Ever wondered why your social media marketing efforts aren't yielding the results you hoped for? Tune in as we uncover the game-changing power of email marketing. Initially skeptical myself, I share how a pivotal moment at a wedding show opened my eyes to its immense potential. We discuss the common pitfalls, like not giving people a compelling reason to hand over their email addresses and demystify the process to supercharge your business strategy. By the end of this episode, you'll be convinced that email marketing is not just a tactic but a necessity for sustainable success.
Download your FREE Email Marketing Starter Kit: https://girlmeansbusiness.myflodesk.com/emailkit
Ever wondered why your social media marketing efforts aren't yielding the results you hoped for? Tune in as we uncover the game-changing power of email marketing. Initially skeptical myself, I share how a pivotal moment at a wedding show opened my eyes to its immense potential. We discuss the common pitfalls, like not giving people a compelling reason to hand over their email addresses and demystify the process to supercharge your business strategy. By the end of this episode, you'll be convinced that email marketing is not just a tactic but a necessity for sustainable success.
Download your FREE Email Marketing Starter Kit: https://girlmeansbusiness.myflodesk.com/emailkit
Know Your Niche Workbook- https://spring-feather-348.myflodesk.com/
_______________________________________ Let's Be Friends:
Instagram: www.instagram.com/girlmeansbusiness
Facebook: www.facebook.com/girlmeansbusiness
Speaker 1:
Hey there and welcome to the Girl Means Business podcast, the show where we're all about helping you feel confident, both as a mom and a business owner. I'm your host, kendra Swalls, mom of two, former teacher and full-time photographer and business coach. Each week, we'll discuss the challenges, success and secrets that make you say I can do this, because you absolutely can. So pop in those earbuds, grab your favorite snack and let's dive in, because this girl means business. Hey there and welcome to the Girl Means Business podcast. Now, I know that just a few weeks ago, I did a listener question episode, but I received a couple of questions over the last couple of weeks that I want to address in this episode as well, so we're doing another sort of listener question episode. The topic that I've received a lot of questions about is email marketing. I know that's because I talk a lot about email marketing. I talk about it on the podcast, I talk about it on social media, I talk about it on my blog, I talk about it everywhere because I truly, truly believe in the power of email marketing. But I also understand that email marketing is not something that a lot of people just get, and I know that because I didn't really get it at first either, like I didn't see the purpose behind it. I didn't see the value in it. I didn't understand why it was something I really needed to focus on. I heard all these people around me talking about start an email list, make sure you have an email list, make sure you're collecting emails, and I would for my business. I remember very clearly I had done a group coaching program. It was the same group coaching program that you may have heard me mention a couple of times before. It was the one where I had my light bulb moment about understanding who your ideal client was. And again, I had pushed back on that too, like this poor coach. Looking back, I was like, bless her heart, she was so patient with me because I pushed back on so many things. I just didn't understand the value in and when she the first step was, you know, know, your ideal client, I got through that. I've had that light bulb moment. I understood the value in that. And then she was like you need to start building your email list. I was like, okay, I don't get it. I don't know why. I don't understand how this is supposed to help me grow my business, but I do know that the last thing I pushed back on finally made sense, and so I'm going to do this.
Speaker 1:
And at the time I was focusing on shooting wedding and boudoir photography. And so I had signed up for a local like wedding show. You know those ones where you go to this convention center and there's all these different booths set up and they're all promoting things and trying to like sell you things. And so I had a booth there and I was like, okay, this is a perfect opportunity, I'm going to collect emails. And so I had just like a little clipboard on my table with, you know, a signup sheet where they could sign up to. You know, learn about discounts. I don't. I don't remember exactly what my wording was, but essentially it was like hey, just give me your email. For no reason.
Speaker 1:
And I remember leaving that show feeling a little discouraged because I was like I didn't get very many people giving me their email and in fact a lot of people just kind of walked right by or like I would have a good conversation with, but they didn't want to put their email down. And I was. I didn't understand. I was like, well, this clearly doesn't work. And so the next week I hopped onto our coaching call and the coach asked me how the show went, because I told her I was doing it and then I was going to start collecting emails and I explained to her you know, this is what happened. I only got this many emails I can't remember exactly how many, it was like a handful, not very many at all and she was like okay, but you weren't really giving them a reason to want to give you your email address. I'm like I don't know what else to do. Like I asked them for it. I was going to offer them a 10% discount, like what do you want me to do? And so I just really really pushed back and again, bless her heart, she was so patient with me.
Speaker 1:
Once it did finally click as to what I was doing wrong and why I needed an email list, it all started to make sense. But I say all of that to let you know for those of you that submitted questions about trying to understand email better, or for anyone listening who's like, yeah, I don't get it. I hear all these people talk about it and I just don't understand why this is such a big thing, or I don't see how this is going to help my business. This episode is for you because one of the messages I got and the person who submitted asked to remain anonymous, and that is totally fine, so I will leave them anonymous. But she basically said that I've heard you and several other coaches talk about the importance of email marketing and, if I'm being completely honest, I just don't get it. Can you please explain it to me, like I'm five? So, yes, anonymous, I'm going to break it down in a way that hopefully will make complete sense, and my hope is that by the end of this episode you will have the same light bulb moment I had, or maybe the light bulb will be burning just a little bit brighter than it was when we got started on this episode. Maybe you won't fully, fully wrap your brain around it, but if it even gets you a little bit closer into understanding what it is and why you should be adding it into your marketing strategy, then I will call this episode a win. So let's just start at the very, very bottom with what even is email marketing.
Speaker 1:
So email marketing is similar to just regular postal mail marketing. You know, we've all gone out to our mailbox and you come out and you have, you know, a postcard or an envelope with a letter inside or something, and it's from a local business. Usually, a lot of times it's from a real estate agent and they are promoting their product or their service to you. Email marketing is a version of that, that is, a digital version. So marketing started with postal mail marketing. I mean, it didn't start there, but that was one strategy.
Speaker 1:
And when email and the World Wide Web and the internet came along, these digital or these physical marketers were like okay, so now people are not really paying attention to what they get in the actual mail. We're going to have to move to digital mail. They started sending out mass emails and in the very beginning a lot of these emails were just sales pitches, similar to what the postcard is that comes into your mailbox from that realtor saying, hey, I'm selling this house on this street, or hey, I'm offering this free, whatever if you list your house with me. Blah, blah, blah. It started off as just let me sell to you in your mailbox, as just let me sell to you in your mailbox, but now let me sell to you in your digital mailbox, which is your inbox. So email marketing has evolved from that. What it is today is it is a relationship building tool. So, when used correctly in a small business, email marketing's purpose is to give you direct access to your ideal clients so that you can build a relationship with them through the course of multiple emails and then ultimately move them into a position where they are ready to work with you or buy from you or whatever it is you're asking them to do with you. Ultimately, email is a tool for you to have communication with your ideal client with the goal of turning them into an actual paying client.
Speaker 1:
Lot of marketing strategies out there. With the invention, like I said, of the internet and social media, we have a lot of options when it comes to how we can reach our ideal client. However, if you really study a lot of successful businesses, you will find that at the core of their marketing strategy is email marketing. It is not something that is just like this new idea that's out there, for course, creators or small business owners. It is something that has been around since email began and it is something that, when you look at almost every successful business who has done a good job at marketing, it all comes back to their email list, and if you and you go work with a marketing company, like an actual marketing firm. One of the questions they're going to ask you is do you have an email list and how large is it?
Speaker 1:
And so that tells me right there that, while it is not the front man of marketing, it's not the pretty face they put on the cover of the album, it is the foundation, it's like the producer I don't know how I got into the topic of using a music comparison here, but it's not like email marketing would be the producer. It's the person behind the scenes who's kind of running the show, while the person out front that everybody sees the lead singer. That's more like social media. And so email marketing is not just this kind of flash in the pan like oh, everybody's talking about it. It is a foundational piece of marketing that a ton of really successful businesses have been using for a long time. So that aspect of it alone lets me know that email marketing is something that is sticking around. It's not a trend, it's not a fad, it's not something that, like, people are going to get bored with. It is something that is going to be consistent, that you can rely on no matter what trends come and go in marketing throughout the term of your business.
Speaker 1:
In addition to that, there are a lot of reasons why email marketing is really powerful for your business, so a couple of them include one you get direct access to your clients. I want to reiterate that because that is a powerful piece of email marketing. You get direct access to your clients 24-7. So let's use the social media comparison here. Everybody loves social media. It's a hot topic. Everyone wants to know how they can get more followers on social media, how they can get more people looking at their content. Here's the thing with social media. It's great. However, you only have their attention for like a fraction of a second and that's only if you happen to catch them online at the right time. So let's say you have the same person your ideal client and your ideal client is on Instagram. So you are. You have an Instagram account, you are posting content on Instagram. It's great, you're getting in front of her there. If you post something at 8am, but your ideal client does not get onto Instagram until 1130, when she's on her work lunch break, the likelihood that she's going to see that piece of content that you posted at 830, nine o'clock in the morning, whatever time I just said I've already forgotten is very, very slim, because you are now competing with hundreds or thousands or tens of thousands of other pieces of content that are in her feed.
Speaker 1:
And a lot of times when people go on social media, they are going on social media for a kind of an escape. They're not looking to really get deep into something, they're just like I just want to scroll for a few minutes to decompress from my job or take a break from my kids or whatever the reason is. They're doing it because they want to shut their brain off for a few minutes. They don't want to have to really think about something. So if your client goes online at 1130, checks her Instagram account, maybe she happens to see your post where you're talking about something really important and relevant to your business, or you're offering a sale, or you're sharing a resource you have, or whatever it is you want to get for your client. The chances that, a she will see it are slim. The chances B that she will actually take action on it are slim. And C the chances that she will actually even remember like, hey, I want to come back to that and be able to find it again are even more slim.
Speaker 1:
So you, when you're posting to social media. You're just kind of hoping to hit at just the right time and to catch that person at just the right moment. Now let's say that you sent out an email to your email list at that same 8 am that same day, and this email had some really important information about a huge sale that you're offering that you are hoping your ideal client will buy into. So you send that email at 8 am. Now your client gets to work, her day gets busy and finally on her lunch break around 1145, after she spent 15 minutes scrolling Instagram, she decides to check her email while she's kind of eating her lunch and she sees your email. She opens it up and she reads it.
Speaker 1:
Here's the difference between her seeing your post on Instagram in that quick moment and her opening that email One. If she's in her email, she is more likely focused and in the mindset to actually consume what it is that you are sending her. She's not just scrolling through her emails hoping to find like a dopamine hit. She's scrolling through her emails because she wants to see if there's anything of value in there. So if you are sending out something of value or something that she's going to be interested in, she's more likely to open it, to read it and to actually take action on it, because there's nothing distracting her. There's not some you know crazy reel she wants to watch. Next, there's not some shiny, flashy thing coming up, there's not a notification popping up, there's none of those things. She's in her inbox because she is ready to focus on the content in her inbox.
Speaker 1:
Now here's the other great piece about this. Let's say that it is Monday morning and you send out your Instagram post and your email, both of them at 8 am on Monday morning, and both of them contain information about this great, big, awesome sale that you're having. You want people to see that right? Well, if you posted on Instagram at 8 am, let's say, your ideal client is off of work that day, or she's homesick with a sick kid, or she just doesn't. You know, mondays are crazy for her, so she doesn't get to hop on social media until later in the day or that evening, or maybe she's on vacation and she's not even really on her phone a whole lot. By the time she gets back on Tuesday or even Monday night, that post on Instagram is long gone. However, because you sent that email that lives in her inbox, she is going to lay eyes on it no matter what, whenever she gets a chance to get to her inbox. So even if she doesn't come back to her inbox until four or five, six days later, that email is still sitting there waiting for her to open it and read it. So when you are posting content on social media, it is a quick like. You only have a couple of hours for that to get seen before it gets lost in the shuffle, if even that long.
Speaker 1:
With email. The shelf life of your email lives on their inbox and you're going to have a much more focused attention span when that person gets ready to go and see that content. So that is one of the main reasons why email marketing is so powerful is because it does give you that direct access to your ideal client. There are no distractions. You're not just hoping they see your content on social media. You know they're going to lay eyes on it. Now, what they do with it, that's up to them, and how well your content is created and written and all the things. However, you know they're going to lay eyes on it. So if you, if they're seeing in your, their inbox every single week, your business name, what do you think is going to stay top of mind your business name. Even if all they're doing is like opening it really quick, scanning it, deleting it or putting it into a folder, they're still seeing your name. But if you post every single day on Instagram at eight o'clock in the morning but your ideal client's not online until five or six in the evening, the chances of them seeing your name on a regular basis are a lot more slim, and so you're not staying top of mind and you're competing for space with all these other people that they are then giving their attention to. So for me, that is one of the biggest pieces of why email marketing is such a powerful, powerful tool for really getting in front of and staying top of mind with your ideal client. So another aspect of why email marketing is so high, which kind of goes along with the first piece, is you get a really high ROI. So ROI is return on investment.
Speaker 1:
So let's again, we'll use a social media comparison. You are investing in social media with your time and your energy, so with social media you are having to create content consistently all the time. You're on sort of this hamster wheel of content creation, because if you really want to stay, you know, in front of people's eyes and you want to have your content be in front of everybody all the time. You have to be posting a lot of content and, even though it is free to post on social media, you are using a different currency, and your currency is time. Now, with email marketing, you are going to have to pay a monthly fee to host your email list on a email marketing platform, and that fee could range anywhere from $19 to $100 plus, and so, yes, it has a monetary value to it and a monetary investment. However, it requires less time, because you can send out one email a week and have it be a really powerful piece of content for your business. So you're having to decide what am I investing? Am I okay investing a bunch of time on a free platform, or do I want to spend a little bit of money on a paid platform but have to spend less time on the actual content? And so the return on investment there is.
Speaker 1:
You can spend a lot of your personal energy for a very little return on social media, because most people on social media are not there to make a purchase. They are not there to look into like this deep, powerful thing that you're sharing, or wanting to hop off the platform to go look at your website or your blog or your pricing or whatever. They are there for entertainment. When you look at email, yes, it has a higher cost investment, but you get a huge return on your investment because more people are willing to buy from an email than they are from social media, and so I don't know the exact numbers off my head, but it's like for every dollar you spend in email marketing, you get like a $4 return on investment, something along those lines. So that, to me, is a pretty good return on investment and it's worth the cost each month for that email marketing platform, which, again, I use Flowdesk. So my cost is very minimal and it doesn't change no matter how many people I get on my email list. So I can build that into my cost of doing business and know that I can send out one email a week and have a 400% return on my investment. Not a bad deal, if you ask me. Okay, let's talk about the last thing I want to talk about when it comes to why email marketing is such a great marketing tool to have in your toolkit, and that is simplicity.
Speaker 1:
Email marketing is one of the most simple forms of marketing. Now, it can get complicated, it can get complex, but in its most basic form, it is a really simple form of marketing. You don't have to fight with an algorithm. You don't have to stay on top of trends. You don't have to create videos where you're dancing to a popular song or you're doing voiceovers. You don't have to compete with all of these things that are constantly changing. Email marketing is consistent. It is simple. You get people on your email list, you send them emails. You make sales that simple. Now, obviously, there's some strategy that goes into all of that, which we'll save for a different episode, but it really is that simple. You get people on your email list. You build a relationship through consistent communication. You make sales With social media. You have all these other factors to take into account. You have to decide which platform are you going to spend your time and energy on, because there's so many platforms. You've got Instagram, facebook, tiktok, linkedin, like Pinterest, like. There's all these different platforms Whereas with email marketing, it's simple you send an email to their inbox, that's it.
Speaker 1:
It doesn't matter if they have Microsoft or if they have Yahoo or if they have Gmail. It doesn't matter, you can send an email, it doesn't matter what platform they're on. It doesn't matter what platform you're using. It's email to email. Simple as that. When you're dealing with social media platforms, let's say you're posting on Facebook and Instagram and LinkedIn. Well, they all have different strategies, they all have different rules, they all have different features. They all have different things. So you almost have to be an expert in all these different things and that takes up a ton of brain space. It takes up a ton of energy. You're creating content for three different things, even though the content itself might be the same.
Speaker 1:
With email, again, it's so simple. It's one thing you create the email, you put in the content, you create a subject line, you send it out and it doesn't matter where they're receiving it, if it's on their phone or on their laptop, or they're on a desktop computer or it doesn't matter. It doesn't matter what platform they have for their email. It's just you sending someone an email, and it goes back to the days of like just writing someone a letter. You're just doing it digitally, and the relationships that you can build through email marketing are so much more powerful than you would get on social media, because you have this place where you have their attention. You can share stories, you can share your why, you can get into details, you can do a series of emails that all kind of build on each other and you can build excitement. You can sell your products and services. You can do so much more because you have their captive attention.
Speaker 1:
And the last thing I will say because I know this is a key piece of why email marketing is powerful and how people talk about it a lot I wanted to talk about all the other things first, because I don't want this to be the main reason, but it is a big reason is that, when it comes to the difference between social media and email marketing, on social media you have very little to zero control over your platform, your followers, anything, so you are kind of at the mercy of the platform. So let's use Instagram, for example. If you have an Instagram account and you have built a following of thousands of followers, of potential clients, that's great. But if, for whatever reason, your account gets flagged or the platform goes down which has happened or your account gets hacked or shut down, you lose access. Or your account gets hacked or shut down, you lose access to all of those followers and all of that content. It is just gone.
Speaker 1:
With email marketing, you don't have to worry about that. You own your email list. You are not at the mercy of Mark Zuckerberg, who could make a decision tomorrow to shut down Meta. You have that list, no matter what. If you change platforms, your list goes with you. That doesn't happen. If you decide Instagram is no longer a place for you and you want to move to a private Facebook group, you don't get to take your Instagram followers with you and just drop them into that Facebook group.
Speaker 1:
You have to start over from scratch. If you start off on MailChimp for your email platform and you decide it's not the place for you and you have 500 people on your email list and you decide to move over to Flowdesk, you can take all 500 of those people, drop them into your Flowdesk account and they don't know a difference. They're still just getting emails from you. That's all they know and that's all that matters. So while, yes, the aspect of the fact that you own your email list is a key piece of it, I didn't want to lead with that because I wanted you to understand the value of it in all the other concepts, all the other pieces. So hopefully I don't know if I broke it down like I would for a five-year-old, because I did get a little kind of high level there, but I hope this helps to just clarify for you maybe, why email marketing is something you need in your business.
Speaker 1:
I did not get into the details of how to build an email list or how to start an email list. I will have other episodes for that coming soon. I'm going to go through all of that. I also have past episodes you can go and check out. But I wanted this episode to just be the light bulb moment of why. Because you can do something, because you've been told to do it, but if you don't really understand why you need to do it, it's never going to have the full power that it can have in your business. So hopefully this gave you a little bit more of the light bulb.
Speaker 1:
If you have more questions around email marketing or social media or anything else business related, you can head down to the show notes, to the ask me anything link and send me your questions. They could be another topic for another episode coming up soon. I love getting your questions, so please send those in and if there's anything in this episode that you want clarification on or want me to go deeper into, then please, by all means, let me know. Thank you so much for tuning in this week. If you enjoyed this episode, I would love for you to take a screenshot, share it to social media and don't forget to tag. Girl means business and, as always, we greatly appreciate any reviews you leave for this podcast. Thank you.
