Why you need an email list to grow your online business

This is episode #34 of The Goodness Squad podcast. Today we are going to be discussing the 2nd step that you need to take in order to turn your hobby, or your side-hustle, into a full-fledged online business that really truly makes you money. That should be your goal, to make significant money. If you’re concerned about that goal, go back to episode #30.

The pitfall of the social media algorithm 

As is often the case before I can dive into the details of today’s podcast episode, I have to start with a story and this story has to do with teaching. Imagine that you are a college teacher, which means that your students aren’t automatically assigned to you. They have chosen your class either because they really want to learn about that subject or they’ve been told by friends or family members that you are a fantastic teacher. 

Unfortunately, at this college, you don’t get to teach your students directly. You have to teach a member of the administration. All of your lessons and everything that you want your wonderful students to know, you have to present that to the administration. And then the administration turns around and they teach your students directly.

 When you first joined the college, they passed on about half of your lessons to the students and the other half just didn’t happen. They also pick and choose which students get to see your lessons. Some students might see 70 of your 100 lessons and some students might only see 2.  You never know exactly which students are seeing which lessons.

It feels really confusing. You want to teach the same topic over and over again because you want to make sure that all of your students are getting all of the information, but then that’s annoying some of your other students who are getting all the information. It’s a very frustrating situation to be in.

What I am describing here is social media. You are the teacher, your students are your followers. They have chosen to follow you, for whatever reason, but you don’t get to teach them directly. It has to go through Facebook or through Instagram or through Pinterest. They’re choosing which of your students get to see your lessons.

Some see a lot and some see a few, and you don’t ever know exactly who sees what you teach. So you often have to over-teach because you don’t know who’s getting what, and then you have this worry that you’re annoying people. This is social media.

Email marketing is how you get around the social media algorithm

So let me tell you another story about a different teacher. She teaches at a college and these people have chosen to follow her, but there’s no administration between her and her students. She is right there in the class with her students. She can tell if a student is paying attention, she can tell if a student is ignoring her.

Students still have the ability to walk out, to leave, to unenroll. They don’t have to stay, but she knows a lot more about which students are engaged.

• Who is actually learning
• Who needs to learn more about what subject
• Who is interested in what specific subject

She can cater her teaching very specifically to each student. This is email marketing.

Email marketing allows you to meet people where they’re at.

When you send an email to people, it is very easy for you to track who has opened it, who hasn’t opened it, even who has clicked on it. You can then figure out what they’re actually interested in, what they want to learn more about. You can tell if they’ve opened an email and if they haven’t you can send them that same email again. You can give them the lesson again because just like this teacher, you can see that they weren’t paying attention the first time. So you can teach them again without annoying other people.

Step #2 for you to turn your side hustle into a business that makes you significant amounts of money is to have an email list and to make it a significant priority in your business.

3 reasons why you need to focus on email marketing heavily

#1 – The return on investment

I want to give you some numbers here. These numbers are well-researched; I’ve looked them up in numerous places with numerous different studies. I’ve kind of come up with an average of my own, but some of the studies were done a few years ago and some of the studies were a little bit more recent. Some of them worked with bigger groups and some with smaller groups. 

If you have 2,000 email subscribers and really average or maybe even a little below average, email marketing skills around 70 of them are going to click. Not just open, but click on an email that you sent. 70 out of 2,000. I know that still seems pretty low, but I want you to remember that you see who has clicked. So you can resend that email to the people who didn’t open it.

Let’s go back and compare this to social media. Out of 2,000, 70 email subscribers will click. If you put the exact same thing into a Facebook post, 18 of them are going to click. 10 of them will click on Instagram because there’s an extra step there on Instagram. And only 6 of them are going to click on Twitter.

That’s a huge difference. Even Facebook, which was the highest, it’s almost 4x as many that will click on an email. Let’s look at the actual return on investment as far as money goes.

For email, you put $1 in and if your email marketing is just average, you’re going to get about $38 back. If you put $1 into Instagram you will get around $11 back. If you put $1 into Facebook ads, you’ll get $9 back. And if you put $1 into Pinterest ads, you’ll get around $4 back. So the principle here, again, is that you will earn at least 4x as much when you invest money into email marketing as opposed to ads.

Now, am I saying don’t do ads in those other places? No, absolutely not. I mean, you’re still getting a return on your investment, right? If I get $11 back for every dollar I spend on ads, that’s fantastic.  The return on investment is significantly higher with email marketing.

I’m not saying give up on social media, but use social media to drive people to your email list. That’s the purpose of social media. Are you going to interact with people there? Yes. Do people get to know, like, and trust you there? Absolutely. But you need to be driving them to your email list.

#2 – you own your list

You don’t have a middleman in between you and your list. They joined your list. They want to be there. They get to choose which emails to open, what to ignore. Facebook or Instagram, isn’t choosing that for them. You own that list. And I don’t mean that in the sense of you own people. I mean you own the email address on that list.

Nobody else is there in between you and this is really, really important. The story I told you already highlighted some of the reasons for that, but there’s one more that I really want you to understand. Social media, at any point if what you are doing on their platform does not serve them, can stop serving you.

They will stop serving you. That’s in their best interest and they are a business. I have seen this happen. I have people that I know in real life who have had followers in the hundreds of thousands on Facebook who, when they very first started, half their people were seeing their posts.

A few years later they would get maybe a hundred out of hundreds of thousands who were then seeing their Facebook posts because they weren’t serving Facebook anymore. It wasn’t being helpful. What they were doing was not being helpful to Facebook. Facebook now wants them to pay to be able to show people their content.

It is really, really important that you are able to contact your people. If Instagram shadow bans your account, or turns it off entirely, you no longer have access to that following that you have worked so hard to build. Whether that is a hundred people or a hundred thousand or a million people, your access to them could be cut off at any time.

You need to drive those people, that are your followers on Facebook or Instagram, to your email list so that you can now contact them anytime you want to or need to. Can they choose to leave? Absolutely. They can still choose to leave just like a student in your class at a college could choose to unenroll but they’re choosing that, not some third party.

#3 – You can automate so much with an email list

You can see who hasn’t opened an email and resend it. If they did, you can see who’s clicked on an email and tag them as interested in that topic.

For example, if you click on one of my products but don’t purchase (or even if you do purchase) you’re tagged with a tag that says: Interested in monetization. If you’ve clicked on a product that has to do with earning money, now I know that you have that interest so I can tailor the content, even the free content that I send you, to that specific interest.

I am now helping you right where you are. So this allows you a few things.

• It allows you to better help the people you’re serving. And I know that is one of your goals, as a Latter-day Saint woman specifically, one of your goals is to truly help people. Email will help you do that in a better way.
• It’s also going to allow you to spend more time with your family because things can happen automatically inside your email, without you doing it. When you get that tag, I can set it up so that it automatically moves you into a different sequence of emails that have to do with that topic.

That all happens automatically. I don’t have to worry about it. I have to set it up once, but then it works for me. This is where passive income becomes a reality. And by passive income, I don’t mean ‘no work.’ I don’t mean be lazy income, but I mean you can earn money while you sleep. That automation can happen while I sleep. I don’t have to be the one there physically doing it.

#4 – you can treat people like VIPs

I love, love, love doing this. I love doing it for two reasons:

1. It is more effective. It is more financially beneficial. It is better for your business. I love it for all those selfish reasons that ultimately really aren’t selfish because if all those things are true, you’re then able to help more people. Go back to episode #30, the first episode of this season, if you’re still concerned about that. I love treating people like VIP because it’s better for me.
2. But I also love treating people like VIP simply because it’s fun. I have loved doing this since I was little. I love it. I love doing this. My mom tells the story that when I was itty bitty and just starting into the nursery, so 18 months old, I would go around and just help all the little kids who were crying. I would give them toys and try to make them happy.

I remember as a child, even at 8 or 9 years old, when my mom left to go grocery shopping, I loved doing the dishes for her or vacuuming the floor. I love making people feel special and I don’t think that I am alone in that. I think that many of you enjoy that as well. I think it’s part of our nature as women to treat people like they’re special and email marketing allows you to do that.

My email subscribers get things from me that no one else gets. And it kind of makes me giddy when I get to do that for them because it is a way of me saying “thanks.” They’ve made a bigger commitment to me by joining my email list. That’s a bigger commitment than just hitting ‘like’ on an Instagram post. It is them really saying, “I trust you Misty. And I want to learn from you.” I love saying thank you to that by treating them like my VIP, because they are.

How I treat my email list like VIPs

So, I have something for you. You might already know about it, but this is one of the ways that I treat my email subscribers like a VIP. I have a product that only my email subscribers have access to. No one else can access it. You can’t find it on my website. It’s called the Product Template Vault. This vault is full of all sorts of templates that will make it easier for you to create a beautiful product for your followers.

There are templates for eCourse pages on your website, drag and drop templates that you just drag in your video and you drag in your little PDF and you have an eCourse that you can sell to people.

Same thing with eBooks. I have five eBook templates in there. I have planner page templates. I have workbook page templates. I have templates for thumbnails. I have all sorts of templates in there that will allow you to make a product that looks as beautiful as the content you’ve created inside.

I know you have stellar awesome content that you want to give to your people. So I have made it easy for you to wrap that content in a design that looks beautiful and makes people want to open it like a beautiful, beautiful gift.

The only people who have access to this are my email subscribers. Anyone can purchase all of the products/templates that are inside this vault, but they would pay $195 to purchase all of those templates. But, my email subscribers can purchase all of those templates for $49. 

If you are not yet on my email list, you need to go over to TheGoodnessSquad.com/join. This is how you get on my email list. I give you a beautiful free gift that people who aren’t on my email list do not have access to.

I love you ladies, who have trusted me enough to put your email address on my email list. So don’t delay. If you want either the Product Idea Generator or the Product Template Vault for $49 instead of $195, get yourself on my email list. Do it right now, because if you put it off you’re going to forget.

Coming Up

In the next episode, we’re going to be talking about the 3rd step that you need to take in order to turn your hobby into a full-fledged business that actually makes you money.