Readers ask: What's the deal with email marketing?

Fanny from New York asks:

"What's the deal with email marketing lately? I hear a lot that I should be using email marketing in my business, but there's so much noise in my own inbox, I'm wondering if it's even worth it."

The short answer is that email marketing's definitely still worth it!

Whether you see this as good news or bad news probably depends on how you feel about emails, but the data's pretty hard to argue with:

• There are more than 4.5 billion email users world-wide.

  
  

• 90% of Americans subscribe to at least one newsletter

  
  

• 51% of consumers say email is the best way for brands to communicate with them (social media came in second at just 25%)

  
  

• Email marketing has better return-on-investment than social media: businesses get back $44 for every $1 spent on emails versus just $2.80 for every dollar spent on social media. If you're into percentages, that's more than 4,000% ROI.

(If you need a minute to recover from that last bullet point, I'd take that here.)

Here's the longer answer.

As much as I love strong data points to validate a point, my POV on the value of email marketing is more strategic and straight-forward. Every business needs to do email marketing. Mandatory, no opt-outsies.

Here are my top 5 reasons every business should be doing email marketing, even in 2025:

1. Your email list is a direct line to your audience.

   
   

   When Meta apps (What's App, Facebook, Instagram) went dark for 5 hours in 2021 due to a technical issue, businesses lost anywhere between several hundred to several thousand dollars in revenue. They never invested in any other way to connect with their audiences, so they were cut off until Meta was back online.

   
   

   Third parties sometimes fail. They also make the rules, and those rules may not always be in your best interest. When you have someone's email address, you can reach them no matter what's happening (or not) on social media.

Just don't treat email like your backup generator; it's not Plan B, it's Plan A.

2. Your email list is algorithm-free

   
   

   Aside from your website, your email list is one of the few remaining spaces online where an algorithm isn't dictating what pieces of your content reach your audience. What you send out reaches 99-100% of your audience.

It also means it's truly a #nofilter space. You don't have to tailor your voice, your style, or your content in exchange for (paltry) visibility, so you can be honest, vulnerable, and completely real with your audience. It's the human aspect people are hungry for, and it's how you build real community with people who appreciate your work, like your vibe, and have similar interests. We're talking true fans, not just followers.

3. Email doesn't silence or extort you

   
   

   Well, okay, those Nigerian princes from the 90s and the legion of digital scammers that have followed suit are trying, but email marketing itself is not a pay-to-play environment like social media.

   
   

   You're never going to check your deliverability to see that your last email only got sent to 1% of your list because you used a word the system didn't like. Your newsletter will never reach just 5% of your subscribers because you sent the email at the wrong time of day, or because your recipients didn't open the email within the first hour.

   
   

   And at least as of today, your email service provider's never going to hold 90% of your subscriber list hostage until you pay them a fee per email to "boost" a few more deliveries, or pony up for their premium feature to guarantee a 10% increase in reach. (Knock on wood)

The asinine rules we're strangled by on social media just don't apply to your

inbox.

4. Your email list is more qualified than your social media following

   Anyone who's willing to give you access to the inner sanctum of their inbox is someone who's committed to hearing from you. They said "I want to make sure I don't miss what this person's saying/doing/offering," so they forked over their email address to make sure you could always reach them. That's someone who's far more likely to support you and buy from you, than your casual fan on social media.

   
   

   Think about your own social media habits. How many people have you followed over the years because their videos were funny, or their free info was interesting? Now, how many of those people have you actually bought something from? I'm willing to bet it's less than 10% of the people and brands you're following.

That's because the human brain taps out at 150 connections. We just can't reasonably manage more than that, which means after you've given your time and attention to friends, family, co-workers, networking contacts, and your pets, there's very little room for yourself, let alone every brand vying for your attention online. You're just not that into 90% of them. But I'm willing to bet that the 10% you are that into have your email address.

5. Your email list is yours

   
   

   This is the root of it all for historically marginalized business owners. If you're still relying on social media to reach your audience, you don't own your audience. Read that again and again until it sinks in. Maybe re-read the whole article, because ownership is the big picture here.

When you have your audience's email info, you are in the driver's seat. If you're kicked off a social media platform, if it crashes, if they start charging a daily user fee tomorrow, you can keep going.

You make the rules, you say what you want, you pay no fees, and you keep engaging your community. That kind of autonomy is everything, because if you're a woman, a person of color, in the LGBTQ+ community, disabled, or part of any other marginalized group, you know what happens when someone else gets to make the rules for you. (Reminder: none of the social media platform owners fall into any of those groups.)

Caveat: This last point is not true if you're doing your email newsletters on Substack. Sorry, my friend, but ownership there is just an illusion. It's still a 3rd party.

You asked about noise in the inbox, and I want to make sure to touch on that briefly. Yes, inboxes are noisy, and all of us are signing up for more emails than we can ever reasonably read. In November 2024, 67% of consumers reported experienced marketing fatigue, and 70% of consumers reported unsubscribing from at least three brands in the past three months.

But so much of that risk is dependent on how you email (more on this in a future article). Yes, some people will probably unsubscribe from you eventually, but that just means you're letting the folks who aren't in it for the long haul see themselves out.

Your ride-or-dies will read your emails; they'll stay subscribed; they'll buy your next thing. They'll probably be a smaller number than your social media followers, but we're trading quantity for quality, and that's always a good thing.

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Have a question you'd like to ask me? Email megan.espinal@marketingbyme.co.