My distant aunt has a lot of opinions about fitness.

Frequently, you will find her giving me suggestions on my workout, my diet, and the vitamins that I should be consuming.

Well yeah, email marketing is a little bit like that.

When you ask a Marketer, the true purpose of email marketing, you would get a few answers like these…

  • Email marketing is for increasing your conversions
  • Email marketing is for nurturing leads
  • Email marketing is for reducing churn and so on.

Fair answers, really. Nothing wrong here.

But when you ask the experts, you get some interesting answers.

Andre Chaperon, for example, says that the primary purpose of email marketing is to build relationships with people.

And if you ask Philip Morgan, email marketing has 3 purposes.

The first two are obvious –

  1. Adding value to the clients
  2. Making an economic return for your business (In other words, sell)

But more importantly, there is a 3rd benefit to email marketing, which is perhaps more applicable for solopreneurs and freelancers than larger corporations.

3. Building expertise.

When you maintain the discipline of sending a daily or a weekly email to your list, you are forced to think. And you are forced to put these thoughts on a google doc.

And no, not stupid thoughts. But genuine thoughts, that could help the reader.

You begin to dig deeper into your expertise, desperately looking for some insight to share.

This is uncomfortable. But so good.

(Philip is on this list, and Philip if I have butchered this, I apologize.)

If you take my example, I currently do not have a product to sell to you. For now, I am not doing this for any monetary reasons whatsoever. I am using my weekly email practise for building trust and cultivating expertise.

The pressure of sending an email every Tuesday and Thursday makes me uncomfortable. In a really good way.

It forces me to think clearly. I do not want to embarrass myself in front of you. I need to look good.

And so, I need to dig deeper.

And that is when the real magic begins.

Thank you Philip for sharing this perspective.

My distant aunt has a lot of opinions about fitness.

Frequently, you will find her giving me suggestions on my workout, my diet, and the vitamins that I should be consuming.

Well yeah, email marketing is a little bit like that.

When you ask a Marketer, the true purpose of email marketing, you would get a few answers like these…

  • Email marketing is for increasing your conversions
  • Email marketing is for nurturing leads
  • Email marketing is for reducing churn and so on.

Fair answers, really. Nothing wrong here.

But when you ask the experts, you get some interesting answers.

Andre Chaperon, for example, says that the primary purpose of email marketing is to build relationships with people.

And if you ask Philip Morgan, email marketing has 3 purposes.

The first two are obvious –

  1. Adding value to the clients
  2. Making an economic return for your business (In other words, sell)

But more importantly, there is a 3rd benefit to email marketing, which is perhaps more applicable for solopreneurs and freelancers than larger corporations.

3. Building expertise.

When you maintain the discipline of sending a daily or a weekly email to your list, you are forced to think. And you are forced to put these thoughts on a google doc.

And no, not stupid thoughts. But genuine thoughts, that could help the reader.

You begin to dig deeper into your expertise, desperately looking for some insight to share.

This is uncomfortable. But so good.

(Philip is on this list, and Philip if I have butchered this, I apologize.)

If you take my example, I currently do not have a product to sell to you. For now, I am not doing this for any monetary reasons whatsoever. I am using my weekly email practise for building trust and cultivating expertise.

The pressure of sending an email every Tuesday and Thursday makes me uncomfortable. In a really good way.

It forces me to think clearly. I do not want to embarrass myself in front of you. I need to look good.

And so, I need to dig deeper.

And that is when the real magic begins.

Thank you Philip for sharing this perspective.

Intro music credits: Dan O songs.