since the 1990s, the practice of sending and receiving emails has remained strong. While the number of your social media followers may be fleeting, an email list offers long-term value. When you use an email list, you get to know who your customers are and, over time, you build trust by forming more personal relationships.
How to Get Email Subscribers
Inboxes are flooded with emails on a daily basis, so getting people to subscribe to your email list might be challenging. Fortunately, one of these subscriber-only incentives just might encourage people to take action:
- Offer future subscribers a sneak peek at your newsletter, a long-form blog post, your monthly webinar or other things your email subscribers get access to.
- Give out a free product for subscriber sign-up.
- Offer discounts on products or services for subscriber sign-up.
- Provide subscribers with handy cheat sheets or problem-solving tips.
- Once you’ve reached a certain number of subscribers, keep a running tally on your website to show authority.
Important Takeaways
As an influencer looking to boost your brand, it’s a good idea to have a strong social media presence, but having loads of followers on Facebook and Twitter is not the end-all-be-all. Building an email list helps you connect with your customers and build relationships in another important way. An email list also helps expand your reach, it generates a great return on investment, and it is easy to manage and cost-effective. Most of all, your email list is a long-term asset that is yours and yours alone.
