If you strip me down everything (I meant marketing tools). Take everything I got. And leave me with just one marketing weapon...

What do you think I'll pick?

Not my social media. YouTube channel. Current rankings online. My business contacts. Or the ability to use paid advertising to turn profit.

I would choose email.

Why?

Email outperforms every other marketing channel there is. The biggest mistake that businesses make is not building an email list from day one.

  • Google can penalize your site, change its algorithm and put you out of business.
  • TikTok can suddenly decide your post is no good and ban you.
  • Good luck with Facebook's (META) support whenever you need anything.

I mean, just this morning, our Instagram channel got hacked – just as I'm writing this!

Unknown posts kept appearing on our Instagram channel

But you own your email list. Nobody can take it away.

Never leave your business in somebody else's hands. If you build your audience on some external platform, you're at their mercy. (I wasted hours this morning investigating the hack, logging devices out, etc.)

Tried email. Didn't work.

There are 3 big reasons why email marketing didn't work for you.

  1. You see it as a broadcast channel. Email marketing doesn't work for many people because they treat it as a broadcast channel. Malaysians go so far calling it a "blast" – "WhatsApp blast", "Email blast". Use email to communicate with your audience, not blast them. Jeez..
  2. You beautify your emails too much. Contrary to popular belief, your emails should look as plain as possible. Who sends those beautified, designed emails that look like a webpage? Businesses! And what do businesses do? Sell, sell and sell. On the flipside, we open emails from our friends and families. Those emails? They are extremely plain.
  3. You're boring. Poeple live boring lives. They scroll on TikTok and Instagram wanting to be entertained. They have ordinary friends and boring jobs. They want to be entertained! Be that person in their life who brings them some spice, entertainment and excitement - that whenever they see your email pop up, they sweat in excitement and get excited to read.

Start your email list now

We use Enginemailer to build our email lists. It makes it effortless to do email right.

You can start with a free Enginemailer account here. Use code "CMOMAILER10K" to remove the 500 daily emails limit.

And keep an eye on your inbox because very soon we’ll be hosting a hands-on workshop with Enginemailer where we’ll dive into everything you need to turn plain-text emails into must-open conversations.

Stay tuned for the upcoming workshop and have a wonderful evening.

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