112. Do I Really Need Email Marketing? (When to Use Email in Business)

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Welcome to the Go Get Great Podcast, the perfect spot for aspiring entrepreneurs and ambitious small business owners. I'm Brittany, your host, an online marketing strategist and mom of 5. Here you'll discover how to start or scale your small business with practical marketing and business strategies that even the busiest entrepreneurs can implement. But we don't just stop at business insight because we know that what you do when you're not wearing your entrepreneur hat is just as important to the success of your business. As a fellow mom, I understand the importance of having a space for real talk where we share the relatable, messy moments of balancing motherhood and a business. So let's dive in and start your journey from good to great. So if you are on team, I don't need email marketing, I beg you, please, please, please, please, please just listen to the rest of the episode. Hear me out. If you still think you don't need it after, I'm gonna question some things, but at least you will be fully informed of the decision that you are making and its impact on your business. So today we're going to talk about a few reasons why I feel you need email marketing, even though you may not think that you do. Okay. So scenario number one, you're posting regularly on social media. What you may or may not realize is that your content is at the mercy of the algorithm and you, my friend, are stuck on a hamster wheel. Now, I'm not going to dwell on this too much because I do think I've talked about this quite a few times, and I think most people in general are aware that this is not a great idea. And the reason that it is not a great idea is that because you have created an audience, most likely on Instagram, let's say, maybe TikTok, could be YouTube, who knows. That audience is also your client base. Could also be from networking, by the way. You can have an audience in networking as well, um, or from guesting on other people's podcasts. But if you are not capturing their information, it's like letting sand run through your fingers, except that sand is your business's revenue. Not a good sign, guys. And the reason that it's a bad thing is because social media may decide to stop putting your content in front of someone who is maybe really, really close to wanting to work with you. Or it's like not handing out a business card at a networking event because you may never see that person at the networking event again. Maybe they never come back. Maybe you never go back. Maybe they just forgot who you are and really wanted to work with you. And then before the next networking event where they could connect with you again, They found somebody else who was just easier, more convenient, already available. And then you lost that sale. Whereas if you had made that connection, got them on your email list, they would really know how to contact you because all they'd have to do is look in their inbox and then poof, there's your contact details. Even if it's not an email that's technically talking about what they want, they can still respond to it, book a call, check out your website. Your details are all linked to there. Email marketing has so many benefits on so many levels. And the same thing applies to guest podcasting. If you are sharing freebies, that's great, assuming you have the next thing that I'll talk about in a second. Um, or you're just in general connecting with people. You can share your social media content, but again, that comes us back to the hamster wheel of you have to hope that they continue to engage with your content because as soon as they stop liking and commenting, it's not in their feed anymore. Top 50 accounts. That's it. I follow so many more people that I would love to see the content for, but Instagram just does not put them in my algorithm. But I was like, I've even gone through the list of people I'm following and really whittled it down. Down and I still cannot get it to be less than 50. So I never see everybody's content that I'm following. It sucks. And that's why email marketing is really important because the business owners that I want to stay in touch with, that's how I stay in touch with them, not social media. I'll try and follow them. I may not get to engage with their content as much as I'd like because it's simply not in my feed for me to see. Um, okay. So that's a really big one. This is where most business owners fall off and they're like, no, it's cool. I'm on social media. They'll just connect with me there. Yeah, but like, what if you get locked out of your account? What if you can't get back in? What if overnight Instagram stopped working? They've had outages before, guys. It's happened. What about all the social media platforms that disappeared? I'm gonna say Snapchat. It's still technically around, but does anybody even really use it? What about MySpace or Vines? I think that was a thing for a while too. I was never really on that one. Um, look at what happened to Twitter. Does anybody still use that anymore? So you see what I say when social media is not a guaranteed way to connect with your audience. And again, aside, algorithms aside, there are just other things. You don't own it. You need email marketing. And that's why, and maybe some of you are listening to this and you're like, I already have email marketing. Probably should have prefaced this at the beginning of the episode. We're also gonna talk about when you may need to upgrade the email marketing that you are doing because it may not be getting the results that you're wanting. So it's kind of twofold in this episode. Maybe you're like, no, it's cool. I've got a freebie. Okay. But is your freebie collecting people's email addresses or are you manually sending a link to a Dropbox for people to download this freebie? Because freebies are usually associated with email marketing. They do go hand in hand quite well, but just because you have a freebie or lead magnet does not in fact mean that you have email marketing or that you're using it well. I have also on many occasions downloaded a lead magnet that consists of one email, legitimately just the email that delivers the link to the freebie. You guys, that's not leveraging email marketing. It's really not. I mean, I'm glad that you're doing that, so at least you're not manually sending links for people. But what it's not doing for you is helping you generate sales, and that's what email marketing should be doing. It's your business's security blanket, but it's also your revenue generator. So if you have a lead magnet, but you don't have an email sequence in it that's designed to sell something, you've probably created the wrong lead magnet, or you're not using email marketing effectively enough. To have that happen because your lead magnet should help you prime your audience to either hire you as a service-based business or sell something. Could be a course, could be a digital product, could be a one-on-one service. Maybe it's just like a regular physical product. You could have a lead magnet that teaches people about different kinds of soaps and what's best for your skin depending on your skin type. And then at the end it's like, 'Now that you know this, here's a link to a collection of soaps of this variety. Go shopping.' That's what they should be doing. But most times I see lead magnets not set up that way. Like I said, it's usually just the delivery email, and I'm like, there's so much missed potential here. So much. Okay, so that was scenario 2. Let's try scenario 3. So maybe you're using email marketing, but are you nurturing your past clients and customers? Because if not, again, missed opportunity, because those are the people that have worked with you or purchased from you. They usually like you or your product or service. They're the ones that are going to be the easiest to sell something else to because they've already had a fantastic experience with you. So if you're not nurturing them and turning them into recurring clients, That's the missed opportunity, and that's where email marketing comes in because nobody has time to have that many individual one-on-one conversations unless you are truly, truly a very small-scale, high-touch, high-price-point, service-based business that works with just a couple people a year where you can have those one-on-one conversations. You usually need email marketing to do this. So from a product business perspective, that looks like having re-engagement sequences in place. So I've set these up before for the boutique that I work with. And it can also be like abandoned cart, although that's not always necessarily the same thing. But, you know, hey, we've noticed you haven't, you know, been into the store lately or haven't shopped online recently. Did you know we've got these fantastic new items in? Here they are to look at. Um, you know, go shopping sort of thing is more or less the undertone, but in a very nice, non-friendly, non-super salesy way. Sorry, very friendly, not super salesy way. To do that, and it's just a case of people sometimes forget. Maybe they didn't know that you had new items that they were gonna absolutely love to have in their closet, house, home, car, whatever. Uh, so those email sequences can keep bringing your business back to front and center of people's minds so that they can then make those purchases. And you're making it super easy because they've probably already opened the email that's in their inbox. So now all they have to do is click the link and, uh, hopefully their credit card details are auto-saved to make the purchase. Bing, bang, boom. Done. And again, I know that works a little bit differently for service-based businesses, but you can have a very similar concept to it where you have engagement sequences. So this is actually something that I have been working on putting in place in my business because again, I've been smaller scale. I could still have manual one-on-one conversations with people assuming I'm not on maternity leave for 6 months like I have been. I've been working on putting these in place for 2026 because that's something that I really want to focus on just from, um, a service quality perspective is to have those continued touchpoints with people. Maybe they have more questions, et cetera, et cetera. But also because I love my past clients and I would love to work with them again. I know some people kind of just graduate from the services that I offer. They don't need my support anymore and that's cool. Uh, but you know, sometimes it's always nice to have like a strategy check-in, just see how everything's going, see what other tweaks and adjustments can be made because businesses change constantly. So you may not need me at some point, but maybe now you're launching something new and you do need me. Um, so that's something that I'm working on and that a lot of other service-based providers can do as well. Because again, I'm very small volume. I work with kind of a very select group of clients, um, in terms of volume, cuz capacity. I have 5 kids, guys. Uh, but if you are like a photographer, let's say, that's still a one-on-one service. You still fall into that category, but you may have 100 photo shoots in a month. The GLP-1 pill you've been waiting for is now on Ro. Yep, it's finally here with the same clinically proven ingredient now in a pill and now on Ro. It's the first FDA-approved GLP-1 pill for weight loss at the lowest price available. That's one daily GLP-1 pill for big results. Now on Ro. Go to ro.co/listen to see if you qualify. Rx only. Go to ro.co/safety for serious side effects and boxed warning associated with GLP-1s. You're probably gonna want email marketing, uh, to book people. Anytime you do fun sessions, you got a new appointment slot coming up, you wanna let people know. But also just in general, you can set it so it's reminders, especially if you're doing like weddings, anniversaries, engagement shoots, all of those fun things, and automate it. Be like, hey, it's been a year since. Blah, blah, blah, shoot. And it will automate all of this for you. You can set it up to do that, especially if you have, um, like CRMs and stuff in addition to it, but separate conversation. Uh, you know, hope everything's going well, that you really love your photos. Would love to shoot you again, you know, take pictures with you again if you're interested. So like that would be a more high volume service-based business that would really benefit from those client re-engagement email sequences that are very easy to set up. So that would be an example of you not leveraging email to its fullest potential. There's more room to grow. Maybe you're sending out monthly or quarterly email communications, but you could be doing this to generate even more bookings, all those fantastic things. Hmm. Another way that you maybe are not leveraging email marketing to its fullest, you're relying only on your launches or your ads for sales because you have not built full funnels to generate sales consistently. Um, so this would maybe look like a course sale and maybe you have ads running at a specific period of time to then get people to enroll in the program. Maybe they're going directly from ad to sales page. Well, if they're not purchasing it, you're not actually collecting their information. So you have no way of nurturing them. So then you're paying for ad retargeting so that you can stay top of mind because you don't have any other way to connect with them. So that makes it more expensive and they may still not buy while your ad retargeting is set up. Um, so unless you have an evergreen course opportunity or course so that they could register at any point in time, your cart close window may close and then you can't connect with them anymore. Whereas if you set up a full funnel where they go from like ad to lead magnet, let's say download the lead magnet, get on your email list, go through a nurture sequence to then purchase. Well, then even if they don't purchase during that cart open window, they're at least on your email list so that the next time you open enrollment for your course, they can be like, you know what, now's a better time for me. I'm going to do that. Can't do that with paid ads because you can't typically retarget people unless you're running course opens like monthly or at bare minimum once a quarter. It's going to be really hard to retarget those people if you only launch every 6 months or even only once a year. So that would be another example of you not leveraging email marketing to its full potential because it could do that for you. And that would be really awesome and help you generate even more sales. So this is a little bit even more basic than some of the things that I just talked about, but if you are emailing inconsistently and there's no strategy behind it, you just go, oh shoot, it's been a couple months since I sent an email. I should send an email. You need an email marketing strategy and you need to be sending, I would say, bare minimum monthly communications. There was a time where I would say that you could get away with quarterly communications, but I don't even think that if you are a business that has a very inconsistent purchase cycle, like realtors, let's say, or pool companies, even then, I still think you need to be sending emails monthly now because marketing is so much more competitive. Everyone's doing it in some capacity, whether it's email marketing. Ads, um, billboards, taxis, buses, whatever. There's just so much more marketing out there. You have to be talking to your people more so that you are staying at the forefront of their mind, or they will inevitably come in contact with a competitor that does what you do, and it just so happens that their marketing is more recent in their brains than yours, and they're going to go with them. And that sucks to hear. I get that, but that's kind of just the reality of what we're dealing with right now. So you need to be sending monthly emails at a minimum. Minimum. More is better. More is better. And you need a strategy in place. You can't be just like, hey, it's been a really long time. I've been gardening. What are you doing? Not a great email. That's not supporting your revenue generation, and that's Even where I'm different than other email marketing companies, cuz I know that I'm not the only one that does this, but the beautiful thing is that I see the big picture in your business and it can be like, cool, this is what you're working on. These are the kind of emails that we need to be sending to help you get there, whether it's goals, revenue targets, whatever it is. Whereas usually it's, this is the email that I wanna send, do it for me. So very different because you're going to end up with different results versus me being able to look at it and be like, yeah, okay, cool. That's a great idea. Let's do this versus maybe we should tweak it in this way, make this change. And then it's going to result in this different outcome for you that better aligns with whatever it is that you're doing. So you need to be sending consistent email blasts and there needs to be a strategy behind it, like 100%. And then within that. There needs to be a strategy with how you're getting more people on your email list. Separate strategies, which again, email marketing companies don't always do. So another sign that you need to refresh, revamp, redo something different in your email marketing is if your opening conversion rates are low. So conversion rates may be a little less. I care about those. Business owners care about those. Obviously conversion rates are what makes you money, but every kind of business and industry is gonna have a different conversion rate. I can't really spout stats for that to be like, if you're under 10%, Well, then you need to revamp that because my conversion rate is not necessarily 10% for every email that I send. It should be during a launch period, but I haven't been in one of those in a while. Um, but if your open rates are low, so that's what I care more consistently about, open rates. If your open rates are under 20%, that's a problem. We need to revisit your email marketing strategy. We need to look over your list. There's something going on here that's keeping people from wanting to open your emails, and we need to address that problem, like, right now. If your open rates are above 20%, you're usually pretty good. Most of my clients, um, and myself usually see open rates— again, this sometimes depends on the email campaign and the type of time of year they were emailing— but usually between like 30 and 50% at least. At least. Sometimes it's higher. Um, but under 20%, that's a really big problem. So that's another sign that you need to do that. So that's kind of another sign, another scenario. I have used different words throughout this episode, but those are some of the really, really big ones. So yes, you need email marketing. And yes, even if you're using email marketing, I mean, good for you, you're ahead of some, but that doesn't mean that you're using it to its full potential. And I want to see every business owner leverage email marketing to help generate those sales because no one wants to be stuck wondering where their next paycheck coming from. That sucks. No one wants to be in that position. And really, not that email marketing is a magic pill. If there are other things wrong in your business, this isn't gonna instantly fix all of your problems. But for a lot of businesses that are able to generate income relatively consistently, you can usually generate more income more consistently by making sure that you have a I don't wanna say robust because that sounds super fancy, big, expensive, hard to do, but like you need a, a solid strategy that's backed up by actionable emails being sent on your behalf to your audience. It may look like one email sequence being put in place. Maybe it looks like 3 or 4. It's not always huge quantities or large amounts of money. Email marketing does not have to be something that's super expensive. It is very much one of the most accessible marketing channels for business owners aside from social social media, which most people think is free, but when you factor in time, that's not always the case. Um, and just people aren't using it and it makes me so sad because my business relies on email marketing. It is the lifeblood of my business. It's where I have great connections, great conversations. I mean, I have those on social media too, but in a different capacity. I talk to my audience more, my business audience, more through my emails than oftentimes I do on social media. And it's where my sales come from, you guys. So, okay, I'm going to wrap this up. This is not supposed to be a lecture. It's just supposed to be hopefully an eye-opening inspirational episode to be like, yeah, you know what? I really do need this. This would be awesome. And you can totally DIY this. I'm not saying that just because you don't have email marketing in place, you have to hire me. Would I love to help you? Absolutely. And can I? 100%. Send me a message. But you can DIY your email. You can set it up all by yourself. You can build your campaigns. You can work with ChatGPT and it will be good. If you've been using email marketing and you have low open rates, low conversion rates, or you're like, you know what, something's off. I feel like something's off, but I'm not sure what. Then I would say, bring in an expert. Have me come in. We'll do a consult, uh, whatever. Um, a coaching call. That's the word I'm looking for. I got distracted by my dogs and my kids now being home. Um, and we'll do a deep dive. I'll take a look and I'll tell you exactly what's wrong because I can tell you what to look for, but sometimes you need an outside person to actually analyze the data, which is another one of the things that I'm pretty good at doing. Not to toot my own horn here. Um, but if you need email marketing setup, I can do that. You want to be more consistent with your emails? I can manage that for you. You need the strategy in place that comes with both of them. You just want a second set of eyes on your metrics to help you figure out what's going wrong and what you can improve. Even if you're not sure that something's wrong, it's good to go do a checkup. You take your car for an oil change. It's time for your email marketing to get an oil change too. So let's do that. Send me a message. We're going to help you make email marketing one of your best revenue generators in 2026. And with that, I'm going to wrap up because it's about to get real loud in this house. So I will see you next week on the Go Get Great Podcast. Thank you so much for tuning into today's episode of Go Get Great. I hope that you found some inspiration and practical tips to help you take your life and business from good to great. If you enjoyed today's episode, please make sure to leave a review and subscribe so you never miss an episode. We've got so much more valuable content and amazing guests coming your way. And don't forget to follow us on social media for marketing tips and a whole lot of relatable mom content. You can find us on Instagram at Brittany Miller Social. Brittany Miller Socials and @BrittanyNMiller_. And if you're ready to elevate your marketing game, I would love to work with you. Whether you need help with social media strategy, email marketing, or growing a podcast of your own, Brittany Miller Socials is here to support you every step of the way. Visit my website at www.brittanymillersocials.ca to learn more about how we can work together. Thanks again for listening. Until next time, keep going. Keep growing and go get great. I started Ornaught in 2013 and we make bike apparel. The best part of Shopify for me is our ability to run the business as essentially non-technical people. We're able to admin everything on the backend, frontend, and sell things online easily. If Shopify were a bike accessory, I think it would actually be the bicycle. It's the thing that you do the thing on. We run the business on Shopify. Start your free trial on shopify.com.