Paid Ads vs Email Marketing 🥊🤺

Hey it’s Max from The Inbox Newsletter.

Today, I’m answering the golden question as old as time.

Should you be focusing more on paid ads or focusing more on email marketing?

Media buyers will tell you that paid ads are the most important part of your ecom funnel.

Email guys will tell you email is the most important part of your funnel.

My answer may surprise you 🤓

The Case For Paid Ads

Paid ads are the top of your funnel.

Paid ads are the only predictable method for bringing traffic to your site and getting eyes on your products.

Without them, you’re left with organic content and SEO. But these are less predictable.

With organic you’re relying on the algorithm and still having to pay for content creators and your marketing team.

SEO is cool but it can take a long time to really get to work.

With paid ads, you can snap your fingers and scale up your traffic.

And more importantly… predictably bring more eyes to your site.

The problem is that paid ads are expensive.

You have to pay for creatives.

And pay for your spots on Meta, Google, etc.

With prices rising.

And dealing with Meta which has to approve your ads, limit your content, potentially ban you, and can break down whenever (which it’s known to do) is a pain.

The Case For Email Marketing

Email is the bottom of your funnel and it’s your retention channel.

It’s how you can nurture non-buyers and get them to trust you enough to make a purchase.

Without any form of nurture in the backend, you’re relying on continually showing your customers paid ads (more money) or hoping that they view your organic content (unpredictable) to cross the trust barrier.

With email, you can set up a predictable system of education that sets up your non-buyers to make a purchase.

On top of that, you get retention.

With a customer’s email, you are always able to market to them and stay in their face.

And the best part, it’s cheap.

Email costs a fraction of what paid ads are.

Email has an average ROI of 4000% while paid ads only have an ROI of 200%.

All because of price and the ability to continue to market to customers for cheap.

And with email you have complete autonomy over what you post and when. You have the ability to send, use whatever copy, and use whatever graphics you want.

Without the potential of getting banned.

Side By Side

Let’s compare the two and their different benefits and cons.

So… Email is More Important?

Nope.

Email does have more advantages over paid ads.

It’s way cheaper and you have complete autonomy.

But the problem with email, is that it relies on attention acquisition.

If no one is being brought to your site, how will they sign up for email?

You need to gather consent from a user to email them.

And that isn’t possible without something like paid ads to bring people to the site to see your email sign-ups or pop-ups.

Okay so paid ads are more important, right?

Well, not completely.

The problem with paid ads is it relies on email as well.

Somebody needs to see your brand an average of 7 times to trust you enough to make a purchase (rule of seven).

Without something like email in the backend, you’re forced to show someone an ad seven times which is very expensive.

You may just break even on your CaC and your first purchase AOV.

Then how do you get people to return? More paid ads. Expensive.

Whereas if you have an email pop-up and proper systems in the backend you won’t need to rely on more paid ads to get conversions.

You pay for an ad 1-2 times and someone can join the email list where you can send the remaining content for cheap to convert them.

That’s the perfect setup.

The Verdict

There’s no world where a brand can profitably grow without both paid ads and email operations.

The real solution is to dial in your backend systems through email and THEN scale up your paid ads.

This way you only pay up on ads to get attention.

Then you can convert the attention for cheap with email.

And retain your attention with repeat purchases through email.

Dial in cheap conversion and retention systems —> Scale up acquisition.

This is the way.

Email Inspiration Of The Day

Brand:
Swole Foods

Email Design:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1smAPN2inXJpw6A7Bb3FRS0yBmOJKEuHS/view?usp=sharing

Notes:
Great educational email here which is focusing on the customer’s goals.

Sometimes it can be fun to have buttons now say “Shop Now”, like in this case it says “Achieve Your Goals”.

Then of course… the email subtly promotes their products at the bottom.

Amazing.

Educational emails like this are great for engagement.

Great stuff!

Template of The Day

Great testimonial section to spice up your social proof in your emails!

If you want access to a bank of 100 mix and match templates like this equating to over 5,000+ possible email designs, click here »

Helpful Links Of The Day

• Email metrics you should be shooting for

• How to nail deliverability

• YOU AREN’T SENDING ENOUGH EMAILS HERE’S WHY

Reply to this email if you have any questions or further content you want covered.

Cheers,

Max

PS - If you want to join a community of 100+ members with daily tips from me, get feedback / support 24/7, AND get design templates that can make 5,000+ unique email designsclick here »

PPS - If you run an ecom brand and want to have a 15 minute strategy session with me, book a call here »