If you want pageviews for your blog, write that something is “dead” (the fold, print, etc.).

More often than not, when you see posts along those lines, you’ll see a specific name on that list of deceased channels that always makes me chuckle: email.

Now, I might not chuckle if they didn’t proclaim that social media had taken over. Here’s why.

How does social work?
I won’t try to sum up the business of being a social network in a single paragraph (mainly because I’d fail miserab…I mean, it would be an “#epicfail”).

Instead, I’ll let a few social networks tell you about a channel they rely heavily on with a few screenshots of messages that have graced my inbox recently:

For social networks to succeed, they need me to come back to their sites and over and over again.

And what is one of the strategies they use to accomplish this task? Email. It may be a stretch, but it’s not too long of one, to say that without email, many social networks (if not all) would only be a fraction of the size they are today.

Two Cases
I’m not as big of a Jay Baer fan as I know many of you are, but I will share a quote of his that i though was especially on target:

“The people that I’m really interested in, the things that I really care about, the information that other people publish…that I want to make sure I get, I subscribe to everybody’s email. I don’t get their RSS feed, I don’t hope that I can catch them on Twitter, I don’t assume that in the flotsam and jetsam of LinkedIn or Facebook see what they happened to publish that day. Things that I care about I subscribe to their email. Why? Because I know I will receive the email.”

That’s a great point: email (nearly) guarantees that someone will see your message. They may not open, but they’ll at least have the option.

The other point is that email can be completely unique to the recipient. Personal communication at scale is not only a powerful thing, it’s not possible on other media. Every one of my tweets is the same for every person that reads it. On the flip side, no two Social7 emails are the same.

I Believe!
And, finally, I’m a huge believe in email because, as you have figured out, I’ve tried and tested the medium and it’s made a lot of money for me and my employers/clients throughout my marketing career.

I’ve said before that I think the priority of growing your email list should be placed above social follower counts, but I’m hoping to give you a reason to refocus your efforts on this medium with a few, awesome examples of email campaigns, designs, and approaches that I’ve grown to love since I started my journey in the ski industry.

Yep, it’s another themed set of posts…let “email idea week” begin!

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.