Your Greatest Conversion Asset Isn't Social Media... It's This
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My last newsletter was about why launches get quieter over time... how that first win often comes from your warmest audience, and how by the second or third launch, you're posting to people who've already bought, already decided it wasn't for them, or never saw your content in the first place.
The response to that piece told me a lot. So many of you are sitting with neglected email lists. Or lists you never built in the first place because social media felt more urgent, more visible, more like where the action was.
And I understand the pull toward social media. It's great for visibility because it's where the people are. It's where you can get discovered, build a following, reach more people than you ever could any other way. Email can even feel old-fashioned by comparison... like something you'll get around to once you've built an audience somewhere else.
But that assumption costs you years of progress you can never get back.
Borrowed Land
Your social media following isn't yours. You're building on borrowed land.
The platform owns the relationship. The algorithm decides who sees your content. And the rules can change overnight... have changed overnight, repeatedly, for years now... in ways that tank your visibility with no warning and no recourse.
I've watched creators with hundreds of thousands of followers launch something and only sell a few. I've watched accounts get shadowbanned, reach plummet, engagement disappear... all because something shifted in how the platform decides what to show people.
Your email list is the only part of your business you truly own.
When someone joins your email list, you have their contact information. You can reach them directly, without an algorithm deciding whether they're worthy of seeing your message.
If your email platform shuts down tomorrow, you can export that list and take it somewhere else. If Instagram changes its algorithm again... and it will... your ability to reach your email subscribers stays exactly the same.
Email is your anchor. Not because it's exciting or trendy, but because it's yours. And in a landscape where everything else can shift overnight, that matters.
The Intimacy of Email
I talked with a client recently about her marketing, and she mentioned something her assistant had noticed, "It's funny, because people respond to my emails like they think I'm emailing them directly. They write back like we're having a conversation."
That's not an accident.
When someone opens your email, they're opening it in the same place they receive messages from their friends, their family, their colleagues.
They're in a private space. They chose to open it. They're giving you a kind of attention that's fundamentally different from scrolling past your post in a feed full of other posts competing for the same glance.
Social media is consumptive... Like people watching at a party. Email is conversational, like going to coffee with a friend.
At a party, you're competing with everyone else in the room. The music is loud. People are distracted. You might catch someone's attention for a moment, but then something else pulls them away.
In a conversation, you have someone's presence. They're looking at you. They're listening. They might respond.
Email converts at rates social media never will. It's not just about ownership... it's about the quality of attention.
When someone reads your email, they're reading it.
When someone scrolls past your Instagram post, they might have registered it for half a second before the next thing grabbed them.
The Consumption Problem
Instagram was built for consumption. For years, you couldn't even put a link anywhere except your bio. The whole platform was designed around scrolling, liking, maybe commenting... but not clicking, not buying, not taking action. People were trained to consume, not convert.
That expectation is baked in now. When people open Instagram, they're in consumption mode. They're there to scroll. To watch reels. To see what's happening. They're not there to make decisions.
So when you ask them to do something... link in bio, comment to get this, sign up for my thing... you're fighting against the entire psychology of why they're on the platform in the first place.
You're asking them to shift from passive scrolling to active decision-making. That's a big ask when someone is lying on the couch half-watching TV.
Email doesn't have this problem. People expect emails to have a point. They expect to be asked to do something. The medium itself prepares them for action in a way social media doesn't.
A Conversation, Not a Broadcast
My client's subscribers respond like she's emailing them directly because she is. The fact that she's emailing thousands of people at once doesn't change the fact that each person is reading it alone, in their inbox, having what feels like a one-on-one experience.
Write to one person. Let the technology handle sending it to everyone.
You can be strategic about this. You should be. Think about what you're trying to accomplish, what you want them to feel, where you're leading them next.
Strategy and connection aren't opposites... the best email marketing is both. Connection is how conversion happens. Every story you tell, every insight you share, every question you ask... it's all leading somewhere.
When the strategy starts creating distance... when the language gets stiff, when every email feels like a pitch, when you're optimizing for only clicks instead of connection... that's when email stops working.
Connection is the conversion strategy.
If Your List Has Gone Cold
Maybe you're reading this and thinking... that's great, but I haven't emailed my list in months. Maybe years. Maybe you have hundreds of email addresses sitting in a database, and you have no idea if any of those people remember who you are.
I work with clients in this situation all the time.
They're about to launch something new and they're staring at this list wondering: Are these people even still there? Will they remember me? Will they think I'm spamming them if I suddenly show up after all this time?
Your email list isn't a list of transactions. It's a group of humans who, at some point, raised their hand and said they wanted to hear from you.
Some of them have moved on. Some of them won't remember you. But some of them have been waiting, wondering whatever happened to that person whose work resonated with them.
The way to find out which is which isn't to keep avoiding them. It's to reach out.
Restarting the Conversation
When you re-engage a cold list, a simple three-email sequence works beautifully. Not a sales sequence... a reconnection sequence. You're not trying to sell them anything yet. You're just trying to restart the conversation.
The first email has one job: get people to respond. Keep it short. Keep it human.
Something like: "Hey, it's been a while. I know I've been quiet, and I wanted to check in. Are you still there? Hit reply and let me know."
No links. No pitches. No lengthy explanations of where you've been and why. Just a genuine question that invites a genuine response.
The people who write back, even just "I'm here!"... those are your warmest leads. They remember you. They care enough to respond. Pay attention to them.
Replies also help your deliverability.
Email providers like Gmail watch how people interact with your messages. When people reply, it signals that your emails are wanted... that you're having a real conversation, not just blasting promotional content. Your future emails land in inboxes instead of spam folders.
The second email shares a little about where you've been and what's been happening. Not your whole life story... just enough context to reconnect. What you've been working on. What you've learned. And then flip it back to them: "What's been going on in your world? I'd love to hear."
You're not selling. You're reconnecting. You're reminding them why they signed up in the first place.
The third email is where you can make an invitation... not necessarily to buy something, but to take some kind of next step. Maybe it's joining a free workshop. Maybe it's downloading a resource. Maybe, if the timing is right, it's checking out your new offer.
By this point, you've re-established contact. The people still opening your emails are the ones who want to hear from you. Now you can invite them into whatever's next.
The Numbers That Matter
One client I worked with had a list of about seven hundred sixty people. Not huge, but significant. Over half of those seven hundred sixty people opened her emails, replied to them, engaged with what she shared.
When she launched her second offer, she made more than double what she'd made on her first launch... with fewer sales, but at a higher price point.
The size of your list matters so much less than the quality of the relationship you have with the people on it.
I don't get excited when clients tell me they have ten thousand followers on Instagram. I get excited when they tell me they have five hundred people on their email list who open and reply.
Because those five hundred people are worth more than ten thousand passive scrollers who might not even see your next post.
Starting From Where You Are
If you don't have an email list yet, or you have a tiny one that feels insignificant... start now. Start small. Start anyway.
You don't need a fancy funnel. You don't need a perfectly designed opt-in page. You don't need a twelve-part welcome sequence before you can begin.
You need a way for people to give you their email address, and then you need to email them.
Create something valuable... a guide, a checklist, a short training, a resource that helps with a specific problem your people have.
Offer it in exchange for an email address. Put that offer everywhere: in your social media bios, at the end of your posts, in conversations when it's relevant.
And then email your list. Regularly. Not just when you have something to sell. Email them with value, with stories, with thoughts, with connection. Email them like they're people you want to stay in touch with.
A list of fifty people who hear from you regularly and feel connected to you is more valuable than a list of five thousand who forgot they signed up.
Your email list is your anchor.
It's the foundation everything else is built on. It's the one thing you own, the one relationship no algorithm can take away from you.
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