It seemed like only yesterday that businesses around the world focused the majority of their marketing resources on social media, but those days are over.
There are so many different traction channels to leverage nowadays, and social media, from an impressions perspective, is just a shell of what it once was. Facebook and Twitter both adjusted their algorithms significantly to limit organic reach, mainly so they could control it for monetization purposes, using ads. If you want to play, you need to pay, unfortunately.
And there's also a lot of distrust surrounding social media and big tech nowadays. Privacy issues have affected how many people engage on social media, and they're top-of-mind for some. Facial recognition technology and third-party cookies aren't helping bring users back to Facebook and Twitter, either, as Gen Z has flocked to YouTube, Instagram, Snapchat and TikTok instead.
Enter email marketing.
Businesses can leverage it to create their own private communication channel to interact with their ecosystem -- both leads and customers -- whenever they choose. Email marketing creates a private messaging channel, and it also has certain audience benefits as well. Unlike social media, whoever builds a list owns the data. Equity isn't common on the internet nowadays, and that's why email marketing and webinars are so powerful. Here are a few more reasons it's replaced social media as the traction channel of choice for marketers.
Users can easily tune out and choose not to listen on social media. Not only that, social media algorithms often take the decision out of users' hands altogether, which is why spending hours on it may not be the best use of your time. Instead, email marketing opens a direct two-way communication channel with every subscriber to your list. The personal nature of it allows you to build trust with your subscribers.
Rather than promoting your brand.Provide value and educate the reader with information they can use to optimize their life or be more productive at their job, and they’ll recognize you as an industry expert. Then, hopefully, down the line, they'll buy products or services from you. (Example: A jeweler shouldn't always tweet about the diamonds they sell, but instead get creative, such as a few posts about how a bride may look wearing them on her wedding day.)
Social media management entails following different rules and policies for different platforms. But anything goes for email campaigns, as lists are private, and marketers can leverage them as they see fit, in terms of strategy for communication and engagement.
Use the "sign up" button at the top of your page's profile, and edit it to include the URL to a landing page for email signups.
There are over 30 traction channels for digital marketers to leverage, with all of them having different strengths and weaknesses.
In our eyes, email marketing provides the best return on investment, mainly because it's virtually free, aside from a subscription to an Email Service Provider. These ESPs, such as MailChimp and ConvertKit, often give marketers other tools to help with CRM, landing pages, pop-ups and more, so they're worth the investment. Not only that, email marketing doesn't require a high time cost, whereas social media management is quite the opposite.
Email marketing allows business owners to establish and build a direct, personal relationship with their list, and it can help convert a cold lead into a life-time customer. And sure, it takes time, but no audience is built overnight, so you just need to figure out which traction channels are best for your market vertical.
