by Nancy Hassel, American Pet Professionals
This week, here in the US, we had an unprecedented action take place, a ban against the widely popular social media platform TikTok. If you have been on the app for a while now, you know the word ‘ban’ has been thrown around for so many years that at this point most people didn’t think it would actually happen. Personally I was hopeful it wouldn’t, but as we all saw the platform shut down due to the ban for about 12 hours. TikTok is back up and running for at least another 75 days – and I guess we will see what happens. During the short-lived ban and after it was reinstated, I have seen some people say, “I was never on TikTok,” in a boastful way, posting on other social platforms. But I was thinking what about the millions of Americans whose literal livelihoods and pet businesses depend on TikTok? What will they do?
Leading up to the ban there seemed to be a panic of people running to other social apps, or platforms that could work in place of TikTok, but it would not be the same. My first thought with any social media is, how are you leading your audience over to your email list? I originally wrote an article about why your email subscribers, aka your very engaged audience, are way more important than your followers, way back in 2014.
Admittedly, I do love TikTok, but primarily for my dog Cody’s page, for community, fun, education, featuring some pet products we love, dog-friendly places, etc. But it’s not a business page, nor do I worry about business for American Pet Professionals via TikTok, because we already have a very well-established email subscriber list since 2009, that we OWN, with new subscribers opting in every single day. (You may be reading this because you saw it in our Pet Events email Newsletter.)
A few years ago, a business person I follow (non-pet), who has a large subscriber base and audience, took to their email list when IG and FB were down for 24 hours and made something like $100,000 in extra revenue in that day by offering a product they weren’t even planning on doing. All because this business person was super savvy and knew they could reach their audience via email, and not on social.
If you’re a member of American Pet Professionals, especially our OG’s you know I have been talking about the incredible importance of your own list that you curate over the years of being in business. And why engaging with your email list, at the bare minimum of one time a month is so important.
Don’t get me wrong, I understand the incredible power of an engaged social media audience for your business, but you should also always be offering something of value that they will want to opt in to your email list.
With email, you have a direct audience connection, where you don’t have to worry about algorithms, social media platform outages or worse a ban. You can ensure your messaging gets to your audience in one click of a ‘send’ using your email marketing platform. For our email, we use Constant Contact, you can click here to get a free trial.
Email marketing, if you are engaging your audience and reaching out, consistently delivers a high return on investment, with studies from Statista, showing an average ROI of $36 for every $1 spent.
Your email builds trust and loyalty. We have subscribers that open our email every week and have been doing so since 2008 when they first subscribed. How incredible is that?
Email can drive traffic to your website, to a product you’re selling, an article you have written, to an event your hosting and so on. Often people tell me, I had no idea about this event until I saw it in your email. I have been hearing that for 16+ years now that our email have been landing in inboxes.
With email, you control the content you are sending out. Yes, you can control the content for your social media posts/videos, but what if one of those social posts, violates the platform ‘community guidelines’ or a hashtag you used gets it taken down? (Some of the community guideline violations are not even an actual violation, but a bot may have flagged it, and now your social post or video is down). That time and effort to create the post, and then appeal it via the platform is time you could have been spending on creating an effective email marketing campaign.
Email marking is Adaptable for All Audiences: Whether you’re a pet business, a non-profit organization, an influencer, or even a dog influencer, emails can showcase your unique voice, updates, promotions, or behind-the-scenes moments.
By leveraging email marketing for your pet business, you can ensure a stable, reliable way to stay connected with your audience—no matter what happens on social media.
I hope this inspires you to take action with your own email outreach for your pet business this year.