I talk to a lot of business owners about email marketing. Sometimes, they get it. They understand that an email marketing program can be a powerful business driver. But a lot of the time, small business owners don’t get it. They aren’t investing in an email marketing program to drive revenue and engagement.

But regardless of which camp of business owner I’m talking to, I consistently hear three pretty big objections to creating an email marketing program for their small business. I don’t want you to be leaving money on the table, so today I’m going to debunk the three biggest hurdles to starting a small business email marketing program.

I don’t have enough time for an email marketing program

This is the biggest one! If you’re a small business owner, you are wearing all of the hats. Adding a consistent email program to the mix? I hear you already: What will I have to cut out, or who will I have to hire, to make this work?

I heard an amazing analogy the other day on Brooke Castillo’s podcast. I’ll kind of paraphrase it here.

Imagine you’re riding a bike to get somewhere. You’re pedaling and pedaling, giving it your all to get to your destination. If you would just stop, get off the bike, get into a car, and plug the destination into your GPS, you would get to your destination ten times faster. But we don’t want to stop, because the act of stopping feels like we’re not making progress, so we keep pedaling, burning ourselves out in the process.

Taking the time to install an email marketing program is the equivalent of getting off the bike and getting into the car. This does not have to take you hours and hours every week, but you DO have to invest hours up front to get the programming running.

Please, get off the bike! Slowing down/stopping now will get you to your revenue goals so much faster, I promise.

I don’t know what to say

I love to write, so I rarely am lacking for words to share in my email campaigns. For many, however, content creation can be really overwhelming. What do I say? Do I have to come up with a bunch of original content just for email? Ugh this seems like a lot of work, I’ll just do it next week…

Content creation for your email marketing program should be as simple as these two questions:

What are your ideal customer’s problems and/or desires?
How does your business solve these problems or help them achieve their desires?

Talk about that, and serve serve serve your subscribers with value through your email marketing program.

You do not have to spend a ton of time writing a thesis for each email campaign. You can share the essence of a social media post, add a seasonal spin to the above formula, or leverage blog or website content that is relevant!

We get all in our heads that email content needs to be 100% original. And hey, if you have the time and inspiration, original content exclusively for email subscribers is not something I discourage in any way! But if you are creating content elsewhere, don’t just assume everybody on your email list has seen it.

For example, you could give subscribers the key takeaways from your recent blog post and link to the full article if they’re interested in reading more. This has the added benefit of becoming a great feedback mechanism for you as well. By seeing which content people click to get more of, you can start to prioritize the top categories, products, or services that your subscribers are showing their interest in. If your email campaigns are just a big word dump, with nothing to do or nowhere to go next, you might be missing out on valuable marketing data to help you get better next time.

I’m not sure an email marketing program will work for my business

A well-executed email marketing program will work for any business. I don’t care what business you’re in. I’ve been in this industry for over a decade and have seen the power of email marketing across industries and verticals. I’ve sent email campaigns that generated 6-figure revenues.

Now, you probably won’t have a 6-figure launch with your first email. Success relies on a solid foundation and consistency. When you put a few marketing automation programs in place, set a consistent email schedule and stick to it, and monitor your results on a regular basis, you are going to see revenue and engagement grow.

But how? HOW, ERICA!

I will be diving deeper into tools, resources and activities to help you with each of these hurdles in the next few weeks. You can subscribe to my emails to make sure you don’t miss a post (and usually I’ll give you key takeaways in my bi-weekly emails in case you aren’t a big reader).

Summin’ it up

I believe that email marketing is the most under-utilized channel for small businesses. I don’t want to see you leaving money on the table because you think you don’t have the time or content ideas to make email marketing work for your business! Stop the bike, get in the car, and go on a journey with me over the next few weeks to get even more tools to help you overcome these obstacles!