The Value of an Email List

Having worked with over 100 businesses, and spoken with hundreds more, I am often surprised to hear that business owners are not leveraging their most important asset.

The most important asset for a business owner is their email list (or, in some cases, their SMS list).

A few years ago, I was sitting with my operations manager and we were trying to understand “why” most business owners ignore this asset which they can easily turn into more money.

Before I reveal what we discovered… Why is an email list valuable in the first place?

Why is an email list valuable?

Every business in the world needs a flow of potential customers to visit their place of business before that business can make money.

For local businesses, this is called Active Footfall. For online businesses, this is called Traffic that clicked. That is, online traffic that clicked directly to your company website.

Online traffic is valuable and can be expensive. For example, you can buy traffic from places like Facebook or Google ads.

It’s not uncommon for a business to spend $1,000 - $20,000 per month to acquire this traffic. To put it simply, traffic is eyeballs.

(By the way, even if you are spending $15,000 per month on traffic, that is a good thing. Because it means you are getting eyeballs. And sales if you are doing it properly)

But what if you didn’t have to spend money to consistently get these eyeballs?

An email list, once built properly, is a constant source of eyeballs that you pay for only once.

If you have an email list of 13,000 people that are interested in what you do, you can email these people for free. And because these 13,000 people receive multiple emails from you over time, they become more and more valuable (warm) and more likely to buy or re-buy.

We helped turn one of our clients email lists from $0 per email to $5,000 every email.

So… if it’s so valuable, why do business owners ignore this valuable asset?

Why do business owners ignore email marketing?

Business owners ignore the idea of an email list because there is one massive, non-negotiable first hurdle to using it…

That barrier is this: you need to build an email list properly before you use it.

I have used the word “properly” a few times. If you want to know more about how to build an email list, you can read this post here.

You cannot reap the value of an email list without building an email list.

And building an email list is a strategic exercise. For example, when we work with clients to build their list we ask:

First, why would someone want to join your email list? People need a reason.

Second, are the people joining the list the right people? Are they potential buyers?

Finally, building a list of 13,000 (which is amazing) can take a year. What should I be doing with my email list when the first few people join?

These questions need to be thought out and executed well to reap the value of a list.

Start yesterday

My advice to you, my dear reader, is to start thinking about these questions today. Build a marketing strategy around these questions and start building your email list now.

Think of email marketing like investing. The earlier you start, the better, because the compound effect kicks in.

The bigger your list grows, the faster it continues to grow and the more sales you make.

There is no downside.