Is Email Dead? 3 Marketing Myths That’ll Destroy Your Business — If You Let Them

Today we are talking about one of my favorite tools in the whole world, especially if you're a small business owner, you're an entrepreneur, or you're a freelancer who likes to make money and make a difference with your business. Now, this is the one area that I see people consistently neglecting, and I can't believe it because it's the one that makes you the most money if you do it right. And so I've been talking about this for, my goodness, over 20 years now, and I keep talking about it because it keeps making good money and people keep ignoring it more and more. 

So, you wanna know what it is? I'm gonna tell you, it's email marketing. So look, before you go to another video or shut this thing off, I wanna bust three common myths that I hear all the time about the power of email marketing because I want you to start making more money in your business. 

Myth number one is that email marketing is dead and all the action is on social media. Have you heard this one before? My goodness, I've heard it all the time. It could not be further from the truth. Let me tell you something. I've been running a very profitable business for 22 years, and email is still the number one way that we convert prospects into buyers. We let people know what's happening, we get them into our business, excited about our business, and we deliver results. So don't let anyone tell you that. 

And it's not just my opinion. I got some good stats to back this up. Stat number one. So email ROI stat from 2022. That is this year. You can make $36 for every $1 spent. I don't know about you, but I will spend $1 to make $36 all damn day. 77% of marketers have seen an increase in their email engagement over the last 12 months. And get this email, marketing revenue is estimated to reach almost $11 billion. Yes, that's with a B, by the end of 2023. 

And look, even if you don't believe the stats, you have to understand this. If all you're doing is building your audience on social media, you are building your business on rented property. That is a very risky proposition. If Mr. Zuckerberg, the people that own the TikTok, or any other social platform out there decide to change their algorithms, or they just don't like what you're posting on your network, or they even go down, which happened, I guess it was a year or two ago, guess what? You are fubared, right? You're not able to reach your customers when you want to because you don't own that connection. That is completely not an issue when you do email marketing properly. You can make money every single time you send out an email if you do it right. So don't let anybody tell you that social media is where all the best marketing is done. It is not. Your email marketing should still be your number one priority. 

Okay? Email marketing myth number two is I just don't have enough people on my email to make a difference. What's the point? It's so small. So I think this is all about small list shame, quite honestly. And again, it's a huge myth. So first of all, I started out my list with zero people on it, nobody. And then the way I built it up was actually using a yellow legal pad. So when I was still a fitness instructor and I was a Nike elite dance athlete, I would go around teaching different classes. And at the end of class, people would inevitably ask me like, Hey, Marie, what else you got going on? What else are you doing? And I would pull out a little pad. So this is not a yellow legal pad, but it's pretty close. And I just had my little pen and my pad and I would get people to sign up for my email list. So I had dozens, then hundreds of people, then a few thousand people on my list, and we just grew it over time. But here's the thing, you don't need to have a gajillion people on your email list for it to be profitable and impactful in your business. And I've got proof. 

So I wanna read you some results from my Copy Cure students. The first one is from Girija. She says, “I have a super small list, 66 people to be precise, and I converted 15 of them into paying clients.” Shauna, she's a health coach in Costa Rica. She said, “I've sold a thousand dollars worth of product in two weeks to a small list of only 305 subscribers.” Ashley, who's a web designer, said, “I have no doubt that my five figure launch to a list of 400 people was due to the sales emails I wrote. The sales came in within hours of the email going out.” So if you don't have many people on your list, do not let that stop you from taking your email marketing seriously. If you're someone who wants more prosperity, more freedom, and more happiness in your business, focus on your email. 

Okay, email marketing. Myth number three is that emails just annoy people. My goodness. So I've been teaching marketing for a very long time now, and especially when it comes to big hearted, really good business owners who are trying to make their way in the world. One of the most common refrains I hear is something like this, “But Marie, I don't wanna annoy people. I don't wanna be aggressive. I don't want people to feel like I'm pushing them into things.” You gotta stop that. When people give you their name and their email address, when they have said yes to hearing from you, they actually wanna hear from you, right? As long as you're sending really good quality emails, helping them get results that they are very interested in, they are gonna be happy that they're looking at an email from you in their inbox. And I've got proof for this one too. 

So I'm gonna read this from one of our Copy Care students. Her name is Sena, and she says, 

So I wanna share Sena’s words directly with you. Here's what she wrote. 

“Way back when we first launched the website, I launched the email list right alongside it. At the beginning, I only had, like, 40 people on that list. And as my list organically grew, I put more time and energy into it. That's when I took The Copy Cure — so I could learn how to write to people outside of my little bubble. I could see that email was working, and I figured if I could get better at it, it would work even better. I continued to email twice a month with an average of $500 in sales per email for the remainder of the year. To stay consistent, I just thought of it as getting paid $500 per email and kept going. That was with a list of well under 1000. Fast forward to today. I email consistently every week and our average sales per email and list size have both increased by 10x. I consider email sales to be our "secret sauce" and I know our business wouldn't be where it is without it.” 

Look, people expect to hear from you If you are a business who has set up the expectations, right? If you're doing your email marketing right? I often say this, and you might be watching this video right now because of this very email. So we've been emailing out consistently on Tuesdays, my goodness, for decades, and I let people know, unless it's one of the set weeks of the year when we take company downtime, and I do too. So we let people know that about in advance. If you don't get an email from me on Tuesday, I'm probably dead. That's how important consistency is. And if you don't think that's true, again, I gotta teach you how to do this email marketing thing better so you can have more money, more freedom, and more impact in your business. 

Okay, so now that we've busted the three common myths about writing email, you know what you need next? To write better emails. That's right. You need to up level your skill set here because I promise you, if you give this a little effort, you give this a little attention, you will see more money, you'll see more happy customers, and you will experience more prosperity and more freedom in your business. It is that simple. So if you want my help in training you in this very amazing, incredible skill set, you need to check out The Copy Cure. It is open right now. It's not open much longer, but it's our flagship writing program. It comes with a money back guarantee. We got stories out the wazoo of how many people have not only improved their writing, and there's more flow and it's more fun, and they never run out of ideas, but they're making a lot more money in less time. 

So you owe it to yourself to go check it out. I'm sure there's a link somewhere in this video. Or you could just Google search “Marie Forleo thecopycure.com,” and I hope you join us. It would be my honor to show you, because you worked so hard already, how to be more effective at what you do. The world really does need to hear what you have to say and your customers do want it. So until next time, stay on your game and keep going for your big dreams because the world really does need that very special gift that only you have. Thanks so much for tuning in, and I'll catch you next time. 

Okay, now before you go, now that you know how important writing great emails is, you gotta be consistent with it. So that means you need to watch this episode right here. It'll teach you everything you need to know about how to write great content consistently. Go watch it right now.

You are absolutely a writer, because if you write once a month, guess what happens by the end of that year? You’ve written 12 days. And I know you can do a lot of beauty in 12 days, because I’ve done it too.