The worst thing that you can do for your business is believed the lie that email is dead. Relying on social media for your business growth is actually doing the opposite. It’s killing your business. I’m going to share a few myths and facts, all data-backed about social media versus email marketing so that you know exactly what’s happening in your business when you choose social over email.

I’m Christina Ethridge and I help solopreneur business owners transform their email list into loyal customers. And a while back, I was at an event and someone shared with me that ever since their social media following had become substantial, that they no longer bothered using email marketing. They believed that email was dead and now they just post on their social channel about their business and it was working for them.

So they believed. They had continued to grow. Their followers were engaging and responding and they felt it was just going to continue to be an upward climb. I tried mentioning several things to them that I’m going to outline in this video for you, including that they were likely missing out on double to quadruple the amount of sales and revenue that they should be getting because they weren’t leveraging their email list.

Their response was that their open rates were always pretty low, less than 20% on average. So email just wasn’t worth it. Besides they believed their generation doesn’t even use email anymore. So what’s the point? I’m going to give you an update on this person and their business later, but for now, let’s hit on some of those things that I brought up to them.

Myth number one, “social media engages better than email.” The fact is, is let’s just compare the reach on social versus email. Facebook has a 0.09% reach. Instagram has a 1.22% reach. Twitter has a 0.045% reach. So what does that mean? It means that social media on average has a reach of about 1%. Now email has an average open rate of 18-24%.

So basically social media has a one out of a thousand reach – one out of a thousand people see what you post on social media. Email has a 180 to 240 out of a thousand reach – out of a thousand people. When you send an email, do you see the drastic difference between these two? Just that alone is a reason to let’s get people onto your email list.

Myth number two, “email is dead.” The under 40 crowd doesn’t use email. Email’s dead, the under 40 crowd does not use email, but the data shows that this is a lie. It’s a myth perpetuated by people who have an opinion, but they don’t have the data to support their statements. Across all demographics – email is the most preferred channel. When you dig into it by generation, there was a slight dip with millennials – and I mean slight – but an uptick with gen Z.

So in other words, across all generations, email is their most preferred channel. Why is email so greatly preferred over other communication channels? Because email feels the most personal to people, which means that you need to be personal in your connection with your email list.

Myth number three, “email isn’t worth it. It just takes up time and doesn’t pay off.” Email has a 4200% return on investment. That’s a 42 to one. That means for every dollar that you spend on email marketing, you’re going to see a return of $42. I’m sorry. If I saw a return of just $1 for every dollar that I spent, I’d still use it, but this is a 42 to 1 return on investment.

Myth number four, “social media is where you should invest your time. It’s where everybody hangs out.” See social media is rented space for which you do not have a lease. You have nothing. You have nothing. It’s rented land. With email, you own it. Invest in your own real estate.

With email, you own the data versus your social media following it’s owned by the platform, not you and you can’t do whatever you want with your following. With email data, you can do whatever you want with it.

Myth number five, “I have control over my social media. I can just post and reach my people.” Well, actually, you have zero control and you can and will at some point be censored or shut down, or the platform will close at any time for any reason, without warning or recompense. Remember this is rented ground that you do not have a lease for.

You’re using it for free, which means you’re kind of a squatter and you’re at the whims of the platform. But with email, you actually control it. Even if for whatever reason, the software that you’re using to send your email quits working, you’ve still got your list and you can move it to another software or do it the old-fashioned, manual way. You can’t have your list taken from you because you actually physically own it. You can have your subscribers, followers, likers taken from you. See what you need to remember is that your email list is the most lucrative, AKA valuable, asset of your business.

It is the most lucrative asset you have available to you. It’s your moneymaker. It’s your powerhouse, it’s your saving grace. These are your people wanting more of you, buying your products and services. Now remember the person that I shared with you at the beginning of this video that stopped using their email because social media was better. Fast forward eight months from that conversation that I had with them, I actually got a message from them in a panic, asking me for help with their email list.

See their main social media channel had shut down their profile one day – had shut down their profile one day into their biggest launch of the year. They hadn’t been using their email list. And when they started sending out emails to compensate for the loss of their social media channel, their email account got blocked by their email marketing service provider.

Why? Well, because they had an overabundance of spam reports. And why did they have an overabundance of spam reports? Because their email list was stale. They hadn’t been growing or adding to it or emailing it for almost a year. And then they started slamming their list with “Buy this! Buy now!” emails during the launch. That’s a quick shutdown. What ended up happening is that their biggest launch of the year, which should have been double or even triple their previous launches actually came in at an 80% drop from their previous launches. They didn’t get their social media channel back in time. And because they hadn’t been communicating with their email list, they weren’t able to email the people that they had previously gathered.

They had the list, but because they hadn’t been communicating with it on that platform, they couldn’t do it any longer. And in their case, they couldn’t just transfer to another email marketing service platform because their list didn’t qualify under the CAN-SPAM Act because they hadn’t been emailing it for over a year. Basically, these were considered cold emails and they didn’t have permission to email them.

Additionally, their ability to run social media ads was shut down. And because their main social media channel profile was shut down, they weren’t allowed to run ads. They were screwed. But the fact is, this was their fault. It was their fault for relying on rented ground without a lease and not building and maintaining an owned asset – also known as their email list.

Fast forward, another four months, they had gotten their social media profile back, but noticed a significant drop in engagement. When they finally figured out was that their audience – or what they had finally figured out was that their audience had started moving over to another social platform that this business owner wasn’t present on. And now they’re working to rebuild on yet another platform.

And they’re working on focusing on their email list, building and connecting with people on that level more than on social media. They finally got the balance right. They essentially had to start from, like from scratch again. Had they kept building their email list and kept communicating with it, the loss of the social media profile would have been a minor inconvenience rather than the major wreck that it was.

So please ignore the “email is dead” or “social media is better” blather and focus on building your email list and communicating with it. Drive your audience from your social channels into your list. Own the future of your business. Don’t rent it. And if you want to know what your emails should look like, so that your people open, read and respond to them, download the perfect email template that I created for my eCLUB members. It’ll get you going on a fast and easy path with your email marketing.

Featured Download: In The Perfect Email Send Schedule I show you the best days and times to email to get higher open rates. Download it here.

As a solopreneur business owner, all of the tasks fall on your shoulders. And one of those tasks is email marketing. And if you are struggling with knowing how often you should be emailing your list or could be emailing your list, or shouldn’t be emailing your list, you’re not alone. That is a common, common “wonder” people are always wondering.

I bet you’ve actually heard a few answers to this question, though. Probably both extremes. One of them is “don’t email too much because you’ll upset people or they’ll think that you’re spamming them.” And the other extreme of course is “email daily. You need to email every single day. You need to make an offer every single day. This is how you do it. If you can’t do that, then they’re not the right people. And if they don’t like it…”

I’m sure you have heard both of those things. But here’s the real question. Which one should you listen to? Which one should you ignore? I also bet that you hear a lot of “do this” or “do that” with absolutely zero data backing the action that the person is telling you to take.

Meaning they tell you what their opinion is or what they think or did to be successful with this. But do they ever actually give you the data that supports what they’re saying or did they just give you anecdotal evidence? See, data is important. Data tells us what works and what doesn’t. Most gurus and experts, they don’t have the data.

They have industry norms, or they have preferred norms, or they even have their own anecdotal evidence. They might even have a few dozen customers and clients that maybe support what they’re saying, but it’s all opinions. It’s not enough data or real data to actually guide you in your decision. So you want to make marketing and advertising decisions from real data, not personal feelings or anecdotal evidence.

So let’s dive into how often you should be emailing your list.

I’m Christina and I help solopreneur business owners simplify their marketing so that they make more sales and keep their sanity. In other words, increase revenue and reduce overwhelm. And the question of how often should I be emailing my list comes up a lot, like a lot.

And while I can tell you the exact number that’s ideal for the algorithms – and I’m going to tell you that – that’s not what you really, really want to hear. And honestly, there’s some nuance around that number, even with the data. I think what you’re really asking me is, “How on earth do I keep up with all of the things I’m supposed to do? Please, please tell me that I do not have to do a ton of emailing. Please tell me that I don’t have to look like everyone else that launches and sends a million emails. Please tell me the easiest and simplest way to do my email marketing so that I can increase my revenue and reduce my overwhelm. And I don’t appear spammy to people. I don’t have time for all of the fluff and I really don’t want people to feel about me the way I feel about getting slammed with emails.”

Is that what you’re really asking? Because that’s what I’m going to answer. So why email is important is because it is the real estate of your business. The email that you have, your email list is your asset. This is huge. This is your asset. Now, just to give you some real numbers here, email is not dying. When you look at social media and you look at Twitter or Facebook or Instagram or TikTok, or any of those things, typically one out of a thousand people of your following are going to see what you’ve put on those platforms. One out of a thousand, but with email, from the last known open rate averages, about 180 out of 240 people out of a thousand are going to see what you created and what you’re sending out. Those are big differences.

Social media, is fabulous, fabulous for building your audience. Email marketing, email is the best hands down for you to own and for you to actually connect and relate to your audience so that they want to actually buy from you. So the data shows, when it comes to frequency of email sending, the data actually shows that you can send too few emails. That sending too few emails is harmful, but sending too many emails, that’s not harmful. Now there’s some caveats around this. And let me explain.

So first of all, this data comes from a HubSpot MailChimp collaborative report over the course of about six years and 30 billion emails. They got together and they put together this whole report called the science of email marketing. It is no longer available, but you can get a lot of this data, more current from Litmus.

And 30 billion emails shows that if you send three or fewer emails within a one month span, you’re unsubscribe and report to spam rates skyrocket. People don’t remember who you are. It’s inconsistent enough for them to go unsubscribe or, or report to spam, regardless of how valuable what you’re sending them is.

Now the data does show that you can’t really send too many emails. Shocker of all shockers. You can, you can send an email a day. You can send two emails a day. There’s a caveat. As long as you’re sending as what you’re sending them is what they want to read. As long as what you’re sending them is what they want to read.

I guess, if you just like randomly hit people with too many, yeah, it would be too much. But the data shows that the more you send there is not a negative reaction. There’s not a negative response. In fact, the more you send the lower your unsubscribe rate is, the lower your report to spam rate is, and the higher your click and reply rates are.

So in other words, the more emails you send, the more your list is engaged with you. Isn’t that interesting. Now there’s a little bit of nuance around this. If all you’re doing is sending the same email every single day with the same subject line, clearly that is not going to work in this case, right?

But just remember if you send too few emails, you’re actually going to have higher unsubscribe rates and higher report to spam rates, but you really can’t send too many emails. So I just want you to be around that. When you send at least one email per week, all the way up to daily emails, sometimes even twice a day emails, your opens, clicks and replies are higher.

It’s more engaged. But here’s where the nuance lies. We know you don’t want to send less than three emails in a one-month period. We know this, we know this from the data because that’s just dangerous for your business. It’s dangerous for your list. It’s dangerous for your email sender reputation. So what’s the reality? What can you keep up with? What’s a good combination between sending daily emails, like that’s an extreme, to making sure that you’re not sending less than three. What can you be consistent with? Because here’s the reality. Consistency is what’s most important. Consistency is what is most important. Content is second. Consistency is number one. Content is number two.

In other words, when you are consistent with what you send, you’re going to get people opening, reading, and responding to your emails. Consistent. And then, make sure your content is relevant to what they want. Right? So my best piece of advice for you is to commit to sending one email per week. That puts you right at four per month, five per month on a five week month. But right at four per month, you’re over the negative number of three and you’re not doing it every single day.

This is consistently sustainable for you – one per week. So every single week, you just pick a day and time and send it at the same day and time, every single week. And you reach out to your email community. So that gives you the best possible position in the email algorithms and in their inbox without being too few in sending emails and without overwhelming your already busy schedule.

Now there’s a few key points that I want to make here about this. Pick a day and time that works for you. Don’t worry about the best time of the week to send, the best day of the week, best time. Don’t worry about that. Don’t worry about that because those, that data, yeah, it’s there, but it’s so nominal that what is more important? That you send an email at the same day and time, every single week. That is actually more important than what day and time it is. So you pick a day and time that works for you. For me, it’s Wednesdays at noon, my time. Wednesdays at noon, my time is when my emails go out.

The next piece is, keep it consistent. You need to stay consistent. You need to email your people every single week at the same day and same time that you pick, you need to stay consistent. Think about this like dating. You are dating them, you’re dating each other and you need to show up. You need to show up, right? The next thing is, keep your emails simple. Keep them simple. Don’t try to do these big fancy newsletters. Don’t try to do all these things.

Keep them simple. Remember our attention spans, well, they’re horrible. And you want to keep it very, very simple and clear for them. Keep your email focused. Choose one thing to email about. Don’t try to choose 10 products to sell or three different blog posts to point people to or five different things to sell. Don’t do that. Just keep it focused.

Pick, pick one focus for the week. What’s your focus for the week. You want to drive people into your Facebook group. You want to have people open, go read a blog post. You want to have people open something. You want to have people reply. Keep that email focused, keep it relevant, stay relevant to why they’re on your email list.

Who is it you serve and how do you serve them? What is your, your core positioning here? What is that? Keep it relevant. Keep the emails relevant. So make sure you’re talking about why they came onto your list. Not say, Hey, you came onto my list for that. But the reason that they came on for your list.

For me, people come onto my list initially because they really want help with their email. Now what I help with, I’m a solopreneur, small business consultant. I help solopreneurs small business owners increase their revenue and reduce their overwhelm. We actually do that through looking at their marketing. So we help them simplify their marketing. I help them simplify their marketing.

But the reality is, is that email is the core. So that’s what I talk about in my YouTube videos. That’s what I’m talking about with my emails. That’s what the majority of my trainings are because email – your database – is the core of your business. It is the number one asset your business can have. And it is the asset that is the easiest to grow.

And it is the asset that is the easiest to leverage. And so that’s what I focus on, but I am a solopreneur, small business consultant. I help people increase their revenue and reduce their overwhelm. But again, the path to me is through email because that is the most powerful piece. It is the piece that most people can relate to, the most frustration that they have.

So when I talk in emails, that’s what I talk about. When I talk on YouTube videos, that’s what I talk about. So keep your emails relevant. You also need to keep your emails relational. You need to reveal pieces of you in your emails. And here’s what I mean. I’m going to use this example.

I got a cat in here. He’s over here somewhere. And every once in a while you might hear him meow. Well, guess what – he is part of my life. He’s just very vocal today and I don’t know why, but I would share things like that in my email. I would share pieces like I’ve got a cat doing this, or, oh, there he is up there. I’ve got a cat doing this. I have to keep certain plants in my office because he wants to eat them all the time. And if I leave them loose, he will eat my plants. So I know these are weird and completely unrelated to email marketing. But when I am sending an email, I always try – on my weekly email – I always try to make a relational connection with people. And the only way people can relate with you is if you reveal something personal about yourself,. It can be silly. It can be weird. It can be whatever, but, and – micro, micro moments, micro things. And actually, as I’m thinking about it, one of my emails in the future is probably going to talk about him, him interrupting my YouTube videos.

I’ll probably put that in there. But the point is is that you need to keep your emails relational. Now I’m not talking about launch emails. I’m not talking about flash sale emails. I’m talking about your weekly email, where you’re building a connection. You’re dating your audience. You’re dating your email list. So you guys can get to know each other and that they want to,

so that they want to buy from you. That’s the whole point of this. So pick a day and time that works for you. Keep it consistent, keep it simple, keep it focused, keep it relevant. Keep it relational. Now what I’ve done is I’ve created the perfect email template. It is a template to show you how to structure your emails.

It’s the link is below in the description box, but it is literally a template to show you what your subject line should look like. What the beginning of your email should look like, what the bottom of your email should look like, what your PS should look like, what your signature should look like. How many words should you put in the email, et cetera.

All of that is in there because that is all relevant. It’s relevant to keeping it simple. It’s relative to keeping it focused. It’s relevant to keeping it relevant and is relevant to keeping it relational. So if you want it, perfectemailtemplate.com. Otherwise, I will see you next time.

Featured Download: In The Perfect Email Send Schedule I show you the best days and times to email to get higher open rates. Download it here.

As a solopreneur business owner, you have probably heard that you need a website or a landing page or a squeeze page or an ebook download, or some other kind of lead magnet or an audience on a social platform so that you can start building your email list. Like, you’ve been told that that is where you need to start.

You need to have all these professional things and all the stuff done before you can even start building your email list or even that you have to run ads to build your list. After of course, you have all of these other things made.

Well, guess what? Guess what you do not have to have or need? You don’t need a website. You don’t need a lead magnet. You don’t need an audience to start building and growing your email list.

Will you want those things eventually?

Yes, absolutely.

You’re going to need them as you grow your business. But in the beginning, you do not need to have all of those things in place, because the most important thing you could do for yourself is start building your email list, as soon as possible. I’m going to walk you through exactly what you can use and how you can quickly set it up today, so it starts working for you today.

I’m Christina and I help solopreneur business owners simplify their marketing so that they make more sales and keep their friggin sanity. That is a big deal. And today I want to actually help you bust through the idea that you need to build out a website or that you need to have a fancy lead magnet, or that you have to have a social media audience in order to start building your list and growing your list.

We need to actually stop allowing gurus and experts to overwhelm us with all of these things that “must be done” in order to actually start and grow our businesses. You don’t need a single one of those things to start. In fact, it’s in your best interest to start building your email list, the way I’m going to show you so that while you’re building your other resources, like your website, like your lead magnet, like your social audience, like your pictures, like your business cards, like your logos, like while you’re building all that, you’re still building an email list. So while all of that stuff is being built while you’re actually building pieces of your actual business, your email list is going to start and it’s going to be growing as you’re building.

So you’re not waiting to build your email list. See, the number one regret of every single successful business owner is that they didn’t start building their email list sooner. I don’t care who you talk to. Their answer is always going to be “I wish I had started building my email list sooner, especially in the online world.” So I’m going to let you in on a simple secret so that you can make that happen right now, today.

See, I’m going to have you leverage the power of a Facebook group that you create and control and don’t get all panicky going, oh no, You don’t have to keep this group active. You don’t have to do anything special about this group, except do these three quick steps that I’m going to tell you.

The Three Steps You Need to Start Your List Without a Website

First, Create Your Facebook Group

Number one, you’re going to create the group, right? You want to name the group something that will actually attract your audience. So it can’t be your name. It can’t be your business name. It’s gotta be something that’ll attract the audience. For example, I have a group that says “Email for Entrepreneurs: Get Opened, Get Read.” That is a lot of what I teach people, how to get their emails engaging, how to get people going, how to get their list built, et cetera. It’s all about email for entrepreneurs. Okay? So that’s the name of my group.

What’s the name of your group going to be? Be around that?

Make sure it’s something that will attract your audience.

Make Sure Your Facebook Group is Private

And number two, in, in this first one, you’re going to make sure that you make the group private and you’re going to make sure that you have join questions, questions they have to fill out when they join.

And one of those questions is going to be, “what is your email address?” And you want to make sure like, I’ll send you this, or I’ll send you that – you can send them something if you want, but just say, “Hey, what’s your email address?” They can put it in or they don’t have to. And then you get, decide if you’re going to let them in the group or not. Right. And then make sure before you approve, when people like go to request membership, make sure before you hit approve that you grab that information into a spreadsheet.

Facebook doesn’t hold it for you. They don’t keep it for you. There’s no real automated legit way because Facebook doesn’t allow you to actually use the scrapers. It can hurt your account. You can get banned. So just be aware that you’re going to need to grab that information that they submitted to those boxes before you approve their request.

So make a group, make it private, make sure that one of the questions that they asked to join that you asked them to join is what is their email address.

Second, Share You Facebook Group Link in Your Personal Profile

Now, here’s what you’re going to do next. You’re going to take that Facebook group link. And you’re going to put it in your personal profile. And you’re going to make sure that it’s in your personal profile.

And that part of your personal profile is public. You need to make sure that people can view that about section of you. And so in my personal profile, the part that’s public is join the group, Email for Entrepreneurs, Email for Entrepreneurs, they click the link, they go right to the group.

So you want to make sure that this is public and you want to make sure that that is like one of the number one things people see when they look at your profile. Okay?

So number one, you created a free Facebook group. You didn’t have to pay for it. It’s free. You did those two things I said.

Two, you put the link to that group in your profile, right? So it’s visible, and you made sure that that is public.

Now, here’s what you’re going to do. You’re going to go out into Facebook.

Three, Find Ways to Be Helpful in Other Facebook Groups (I Promise, It Works)

You’re going to find Facebook groups where your people, where the people that you want to attract to your business are. Okay. So if you’re somewhat, let’s see. Let’s say you’re a crafter, right? And you want to start selling some of your crafts. Well, you’re probably going to want to go either into some local groups because you’re selling things locally or you’re going to want – and/or – you’re going to want to go into groups that are related to craft supplies or whatever it is, because those are things you can connect with people on. Those are playing with your location, the thing you do, et cetera. And you’re going to go into that group and, and stick with me here on this.

You’re going to start engaging and you’re going to do relationship, genuinely focused on engaging with people. Here’s what you are not going to do. You are not going to post in that group. One cotton picking even breath about your business or what you offer. You’re not going to do that. You’re not going to comment one cotton picking breath about or whatever about what you offer.

That is not genuine relationship. Here’s what genuine relationship is. Let’s pretend that the Facebook group is a party that you’ve been invited to. Would you walk into a party and announced to the world, Hey, I got my crafts here. Come buy them. If you would. Yeah. Nobody’s inviting you to a party. But if you wouldn’t walk into a room of people in person and just suddenly blurt that out, don’t do it on Facebook and a Facebook group, go into the group, start looking for groups of people – and I mean posts – posts that you can actually engage with or contribute to.

And I don’t mean about your business. I mean, as you as a person, so maybe you’re in a local group and they’re talking about, I don’t know, some event that was at the park that you went to that event. And you’re like, it was great. I love seeing this, this, this, and this. You do not need to say a word about your business. The next post is going to be, Hey, do you know, I’m new to the area? And I’m looking for a great hairstylist.

Who would you recommend? You have your favorite? You’re going to recommend them. Then another post is going to be something else, not a single one of these are directly related to your business at all. You are just saying, you’re just showing people that you’re a real person that lives in this area that engages in this community, et cetera. That’s all you’re doing.

And because of that, what happens is the more you show up, people start hovering over your little icon and they go, oh, who is this person, oh, what do they do? Ooh, that sounds interesting. And they go click and they request to join your group.

They give you their email and you start building your email list.

Now some of you’re like, oh, this takes a lot of time. Yeah. This can take a lot of time or not. If you literally just put it on your calendar to show up once a week for 30 minutes and a group where you just literally show up and answer some random questions, guess what’s going to happen. Your email list is going to start growing. And it’s going to start growing with people who are generally interested in following you, engaging with you and eventually buying your products. And that’s, what’s going to happen with it. I’m telling you, it is the easiest way to start an email list without a website, without a landing page, without a lead magnet of any sort, without any type of social following. And, and it’s free. It’s free.

You don’t have to have anything that you do anything. This is the easiest way to do this.

Continue Working On Your Lead Magnet While Leveraging Facebook Groups

Now, while you’re doing this piece, while you’re engaging in your normal groups that you are engaging in, you’re going to be creating a single one page lead magnet that you can eventually put out there, not in the groups, but just in general, that attracts your ideal audience so that you can ramp up your list building.

But in the meantime, you’re going to have your list growing and going. See, one of the times that I used, this was when I launched a new business and I wasn’t ready. I wasn’t ready to announce that I had anything going yet. I wasn’t ready to do any of that stuff, but I went ahead and created a free Facebook group.

I did exactly the steps that you wanted. And within three months I had added 734 people to my email list, just because I was in Facebook groups once a week, engaging with people answering questions. It was all related to being an entrepreneur. It was all related to all those kinds of things. Even though I very specifically help with one area, but I was still able to help them.

They were like, well, Hey, I want to learn this technique. I’m like, Hey, I learned that from this person, or what are your favorite books to read? And I would answer with some of my favorite books or what are these, or what are that? It was all genuine relationship engagement stuff. And it didn’t take any more than 30 minutes a week, but I was able to add 734 people to my list before I even actually launched my lead magnet or launched my list. So it was going while I was building the pieces to my business and that’s the point of this stop letting the gurus and experts tell you that you need these things in order to start, you don’t fricking need them in order to start.

You just need a quick, free way to meet those people and get them on your list.

That’s it.

And then once you get that lead magnet, of course, you can go and build your list everywhere else. And I actually have a thousand things to do to build your email list for free. Like you can do all of these things that are free to build your email list.

I want you to start with this one. This is the key one where I want you to start, but you can download the gigantic list. I put the link below for you, if you want to.

So you can keep going on, but I just want you to start. I want you to start. I want you to stop listening to those gurus, those experts that say you need all these things, and I want you to start building your email list today.