If you’re a business owner who has spent a bit of time online, you must have heard the phrase ‘you must build your mailing list’ a few times. You might wonder why, as it’s just another thing to add to the mountain of things you have to do for your business already.

You’re probably on social media and you might think that’s enough, especially because it takes up a bit of your time and energy. I’m hoping to convince you otherwise and start your list because I really do believe it’s the biggest asset a business can build, dare I say that it’s even more important than being on social media (and that comes from a social media coach).

Here’s why it’s so important to start building your mailing list:

Email is more popular than social media

Email has been around for much longer and is more widely used than social media, in other words more people are using email than social media.

Better Engagement

Engagement via email is much higher than on social media. This probably won’t surprise you, knowing that not everyone who likes your Facebook page will see your content and twitter streams almost go at the speed of light so it’s hard to keep up. The return on investment (ROI) is also much higher on email, most likely because emails are harder to ignore than social media and you have been personally invited into someone’s inbox, meaning that they actually WANT to hear from you. Here’s a very impressive statistic from the Direct Marketing Association, who have researched ROI on email marketing and state that email marketing has an ROI of about 4300%.

This post was originally posted on the ROOOAR blog, please head over to Roooar to read more.