Why an email list is still important

Nathan Barry is the author of three self-published ebooks. His latest book, the second edition of The App Design Handbook, went on sale in November and revenue for that first 24 hours on sale was $36,297.

Barry has shared detailed statistics of that 24 hour period on his site, and they make interesting reading. He writes, "Email marketing is the key to making an entire launch like this happen. It's especially important to focus on the sequence leading up to launch day, without that done right, none of this would have happened [...] it's not as easy as just sending an email saying, "go buy the book!" You have to build up anticipation, answer questions, and send reminders to get a launch of this scale. None of that would have been possible without building up an email list first."

It would be easy to think that having lots of Twitter followers would be the most important factor in a successful launch. Barry has a respectable 5,804 at the time of writing but that isn't a vast follower number for someone having such success.

He explains, "An email list is the single most effective tool in any launch. I've found that an email subscriber is worth at least 15 times as much to your business as a Twitter follower. Email is not dead, it's the future of building profitable audiences online."

Words: Rachel Andrew

Rachel Andrew is a web developer, writer and speaker and one half of the team behind Perch cmS. This article originally appeared in net magazine issue 251.