Jenny (00:28)
If you've ever heard someone say that you need an email list to help grow your business, but you're doubtful about whether that's true or not, listen up. In this episode, I'm outlining why people say that you should have an email list, statistics about this particular marketing technique that will probably change your mind about how important it is.
And I'll be sharing how I personally use an email list in my own business to grow it and earn revenue from it every single year. But first off, before we dive in, let's just go over what the heck email marketing actually is. Email marketing is a type of digital marketing that is just simply sending emails to a group of people or in the way we say it in the marketing world is to an audience.
And you're doing this to develop relationships with potential customers, connect with people and promote your products or services. And most people use an email marketing service provider or software to do this. Email marketing is great because it can be used to build brand awareness. can increase customer loyalty and trust because you're allowing your audience to get to know you on a deeper level than just social media.
You can also use it to inform customers about new products or discounts or sales or launches or whatever you have going on in your business and educate those customers about what you do, what your values are, what your products and services are, and really helps customers make purchasing decisions. So if they get to know you through your email list, they'll be way more likely to buy from you.
rather than some other flower farmer that they don't really know anything about or don't have any connection to at all. It's basically just a way to reach your customers and communicate with them apart from things like social media. And okay, I'm just going to spoil this whole episode for you upfront and just give you my two cents about social media versus email marketing. I believe that you need an email list and to focus on email marketing. And here is why.
I just see so many people focusing so hard on social media and they completely neglect building an email list. But social media followers can be such a vanity metric. A vanity metric is just a statistic that looks impressive, but it doesn't really provide any meaningful insights or information about a business's performance or it might not even be moving the needle at all for your business.
And while a really good social media presence can help boost awareness and it can be great for marketing to make people aware of your business, followers and likes on social media are really just vanity metrics because they're easy to manipulate and they're often out of your control. I don't think that they mean a whole lot when it comes to the bottom line of your business. Like I said, I think it can be helpful, but I personally have friends that have
So many social media followers, like hundreds of thousands, close to a million social media followers in my business with right now we have about 8,000 social media followers makes way more money than them. And it has been making way more money than them since I had like three or $4,000 or I'm sorry, three or 4,000 social media followers. And so I really don't think that the amount of social media followers you have.
will equate to dollars in the bank. However, I do think that the amount of email subscribers you have directly equates to money in the bank. And I am 100 % honest about that. As I've seen my email list grow over the years, I have seen the money that I make, overall revenue in my business, and of course from my email list grow every single year. So I think that that is important and it does make a difference.
Another thing about social media is you do not know the algorithm. I do not, I certainly do not. I am not a social media expert. Others do not. And even for people who claim that they do, I don't think really do.
I think that meta is the only one that knows, and they're probably changing it all the time. And we are just little peons playing their little game and the algorithms will change at some point. Like remember Instagram, if any of you had an Instagram before reels, it was so different back then, in my opinion, so much easier and way less time consuming, but you used to be able to just like post a picture of Dally is that you took on your iPhone when you were rushing through harvest and it would get a thousand likes. now.
You post a picture and like two people see it, but if you spend an hour making a reel, like maybe a hundred people will see it. Maybe not. It's so up in the air. And, so I'm just, if you can't tell, I'm not a fan of social media, but my whole point is algorithm will probably change at some point and you don't want to be left in the dust. you're solely relying on marketing your business through social media, here's the thing.
You do not own your social media followers. And that sounds weird. Me saying that you don't own your followers. But what I mean by that is you don't own your contact list. You have no way of contacting your followers. If whatever social media channel you're on goes down. So if Instagram all of a sudden crashed or is made illegal or shut down suddenly for some reason, and all these things have happened with different social media platforms in the past, and there's no reason why it can't happen in the future. But if something.
like that happened and you needed to get in touch with your followers to tell them about an upcoming sale or a product launch you have coming up. You would have no way of getting in contact with them. Now with an email list, people on your list have given you permission to have their contact information and email them. So you actually own these contacts. You have that physical contact of their email. It's a business asset of yours.
So if the rest of the social media world changes and all of a sudden to like long form video or one second videos or whatever nonsense is coming up next, like I can't even imagine, like you would still have a way to reach them. And I'm not saying that social media isn't a great tool and it isn't a great thing to use. I'm just saying, I don't think it's great to rely on it 100%. I think that an email list is really important and an important piece of your marketing strategy. So here are some stats for you.
Only about four to 6 % of your social media followers see your posts on average. That's a, that's pretty low. Okay. Now my personal email open rates fall between 50 and 60%. Okay. So that is a really drastic difference there. So let's just say that a hypothetical situation, let's say you have a social media following of a thousand followers. have a thousand followers on Instagram.
And you also have a thousand people on your email list. If you put out a post or let's say you just put out a communication, you email your list and you put a post about the same thing on social media. If only 4 % of people on average see your social media posts, that means about 40 people will see your post and even less will engage with that. But if you're like me and you have a 60 % open rate on your email list, that means six
100 people will see your email. So if you want to sell some flowers, that is a pretty stark difference. Think 40 people versus 600 people. So as you can see, you have way more control over your email list and communicating with your audience, with your followers, well, not your followers, but with your email list subscribers and your potential customers through your email list than you will ever have control through social media.
So not to mention for every dollar you spend on average on email marketing, you will get about a $41 in return. Okay. You don't get that kind of crazy return on investment and any other kind of marketing that I'm aware of. Like that is literally crazy. And that is why I really focus on my email list, building my email list and email marketing. I also love the email because.
I feel like social media is very like quick, like just a few seconds to get like in front of people's eyes. And I find it not as genuine as building in a relationship with someone via email, or it can be more long form where you can be more personal and you can really get to know someone better over email, than on social media, in my opinion, like you might feel differently. It might be different for you, but I think that it's a little bit easier to do via email. Now, just from a time perspective,
Jenny (09:32)
Hey, I'm interrupting this conversation really quick to ask you an important question. Do you love the growing part of flower farming, but find that selling is a real struggle? I get it. We didn't become flower farmers because we love sitting behind a desk, writing marketing copy, or crunching numbers all day. And yes, even me, your go-to business person, of course I would rather be out in the greenhouse than sitting on my computer doing quote unquote business tasks. But here's the thing.
The selling and marketing and the business side is what's going to make your flower farm successful. You could grow the most beautiful flowers in the world, but if you don't develop the skills to market and sell them, well, you won't be in business for long. So if you're like me and you'd much rather be out in the field getting your hands dirty, working in the sunshine and cutting bucket loads of flowers, but you know you gotta market and sell your flowers to make a profit.
but you're maybe just not sure what that looks like, how to do it, how to find the time, or where to even start, then listen up.
It's time to take your business to the next level. My online business course called Six Figure Flower Farming is launching the first week of January and to celebrate, I'm hosting a free flower marketing masterclass called What to Do When You Love Growing Flowers but Selling is a Struggle, Three Steps to Master Flower Farm Marketing Without Spending All Day on Social Media. This masterclass will cover how marketing and selling
doesn't have to feel sleazy or salesy, and how to make a genuine connection with your potential customers, how to actually find time to market and sell your flowers between all your farming to-dos, how to feel confident with what actually works for hyper local flower farm businesses, and how to get the most bang for your buck. And you can learn how to do.
all of this without spending all day on social media, wondering how the hell to get more customers or feeling scared or afraid of selling and putting yourself out there. So this free masterclass training is for you if you're tired of wasting time on social media marketing that doesn't work, you feel like you have zero time for marketing and selling yourself and you want a clear path to easily sell your flowers.
Plus, if you show up to this live training, you'll get a free bonus, my favorite business book list that has a list of the books that literally changed my life. But you only get that bonus if you show up live to the masterclass training. You can sign up for this free masterclass by heading to www.trademarkfarmer.com forward slash masterclass. I'll put a link in the show notes of this episode so you can just click it and head over to sign up. All you gotta do is stick your name, email in there and you'll be in.
So go to trademarkfarmer.com forward slash masterclass or click the link in the show notes of this episode. Now back to our regularly scheduled conversation.
Jenny (12:27)
Now, just from a time perspective,
If you spend an hour posting a reel every day on social media, that means you spend about seven hours a week posting something that will be gone within 24 hours, usually like disappeared.
The lifespan of social media posts is so short, depending on the platform you're using anywhere from 24 to 48 hours on average. Okay. So you put all this effort, you put an entire hour into, you know, writing a script for a reel, filming the reel, you know, editing it, putting it out there. And then like the algorithm decides that it doesn't want to show it to everyone. And then it's gone within 24 hours. Like to me, that's really hard for me to spend a lot of time on something like that, that I'm not really sure is moving the needle.
Meanwhile, with email marketing, if you send one email week, which is pretty average, and you spend one hour a week on it, that's only one hour versus seven hours a week, and 55 % more people see it, like that is just a complete no-brainer for me. Like that is why I am focusing on email marketing far beyond social media marketing. And like I said, I'm not saying that social media isn't good. I think it is a great business tool.
But I personally do not think that you should be relying on it solely for marketing purposes. I really believe truly that email marketing moves the needle in businesses as far as bringing in revenue, getting reliable customers, forming relationships with your customers far better than social media.
Email marketing just moves the needle for me so much more. So here is an example of that, how I actually use email marketing in my business. So I told you already that at the farmer's market, we have a little sign that says, you you could win a free bouquet because we give away a bouquet every month to one of our email subscribers. So we have people sign up all the time and then we give away something every month and it's really doesn't cost us hardly anything. have extra flowers usually.
And so it creates a lot of excitement and we are able to build our email list in that way. And we have a lot of other ways that we build our email list, but that one is just a super simple, easy way to get started getting people on your email list. And then once we get those people on our list, we send out emails. Usually now we send them about once or twice a month. So I'm not sending emails to my retail flower customers every single week, although I think it's great if you do that.
But we send them out pretty frequently just to give them updates. give them information about flower arranging. We give them behind the scenes information about the flowers and the farm and things that they're genuinely interested in. And then when it comes time for us to have a promotion, we use our email list to sell that promotion. So we promote our flower CSA, for example, every November.
We push our flower CSA and subscription for holiday sales. make a great holiday gifts, but sometimes when I post about it on social media, gets like zero reach and it's so frustrating. And I really think that they, you know, they being the social media gurus, gods, whatever. think that they suppress promotional posts. Like I'm no expert on social media, but it sure seems that way because they want you to pay for ads. So if you're promoting something.
They're in the business of getting money through advertisements. And so they want your money to promote that ad. But with my email list, you know, I have a 50 to 60 % email open rate. And when I send an email out about my flower CSA, about 50 to 60 people on my list, open that email, see it, read it, and they can make a decision on whether they want to purchase or not. Every year we do well over 75.
$1,000 in revenue solely from our email list. Just, just from our email list. That's for me sending out email promotions for things like our Flower CSA, our Dally YouTubers, wholesale flower sales, and Mother's Day promotions, you know, things like that. We're sending out promotions to our email list and people click through that email to buy something. So that is a lot of money that we are making from our email list. And I will tell you,
I make a fraction of that from social media. Like, I don't know the exact number actually because it's so small, but it's like a tiny, tiny sliver. So I'm actually making the bulk of my sales from our email list and from email list marketing and promotion. So all of this to say, you should start an email list.
But how do you start an email list? Well, I'll tell you. You just start collecting email addresses. You don't have to make it any more complicated than that. I told you how I get our emails or our email list subscribers just from putting out a sign at our farmers market. When I talk to customers or I meet customers, I ask them, you like to be on our email list? I usually give them a little freebie or promotion or I tell them they could win a bouquet.
or something like that. But we also set up lead magnets or freebies or opt-ins, all the different words for the same thing through my website. And I promote these things on social media. So you're basically giving away a freebie, something that they would like. And when they sign up for the freebie, they're also signing up for your email list. And this is a great way to grow your email list, to get more people involved in your business and to create
a more loyal audience. And you know, these freebies and opt-ins are more advanced email marketing technique. You know, there's a bunch of software that goes along with that technical tips, tech strategies. And I teach all that in my online course called Six Figure Flower Farming, which opens for registration this year on January 1st, 2025. So that's something that interests you. You could get on the wait list to be notified when registration opens at
trademarkfarmer.com forward slash S F F F. There's also a link in the show notes if you want to get on that wait list. But the main thing is to just get started collecting emails from customers so you can start connecting with customers when they're not standing right in front of you. And that will help you start building a solid relationship with them. So this is great for people who
see customers face to face, like if you go to a farmer's market, you can tell your customers, hey, at the farmer's market coming up this weekend, we're gonna have X, Y, and Z, or we're doing a promotion on whatever. And they'll be able to communicate with you when you're not standing right in front of them. So it's a great way to connect with your customers when you're not personally there with them or when they're not on social media. And so the conclusion here is, you know, that's about it. We just talked about...
why people say that you should have an email list, the statistics about email marketing versus social media marketing, how I personally use an email list in my own business that really moves the needle and increases my bottom line, and how to start your email list. You you don't have to make it more complicated than it has to be. And honestly, when you have a local business, like a local flower farm, and you're face to face with local people, you just simply ask them to get on your email list.
And this applies to you no matter who you serve. If you are selling direct to florists, I assume that you would want your florist emails so you can email them an availability list every week, or you can communicate with them about what kind of flowers you have coming up for sale or any sales or promotions you have when you have a big flush of, know, listening at this or whatever. If you're a farmer florist, and even if you feel like you're only serving those customers when you're doing a wedding or something like once.
Through your email list, you can be in contact with them for anything else that you sell.
So even if you are a farmer forest and you only sell one kind of wedding package and you feel like the clients you serve, will only ever sell them one thing in their lifetime, and that is that wedding package, I still think you should have an email list. Because you can form a really deep relationship with them, you can send them emails on
how to choose your color palettes or what flowers are in season when your wedding is happening or just send them a newsletter giving them information about weddings and how to make their life easier and more information about your florals and what to expect. And when they get that kind of communication and care and service from you, from that email list,
they're going to be way more likely to refer you to all of their friends and all their family that have weddings coming up or are going to be engaged someday than if you didn't do that. So I think an email list is important for just about anybody out there, regardless of what kind of business you have.
Yes, the answer is a resounding, very loud yes. So I am telling you today to go take action right now and if you haven't already started your email list, to go start your email list and to start building it now. If you need help with this, with the tech, the software, how to, how to engage your list, what to send them,
Join my online business course. It's called six figure flower farming and registration for that opens on January 1st, 2025. And you can get on the wait list for that. So, you know, when it opens at trademark farmer.com forward slash S F F F, or you can click the link in the show notes so you can get on the wait list there. Thanks for being here. I really hope that this was helpful for you. And I really hope that you go start your email list now.
So I'll see you next time on the Six Figure Flower Farming Podcast.
Jenny (22:13)
One last thing, don't forget to sign up for the free masterclass training happening the first week of January. It's called what to do when you love the growing part, but selling is a struggle. Three steps to master flower farm marketing without spending all day on social media. Sign up now at trademarkfarmer.com forward slash masterclass, or by clicking the link in this episode show notes. And you probably already know this, but I struggled so hard with marketing my business when I first started.
which is why I'm doing this free training because I want you to have the tools you need to thrive. So go to trademarkfarmer.com forward slash masterclass or click the link in this episode show notes. And I really hope I see you there.
