Email Marketing is the Ultimate Content Marketing for Driving Sales

email marketing

Email marketing is one of the MOST important types of content marketing you can do for your business…

… yet so many people overlook it or don’t give it the attention it deserves.

I heard from day one in this space (online marketing), that you need to build your email list or, as the cheesy McCheesy internet marketers will tell you, “the money is in the list.”

You can’t quite comprehend this until it starts working.

And it doesn’t start working until YOU start working it correctly.


The typical way I see most people (this was me for YEARS, so no judgment friends) do email marketing is they put up an opt-in form for a lead magnet, create a follow-up email to send said lead magnet, then they go about their lives.

They may or may not email their list (once in a blue moon or when they have something to sell), and keep doing the same ol’ same ol, expecting a different result (we all know what Einstein said about that, right?).

Or worse, every single time they email it starts with an apology because it’s been so long since they’ve emailed.

Confession: I did that way too many times.

I’m going to make a bold statement here and say that email marketing is probably MORE important than content marketing.

And you know how I feel about content marketing. 😍

Here’s a little analogy to put things in perspective for you.

I’m writing this towards the end of July 2020. We’ve been in the depths of COVID-19 for a few months now and it doesn’t seem to be getting any better in the U.S. (for the sake of all of our sanity, I’ll leave the politics and opinions out of that).

How many local and small businesses are suffering because of not being able to serve their customers at their physical locations?

What do you think their businesses would look like if they had a quality list of email subscribers they had a relationship with and had been communicating, marketing, and selling to all along?

Your email list is an ASSET.

Facebook is NOT.

You don’t own Facebook or any other social media platform for that matter. Even if you’ve gone all-in with YouTube, which we know has massive value, you need to make sure your videos are on your website as well (even if they’re hosted on YouTube have some original content that supports the video).

Email marketing is content marketing that drives sales. 

Content marketing (blogs, podcasts, videos) all drive sales, but they’re definitely the long game.

Add email marketing to all three of those mediums and it can be gold for you AND your subscribers.


In looking at email marketing statistics, I thought these two were most important in sharing. The first one shows that email marketing still works and is worth doing:

“Roughly 80% of marketers have reported an increase in email engagement over the past 12 months. “
(HubSpot, 2020)
(Source: https://www.hubspot.com/marketing-statistics)

This second statistic is kind of self-explanatory, but isn’t this why we do marketing in the first place?

We need to see an ROI on our activity (and of course you should do marketing for brand awareness, value, etc. as well, but it should all lead to increased sales).

“Email marketing has the highest return on investment for small businesses.
(Campaign Monitor, 2019) (Source: https://www.hubspot.com/marketing-statistics)

Getting Started

If you have an email opt-in on your website, but you’re not consistently email marketingemailing or selling via email, then this is for you too. Don’t assume I’m only talking to the new online marketer and business owner who is new to this.

While I’ve gotten way better at email marketing than I was when I started, it wasn’t until we launched the Content Creators Planner that I started getting ridiculously excited about it.

Even if you don’t think you’re a good writer or have enough to say, I can promise you that with practice it will get much easier.

Let’s imagine something for a moment, shall we?

What if, instead of a generic lead magnet, you had a clear call-to-action that provided something really valuable, where you also segmented your subscribers at the point of opt-in?

Once you collected their name and email address, they were taken to a Thank You page that had some simple instructions for getting their download as well as something for sale?

Then they were put on a specific list and were sent a well-crafted, thought out series of emails that created a relationship, and then you offered them something for sale at the end of the sequence?

This doesn’t have to be some high-ticket, expensive offering. 

But it SHOULD be something relative to why they signed up in the first place, so you’re in alignment with the customer journey.

Here’s an example of what this might look like:

email marketing

To make it easier on your eyes, here’s what this looks like:

  1. Quality lead magnet ==>
  2. Thank you page with instructions + offer ==>
  3. Added to email list and tagged (segmented) in your email provider ==>
  4. Email #1 goes out (the day after – value-based and provides a link to lead magnet again) ==>
  5. Emails #2-4, provide value & connect, send a couple days apart from previous email ==>
  6. Email #5 – makes another offer (you can offer the same thing if they didn’t take you up on the Thank You page OR offer the next logical product or service

Before we continue, think about what that could do for your business.

What if you sold ONE offer a day, based on your thank you page or the follow-up sequence?

Think about it, one $27 offer x 30 days =$810

Now I know that’s not enough to retire on, but what if you then invested that $810 in targeted ads? Heck, take $300 of that and invest it in a $10 a day ad campaign. It WORKS.

*NOTE*
Unless you are super familiar with running paid traffic, there is going to be a learning curve here as well. The goal, of course, is new subscribers, but initially, you’ll be paying for data.

I can tell you that the more time you spend getting clear on your audience, message, and copy, the better the ad will do.

Back to email marketing.

Time to start sending

Once you’ve started growing your list, it’s imperative to start sending regular emails.

Start small and work your way up. 

Start with ONE email a week. If you haven’t been emailing, don’t jump in and start a newsletter that will require a fancy layout, lots of research, links, and writing.

Keep it simple.

One message, one call to action.

And be prepared for:

  • It to be harder than you think
  • It to take longer than you expect
  • People to unsubscribe
  • People to ignore or not click through on anything
  • To see no results… for a while

BUT…

You WILL see results.

Without a responsive list of subscribers, you are going to be in an uphill battle for the rest of your online career.

You’ll spend all this time creating amazing content and courses that your audience needs, but they won’t have a relationship with you so they probably won’t buy from you (or open your emails).

I’ve said this so many times, but getting better at writing is one of the best things you can do for your online business.

Even if you focus on audio or video.

Being able to write in a way that inspires action is the core of ALL marketing.

And it starts with your email list.

Do something every day to grow your email list.


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