5 Reasons Every Blogger Needs An Email List
So, you’ve started a blog, your audience has begun to grow…on social media. All of a sudden, your social media goes off for some reason. What now? Well, that’s where your email list comes into play.
What is an email list?
Well, you know when you go to your favorite website/blog and they have either a popup asking for your email address or they have a sign up form on their site for you to fill out? Yup, that’s what’s going on there. When you enter your info into that form/popup, you’re adding yourself to that person’s mailing list.
How does this happen? Well, usually, that person/company has created some type of free resource that they know their audience wants/could use and they offer it for free in exchange for your email. That free resource is called a freebie or in more technical terms, a lead magnet.
Now, why is an email list so important for you as a blogger?
Here are five ways that having an email list will benefit you as a blogger, entrepreneur, or virtual assistant:
You own your email list, you don’t own your social media channels
Having an email list helps you create and build a relationship with your audience
Your email list can turn into your business
An email list makes it easy to keep your audience up to date
Your email list makes it easy to organize your audience
You own your email list, you don’t own your social media channels
Though we like to think of it as something that is OURS, your social platforms don’t actually belong to you. You can easily be kicked out for something you didn’t even know wasn’t allowed.
(Funny story, when I really started working on my facebook group and growing my numbers, I began posting every day, probably 1-3 times a day. That wasn’t my ‘normal’ activity so Facebook actually BLOCKED MY ACCOUNT from posting, and responding to anyone else….just for posting and using the platform. I was blocked out for a week.)
Not to mention the recent Instagram blackout. Thousands were locked out of their instagrams and their accounts had been completely deleted for some hours until IG got their platform fixed but what if it hadn’t? Millions of contacts would have been lost with very little likelihood of every single one being retrieved again.
On the other hand, your email list is YOURS. The only time someone can delete your subscribers is if they, themselves unsubscribed or you physically went in and deleted them yourself. Otherwise, even if you switch email marketing platforms, all you need to do is download your list from the old platform and upload it back up to the new and voila, your list is back.
2. Having an email list helps you create and build a relationship with your audience
Contrary to social media, email has a much longer lifeline. What do I mean? Well, social media is constantly refreshing and changing. Even if there is a post you actually like and want to read more about, unless you either remember the author or you saved the post, it will most likely be gone, never to be seen again.
Email on the other hand can be searched. Email is a more personal touch as a pose to social media where you just come across everything that everyone does. Email marketing, if done correctly, is a very targeted platform.
What do I mean? Well, let me give you an example.
Say, you have a website that talks about cats and dogs. You put out 2 types of lead magnets, one for cat owners/lovers; one for dog owners/lovers. Now, let’s say that your audience signs up for whichever one they’re most interested in. You’re not going to send them info on the animal. You’ll send them the info that they signed up for and now, you know they have interest in that pet so you’ll offer them even more info about that specific pet. Now you’ve gone from someone they didn’t know existed into the expert in your field and the one they will now come to when they have questions.
3. Your email list can turn into your business
Now that you’ve built up that trust with your audience, you can now monetize your list.
How? Well, by offering products and/or services.
Let’s go back to my cat/dog example. How can you turn this pet site into a business?
You can coach people on how to understand their pets
You can create products that will help the pets be happier
You can offer pet-sitting services and hire others to do the watching for you
You can offer pet training courses
And this is just at the top of my list. If you do a bit of research, you can come up with so many types of businesses that you can offer your email list.
4. An email list makes it easy to keep your audience up to date
Your email list is the one place that you can email people and let them know what you’re up to. You can give them an inside, behind-the-scenes look at what’s going on in your business and best of all, you can offer special discounts on your products and services as a ‘thank you’ for having them on your list.
5. Your email list makes it easy to organize your audience
This comes back to my 2nd point. When you create a lead magnet, the person is signing up to that lead magnet because it is of some sort of importance to them. Maybe they want to learn more about said-topic or maybe they’re a business owner and your lead magnet is a great resource that could really help them get to the next level in their business.
Whatever the case, once someone downloads your freebie, you now know what it is that they want and therefore, you can nurture them by giving them even more of what they want, hence, targeting your content to your own specific audience.
BONUS: Your email will stay with your subscribers!
You’re searchable in the inbox whereas your posts tend to disappear on social media after awhile unless someone knows that it was you who wrote that post and they can search you specifically, it’s very difficult to keep posts alive on social media.
Whereas an email stays in the inbox unless it is deleted BY THE READER THEMSELVES and even if they don’t remember your name specifically, they can search a specific topic or keyword in the email and it will pop back up in front of them.
Having an email list is immensely important and beneficial for your business and your blog. And if you use the right strategy, your email list alone, can take you to the stars and beyond.
Fun fact to leave you with just in case you’re still thinking about starting your own list:
Did you know the first-ever email blast was sent by Gary Thuerk in 1978 to 400 recipients as a promo for his computer? This resulted in $13,000,000 ($13 MILLION) in profits!