Email outperforms every other marketing channel online.

Email is the absolute best conversion mechanism that exists in the history of internet marketing.

According to a 2014 study by McKinsey and Company, for every dollar you put into email marketing you get back 40X more than you would through Facebook, Instagram, and almost every other marketing channel.

Remember the time when you could post something on your Facebook page and it would actually be shown to all of your Fans?

That’s long gone. Facebook changed the rules. Now you have to pay to reach your fans, even if you originally also paid to acquire them in the first place.

You don't really OWN that customer relationship. Facebook does. Similarly for Twitter, Pinterest and the other networks.

The platform owner's decisions can at any time rob you of your access to your fans and followers. When you are using the social networks, you're essentially building your foundation on someone else's land. Land that you don’t own.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying that you shouldn't be using the social networks at all. Certainly they are great media to connect with your audience and reach new people.

However, when building a long-term sustainable business, you MUST also build an asset that you actually own and control yourself and that cannot be taken away. YOUR USER/CUSTOMER BASE.

The key to long-term success is building solid customer relationships by keeping regular contact with your prospects, users and customers and turning them into long-term supporters.

Instead of buying from you just one time, they'll keep coming back for more.

This way you will increase the lifetime value of your customers.

Email should be integral part of your overall communications and engagement strategy. Giving one's email and agreeing to receive further communication also indicates much stronger interest than just tapping "Follow" or "Like".

That's why email can be more effective asset to you than social media. Email can provide a way to form a closer tie with your audience by providing different type of content than is possible through social media.

Also, have you noticed that every single social media service & network out there USES EMAIL to connect with their users and get them back to their service?!

Those guys have great, engaging platforms, yet they still use email - so it must be working very well for them (and rest assures, it is).

Once you have a relationship with your customers over email, you can send them to Facebook. You can send them to Pinterest. Or wherever.

I’ll take someone with 5000 email subscribers anytime over someone spending $10,000/day on Facebook ads.

I’ll take the e-mail list because that has the relationship. (Of course, if it’s a poor relationship, it still won’t produce anything.)

Also, according to research, 52% of B2B buyers need to see 2-4 pieces of content before making a purchase decision. 28% of them view 5-7 pieces of content before making a decision.

It takes a lot of advertising money if you have to do an ad for each of those interactions.

For communicating with an audience in scale in way that’s cost-efficient – and most importantly – is personal and builds and nurtures the relationship, there’s no better way than email.

Email's perfect for earning attention and building trust.

Sure, you can treat your subscribers as a faceless mass and just transactionally push promotion after promotion to the them. But that’s a big mistake.

The best marketers use email as a way to interact with and learn from their audience and customers, building relationships.

In many ways email as a medium is really similar to the art of direct mail marketing, which was perfected over decades in the snail mail era.

But there's one key difference and advantage. 

Email allows for an extremely easy way for your audience to reply to you, to start a conversation. For marketers – and anyone who is genuinely interested in learning about and helping people – this is golden.

The feedback and conversations allow you to learn about who your subscribers are, what are their desires, wants and needs. Then you can identify patterns and solve one or more of the problems your audience has.

That leads to high growth businesses.

Sometimes I get this:

"But Miiiiiiikkaaaa... the teenagers or millennials don’t use email anymore! They only use these Instant messaging services, Snapchat and whatnot…! Email is dying."

Well, you know what do you call a millennial who doesn't use email?

Unemployed.

Yes, surely if your main target customers REALLY are the teenagers (quite rare), perhaps you don’t need email marketing. But with that target audience you also have any other things to worry about (like not having any means of payment; or money at all).

Even these teenager “digital natives” or “born digital" will have to use email when they enter higher education or the workforce.

Finally, usually the 25-and-above age segments have the most available money anyway and thus make up the main paying audience. That's true even for online and mobile games (which many mistakenly think rely on teenager spending – dead wrong.)

Ok, So HOW I shift my email marketing to high gear?

Maybe you know you need to start email marketing right now.

Most business owners say they regret not starting email list building and email marketing sooner. It's that effective. (when done right, that is)

Maybe you need to amp up what you’re doing (because your competitors will).

Maybe you have an email list, but don't know what to do with it. “What could I possibly send out to these folks?”

You could just go and do things on your own and learn as you go.

But don’t be like this guy:

A classic mistake, unfortunately... He’ll need to find some other service since he won’t be using Mailchimp again anytime soon.

Your time is the most expensive resource. Don't waste it.

Missed sales revenue i.e. opportunity costs is frustrating as well.

And whatever you do, don't break the trust of your audience and customers (like the above Mailchimp guy).

If you’re the kind of startup founder / ecommerce store owner / C-level executive who is:

• willing to invest in their business and in accelerated learning to become better and grow their business faster

• committed to helping your customers succeed

• have a business with some kind of positive social value, impact and vision (not just buying low and selling high whatever to make money)

• generally a friendly and nice person