Why Growing Your Instagram Following Isn’t The Same As Growing Your Email Database (like at all)
In my 10 years of email marketing experience across several different industries, I’ve heard pretty much every joke in the book about it. Social marketing providers love to say email is dead, that it’s basically the boring AF chore in your marketing toolbox.
Sure, maybe it’s not the sexiest, but I’m here to convince you that: 1) it doesn’t have to be boring, and 2) it’s just as crucial to your marketing efforts (if not more) than having a ton of followers.
5 Reasons You Should Lean Heavily on Email Marketing
You Actually Own Those Leads
Facebook, as we’ve seen numerous times over the past several years, regularly changes their terms on how you can target and reach out to audiences, post, promote and so on. And those 58,000 people following you? They aren’t actually yours, but Facebook’s. So if Instagram up and disappears tomorrow – so do all of your lovely followers.
Your CRM, however, is yours to keep. The names in your database have submitted their information and subscribed to you, and are interested in you and your brand beyond just a heart on your photo.
Your Email Marketing is a Fixed Cost
I can’t tell you how many times we have started working with a brand and beyond setting up some basic, required email flows, they haven’t touched their email database. And these are people that know they need more robust email marketing.
Here’s why that is such a waste – email (unlike ads) is pretty much fixed cost every month. Especially with a tool like Klaviyo. You are already paying for it, get the most out of it! Build out all the damn flows. Send a campaign at least once a week. Work that account to its absolute fullest so you can be turning as much ROI as possible.
Email Can Be Just as Creative & Fun as Instagram
Take a look at thebrands Shinesty, Chubbies, Black Rifle Coffee or Beis Travel. Not only are they hitting inboxes in a very strategic and creative way, but they’re also fun and quippy as all get out.
Instead of a limited, 1098 x 1098 space (with a caption) to capture people’s attention, email marketing gives you a subject line, preview text, and the top ⅓ of the email to make an impact. Getting down with creative and engaging email can be just as an exciting challenge as it is with #instgramcaptions.
Your Customers ACTUALLY Want It
We’ve all done it – chase the person who didn’t actually like us. But your email audience is like the end of a romcom – when you realize that perfect guy/girl/customer is already 100% into you (queue lightbulb). They’ve asked for you, and they want to hear what you have to say. They like you, they really REALLY like you.
So take the time to talk to them. Get to know them, and get to know what they like and what they don’t.
Email Marketing is Insanely Scaleable & Measurable
Do you have a Karen who’s always asking you what the ROI is for your instagram campaign *insert eyeroll*. But when you walk away you’re kinda like crap, Karen might be onto something.
Even the Karen’s of the world can get on board with the measurability of email marketing. There are so many metrics to geek out about. Open rates, Average Order Value (AOV) of Campaign, ROI of Campaign, Whole Revenue coming from platform, Click Through Rates (CTR) and if you’re in Klaviyo – they even tell you about predictive purchasing (gasp).
All you’d have to do is set the Karen’s of the world up with an analytics login, and they’d have so much data to dig into – you’ll be able to enjoy your morning coffee with no Slack pings about why you spent what you spent on your email marketing software.
Here to Help
Still want to argue with us about how email marketing is dead? Contact us, we’re pretty passionate about showing you otherwise. In the meantime, we’ll be crushing some email campaigns for our clients. Interested?
