Audience
5 min readThelistoutlivestheadaccount
Email is unglamorous, occasionally tedious, and the only reach in most businesses that nobody can ration.
Advertising platforms are not hostile, but they are not on your side either. Eligibility rules change, categories get restricted, costs rise, an account gets suspended over something a supplier wrote on a product page. None of that is unusual and none of it is negotiable.
Against that, a list of people who agreed to hear from you is remarkably durable. It moves between platforms. It survives a rebuild. It works on the day the ad account is under review.
Most lists are built badly
The standard approach is a ten per cent discount for an address, which reliably attracts people who wanted ten per cent off. The list grows, engagement falls, deliverability follows, and eventually somebody proposes buying a bigger list to fix it.
The alternative is to trade something that only matters to a genuine buyer: a sizing guide, a fitting tool, a specification sheet, early access to something limited. Fewer addresses, considerably better ones, and no discount habit to unwind later.
Then give people a reason to stay
A list is only an asset while people open it. That means fewer sends with more in them, a recognisable voice, and a willingness to delete the scheduled message that exists only because it was Thursday.
The test we suggest is uncomfortable and useful: would a reader notice if this month's emails had not arrived? If not, the programme is generating unsubscribes in exchange for very little.
What it is worth
The point is not that email out-earns advertising, though in mature businesses it often does. The point is that it is the part of the marketing you would still have after a bad quarter, a platform policy change or a supplier falling out with you.
Assets are not judged by their best month. They are judged by what they are worth when everything else is difficult.
If this describes a situation you are responsible for, a second opinion is the quickest way to find out how much of it applies. Ask us for one.
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