Four reasons why you should already have a mailing list

First of all let's talk about what a mailing list is. A mailing list, or email list, is a list of emails of customers/audience members that want to hear more from you.

They want to know all about you, your updates, receive discounts, and everything else about your small business! You can get people to sign up to your mailing list via a form on your website, or having a form housed on the email marketing platform of your choice like Mailchimp and ConvertKit.

So why exactly should you have one?

It's under your control

Have you ever read the warnings that if a social media platform dies or blocks your account you have to start again? That's totally true! Having all your audience in one place leaves the control of your business in the hands of those running Instagram or Pinterest. One day you may lose your account and that's it, all those lovely people gone!

Having a mailing list leaves the control in your hands!

You're 40 times more likely to acquire a new customer from an email

According to global management consulting company McKinsey & Company that's true! You're 40 times more likely to acquire a new customer from email than the likes of Facebook or Twitter.

Facebook may have over 1.4 billion daily active users and Twitter may have 100 million but did you know in 2020 the amount of global email users totalled around 3.9 billion! Now they're not all going to be on your mailing list, but they could be, just like 100 million may follow you on Twitter.

You can analyse the data

Just like social media, sending an email doesn't just mean sending it out into the void in the hopes people will like it. You can track how many people, and usually who exactly opens those emails. Depending on your email marketing tool of choice you can track a whole heap of data.

Knowing who clicked the link to your new product and how many people did can help you gage how interested your audience is, and if they don't follow through you know exactly who to send those discount codes to!

It's personal to the individual member of your audience

Your emails go straight to that subscribers inbox, you can customise the content to include their name to make it even more personal as well! Plus, unless you're having some unfortunate luck with junk inboxes you know for sure your email is going into their inbox so you're not relying on the algorithm to put your content in front of people. Going straight to the individual customer builds trust between you and them, it almost seems like a private conversation between the two of you.

You may only have a small amount of people subscribed to your mailing list, or haven't even started one. That's fine, remember you're in control and email marketing is the best long term investment and "is the most predictable driver of growth and sales" according to Syed Balkhi of WPBeginner.

Oh hey, did you know I had a mailing list? If you want to subscribe I send out a newsletter every month and also send out info and discounts for my shop updates!

- Sophie

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