Twitter? Hot. Video? Hotter. Facebook? Crazy hot. Email? Half-forgotten. Today, as the last post before I take time away from the computer for a nice Christmas holiday, I want to give you something to think about by making a case for my good friend Email Marketing. You see, through my own projects and companies I work with, more than 60% of my income is drawn directly from the email lists I work year round to build, maintain, and profit from.

Let me begin by asking you three questions about Facebook (you can repeat these questions and insert Twitter):

1. How valuable (in $dollars) is each new fan you acquire on Facebook?
2. On your average Facebook post with a link, what is the click-through rate (clicks/fans)?
3. How many posts does the average Facebook user encounter each day?

If you are like my own Facebook pages and pages I’ve worked with/on, your answers would likely be somewhere around these:

1. Less than a dollar.
2. About 1%.
3. Usually around 1,000, if not more.

Now, let’s answer those same questions for the email list of a company I work with here in Northern, UT:

1. Value of each new subscriber: $27.50
2. Average click-through rate on links: 20%
3. Other emails that subscribers sees: Less than 20/day.

That’s an impressive list, but it’s not that uncommon. I have two lists in two different industries that average a $12-$15 value per subscriber and 10-15% click through. Social media is something that is extremely popular but hard to squeeze a lot of sales value out of. YES, it is great for customer service. YES, it is great for sharing stories and reliving days on the mountain. YES, it is great for contests and building up a brand. But when it comes to making money, email takes the cake…and then some.

WHAT CLUTTER?
Think about it this way. Marketing has become more and more the art of breaking through the clutter we are surrounded by. Without applying filters, a Facebook user could see many hundreds, if not thousands of new posts every day. Same thing on Twitter.

With email, however, some email marketers I know have estimated that average person’s personal email account sees around 8-10 other emails a day. Then, that email includes a nice headline (also known as a subject line) that is there for you to sell the recipient on opening it which stays bold until they do. If they are away from their computer for the weekend, your email is still there, waiting.

WHERE THE MAGIC HAPPENS
After Christmas I am going to talk about what I do with my lists to make them extremely profitable and revisit some of the principles behind getting as many of your skiers (and your competitor’s) to willing hand over their email addresses. I still feel like this is a hugely untapped resource at more ski areas.

Until then, have a very Merry Christmas and don’t forget to get out and make some turns :)

About Gregg & SlopeFillers
I've had more first-time visitors lately, so adding a quick "about" section. I started SlopeFillers in 2010 with the simple goal of sharing great resort marketing strategies. Today I run marketing for resort ecommerce and CRM provider Inntopia, my home mountain is the lovely Nordic Valley, and my favorite marketing campaign remains the Ski Utah TV show that sold me on skiing as a kid in the 90s.