Email Lists: All That is Old Is New Again

How will you reach your audience if you are cancelled?

Email lists, long considered relics of the pre-social media age, are becoming increasingly important in an era when deplatforming and canceling are the norm for supposedly problematic individuals and brands. You do not own your Facebook account. Your Twitter, TikTok, and Instagram followers are not your property. All of your social media accounts, no matter how successfully personalized, are ultimately the property of the companies from which they are derived. In fact, even access to a website can be taken away if the hosting company that maintains your site decides they no longer want to connect your content to the internet. The only way to guarantee continued access to your followers, voters, and customers is to create and maintain your own email lists.

What are the Benefits of Maintaining An Email List?

• Stay In touch with your customers. No matter what. President Donald Trump was removed from Twitter after the events of January 6th, both Republicans and Democrats have claimed that algorithmic changes on Facebook have hidden their content, and all users of the Twitter alternative company Parler lost access to their followers when Amazon refused to continue hosting the site. Only a private email list could have prevented, or at least mitigated, the damage done in these situations.

• More options for creativity. While most social media platforms only allow an image or basic text an email allows a combined of both. The ability to include photos, several links, and embed video allow you to create a tool that is optimized to secure and maintain your audiences attention.

• Metrics You Can Trust. Several pieces have been written about how social media platforms such as Facebook provide metric data that may not be entirely reliable [1]. However, metrics generated by emails including open and click through rates are highly trustworthy. Further, the data can be compared to the metrics provided by the resources you divert traffic to, such as your website, to confirm fidelity.

• Personalized content for the receiver. When you post a status on Facebook or an image on Instagram, that is all that is sent to your audience. You can create several posts but the more you share in a single day, the less your audience sees. However, with emails, you can personalize the messages you send to insure the content is more likely to be well received. For example, if you are sending out a newsletter you can personalize the subject line so that constituents who are interested in taxes see a headline that frames the piece as it effects their personal financial liability while you can use another to frame the piece as appealing to environmentalists to constituents who prize those concerns above all others.

• Fostering parasocial relationships. As we have written about before, a parasocial relationship refers to a phenomenon whereby an audience forms a strong emotional bond with a public figure who they interact with solely through mass media [2]. All human brains are hardwired to trust and depend on the 100 or so people they regularly interact with because, historically, these individuals were the ones that helped keep you alive. In order to take advantage of this phenomenon, creators need to make their content appear as personal as possible. When a post is written in the third person or is clearly not written about the actor it purports to be the audience recognizes this, even if it is only on a subconscious level, and does not make a connection. However, personalized content including emails that come across as person pleas foster a connection between the sender and the receiver creating loyalty and a sense of comradery that translates into sales or votes.

The Cons of Mass Email

Nothing is perfect and this is particularly true of digital tools. Mass email, just like social media, can do more harm than good if used poorly or unintelligently

• Don’t destroy your reputation. Mass emails can be an excellent way to stay in touch with customers or constituents but it can just as easily alienate all of them. Generic and uninteresting content can very easily turn off the very audience you are trying to appeal to. Further, if you purchase an email list instead of growing it organically by soliciting and securing followers you could anger people who did not even know you existed.

• Spam. Sometimes, less is more. Spending too many messages or messages to people who never signed up to receive can, not only damages good will you have built but also, make potential patrons hostile to your product or message. Further, if you do not comply with the CAN-SPAM Act your business could be subject to legal consequences or, if you are a political figure not subject to the Act, you can find yourself punished at the polls.

• Sharing your message ain’t easy. When you start off as a business or an aspiring public figure it is tempting and perhaps even necessary to buy lists of email addresses or leads to begin your outreach project. While not necessarily a bad idea there is a chance, if you do not use a reputable provider or try to cut costs, that you will waste your money on contacts that are out of date or uninterested in the message you are trying to send. Securing the correct email addresses from the right demographics in the right geographic area may be cost more than you are willing to lay out for the project.

Overall, there are a few potential cons to using an email list for marketing. However, if you use an email list responsibly and ethically, it can be a very effective way to reach your target audience and grow your business for the reasons outlined above.

So You Decided to Mass Email

Once you have decided to deploy a mass email campaign as part of your outreach strategy it is time to select a provider. There are literally hundreds of options online but here are some of the best!

• Mailchimp is a popular email marketing platform that offers a variety of features, including email list creation, email automation, and A/B testing to determine which messaging gets the best reaction from your readers. However, there is some criticism of the product including a lack of design choices, poor customers service, and a lack of free templates to choose from for emails.

• Constant Contact is another popular email marketing platform that offers a variety of features, including email list creation, email automation, and segmentation. The company is also one of the oldest and most established in the mass email space. However, some users claim Constant Contact lacks innovation instead resting on their previous success. Further, customer service leaves much to be desired.

• ConvertKit boasts a variety of features including email list creation, email automation, and landing pages. Personally, I know several businesses that swear by their products. However, the site has been criticized for its limited metric tools, the lack of customized functions, and a low feature to price ratio compared to other mass email services.

• HubSpot is a CRM (or customer resources management) platform that offers a variety of features, including email list creation, email automation, and marketing automation. The biggest draw back to their service is the high price tag and the annual contract which locks you in. I am a big believer in CRMs in both the private and public sector but, for a first time expense, this may be too much to legitimize.

• AWeber is an email marketing platform founded in 1998 that offers a variety of features, including email list creation, email automation, and segmentation. The company also claims to have over 120,000 individuals and businesses have used the platform for their email marketing. A key thing to be aware of with regard to AWeber pricing is that both subscribed and unsubscribed contacts count as ‘billable’ subscribers. This means that even if somebody unsubscribes from your list, you’ll be charged for keeping their details in your AWeber account [3].

• ActiveCampaign is a platform that is designed for small businesses and e-commerce businesses. Their products have been very well received from first time users and offer a variety of features including email list creation, email automation, and marketing automation. However, complaint about customer service and bugs in the system are common. Most troublingly, some users have complained about billing issues which makes the customer service problem all the more anxiety inducing

No matter what program you decide to use, even if it is only an excel sheet and a Gmail account to start, mass emails are a vital tool. Ignoring the possibility that you or your business could be cut off from your social media following at any time is foolish at best and catastrophic at worst. Don’t find yourself in the digital wilderness, start a mass email program today!