they ,Years ago I would have told you that email marketing for authors was the dumbest thing ever.
Importance of an Email List
I truly believed building an email list was a waste of time.
Instant messaging, Snapchat and social media pushed email out of the way, right?
One year, I attended a writers conference workshop where the presenter talked all about why we need to build email lists, and I groaned the whole time.
I’m here to say, “mea culpa.” I was wrong.
As a data kind of girl, if you want to convince me of something, a little anecdotal evidence is fine, but you’ll nail a homer with statistics.
As I researched my current marketing book, I gave in and started looking at email marketing for authors statistics and I was blown away.
My skepticism squashed.
So, to convince you that email is the way to go and crucial to add to your author brand toolkit, I’ve compiled some statistics and data that convinced me.
I think it will convince you too.
Here are 10 Reasons Why You Need an Email List
1- Email usage is up across all demographics
2- Email usage for those under the age of 25 saw a jump from 64% to 82% from 2014 to 2017.
3- 71% of poll respondents admitted that email is the first thing they check when they wake up in the morning.
4- 91% of U.S. consumers use email daily. Email marketing for Black Friday / Cyber Monday deals converts ads to sales at double the rate of social media.
5- An email is six times more likely to get a click-through than a tweet.
6- Email users worldwide is projected to reach 4 billion by the end of 2020.
7- 28 percent of US online shoppers subscribe to store or product emails in order to stay informed.
8- 59 percent of US moms sign up for email updates from brands if they offered rewards.
9- 85 percent of US retailers consider email marketing one of the most effective customer acquisition tactics.
10 – 72% would rather receive brand content through email, and 17% prefer to receive their brand messages from social media platforms.
Bonus reasons:
- Email usage is up. Nielsen and Pew Research both report an increase in email usage.
- Email is seen more often by the recipient than any social media post.
- Social media is saturated scrolling. Your followers may or may not ever see your post.
- If you run a business profile, those followers definitely won’t see it without paying for ads.
- Open rates.
- Organic reach on a Facebook Page is 3–5% (it can get as high as 10–12% with good engagement).
- Twitter is about the same. Instagram is slightly higher.
- Open rates on email are in the 25–30% range.
- You own the list. Forever.
- Your social media followers don’t give you their address and the platform owns the list.
- If they go under or out of style (Google+ or MySpace, anyone?), you lose that list. Forever.
Resources:
Top 5 Reasons Why Email Still Works