Every few years, someone declares email dead. They've been saying it since 2010. Meanwhile, email consistently delivers the highest return on investment of any marketing channel — an average of $36 for every $1 spent.
Why Email Still Wins
You own your list. Social platforms can change their algorithm, limit your reach, or disappear entirely. Your email list is yours. No intermediary decides who sees your message.
Email is intimate. A social post competes with hundreds of others in a feed. An email arrives in a personal inbox — a space people check deliberately.
Email converts. People who open your emails are already interested. They've given you permission to contact them. This is the warmest possible audience.
Email compounds. Every subscriber you add stays until they unsubscribe. Your list grows over time, and so does its value.
The Mistakes That Kill Email
Sending too much. If you email daily and have nothing to say, people will unsubscribe — or worse, ignore you.
Sending nothing. If you collect email addresses and never send anything, people forget who you are.
Being promotional. If every email is "buy our service," you're an advertiser, not a resource.
No personality. Corporate-speak emails from "The Team" feel impersonal. Emails from a real person build real connection.
What Works for Service Businesses
The newsletter that's actually useful. Send one email per week or per month. Make it genuinely valuable — an insight, a resource, a perspective. Not a sales pitch.
The welcome sequence. When someone subscribes, send a series of 3-5 emails over the first week. Introduce yourself, share your best content, explain what you do.
The occasional offer. Once you've built trust through useful content, it's okay to make an offer. But the ratio should be 80% value, 20% offer at most.
The personal note. Occasionally, send an email that's just personal. A thought, a story, something you learned. These often get the best response because they feel human.
How to Start
- Choose an email platform
- Add a signup form to your website with a clear value proposition
- Set up a welcome sequence for new subscribers
- Commit to a schedule you can maintain
- Write genuinely useful content
- Be patient — 500 engaged subscribers outperform 5,000 who don't open
Email isn't a channel for quick wins. It's a channel for building relationships that last years.