Whether it’s social media, SEO or content marketing, you’ve got a lot of options when it comes to marketing your business online.

But when it comes time to have a sales conversation and drive conversions, there’s one channel that continues to outperform the rest: the good old-fashioned email.

According to the Direct Marketing Association, email marketing campaigns have an average ROI of $40 per $1 spent. That is a 4,000 percent return on investment. Compare that to the strategy with next highest ROI, search engine optimization, at $22.24 per dollar and you can see how effective email marketing is.

If you want to grow your business, you absolutely MUST make building your email list your top marketing priority. It needs to be an even bigger priority than building your fan base on social media.

Email is less competitive than social media

Think about how many emails you get in an average day. Maybe 50 to 100? Now think about how many social media updates appear in your various feeds each day. Several hundreds to thousands! You have a far higher likelihood of having people see, open, and click on your email newsletter than you do having them see updates you post on social media. It’s a lot easier to ignore a status update than it is to ignore an email in your inbox.

You own your email list

You have no ownership over social media. Platforms can change their policies and the reach your status updates have at any time. If you have a Facebook fan page, only about 16% of your fans will actually see your posts. That’s because Facebook wants you to buy their advertising to promote your message. Having people on your email list keeps you in control and your exposure to your subscribers stays completely in your hands.

Your mailing list is directly related to your turnover

70% of people make use of coupons or discounts they learn about from email.

You need to consider every person you acquire on your email list a potential customer. Marketing to them over and over again will build their trust and will (hopefully) eventually turn them into paying customers. Whether you realize it or not, your email list serves as a direct reflection of the energy and success of your business.

Hands down, building a targeted email list is THE most important thing you can do to create a successful marketing framework for your business.

Let customers know when new items are in store.
Set up autoresponders – a series of emails aimed at encouraging customers to learn more about your products or buy.
Send timed discounts for birthdays and holidays.
Remind customers about uncompleted purchases left in shopping cart.
Reward loyal customers with discounts.
Re engage customers who have not shopped in a while by offering discount.
Share knowledge and content (blog posts, videos, ect) with your customers.
Gather testimonials and feedback.

As you can see, you can engage your customers through email in much deeper ways and use it to drive traffic to your ecommerce website.

While social media and search are great ways to get discovered by your customers, email is still the most effective way to really build a relationship with them.