If you asked most small business owners where they focus their marketing energy, the answer would be social media. Instagram posts. Facebook updates. The occasional TikTok.
Ask them how their email list is going, and you’ll often get a blank stare, or: “We set something up once but never really used it.”
This is backwards. And understanding why matters a lot if you want to get more from your marketing budget.
The Uncomfortable Truth About Social Media Reach
When you post to your Instagram or Facebook page, how many of your followers actually see it? The answer is: far fewer than you think.
Facebook organic reach has declined dramatically over the past decade. Currently, the average Facebook business page reaches roughly 2-5% of its followers with any given post. So if you’ve worked hard to build a following of 2,000 people, you’re reaching 40-100 of them per post.
Instagram is better - for now - but the same pattern is playing out. Algorithms prioritise paid content and Reels, and organic reach for static posts continues to decline.
This is the fundamental problem with building a marketing audience on a platform you don’t control. They can change the rules at any time. Your follower count is a number that lives on someone else’s server.
Why Email Is Different
When someone subscribes to your email list, that relationship is yours. No algorithm decides whether your email gets delivered. No platform can halve your reach overnight because they’ve decided to prioritise paid content.
The numbers tell the story clearly:
- Average email open rates across industries: 35-45% for small businesses with engaged lists
- Average social media organic reach: 2-5% for Facebook pages, 10-20% for Instagram (declining)
- Email marketing ROI: An average of $36 returned for every $1 spent, according to the Data & Marketing Association
- Social media ROI: Highly variable, and increasingly dependent on paid promotion to achieve meaningful reach
These aren’t minor differences. Email reaches your audience 7-10x more reliably than organic social media.
”But I Don’t Have an Email List”
This is where most small businesses stop. They assume email marketing requires a large, established list, and since they don’t have one, they don’t start.
The truth is that every small business has the raw material for an email list. It’s just sitting in different places:
- Your accounting system or CRM (past and current clients)
- Your booking system (everyone who’s ever made an appointment)
- Your POS system (everyone who’s made a purchase)
- Your contact form submissions
- Business card exchanges
Many businesses discover they have 300-500 contactable people they’ve never marketed to systematically. That’s a significant audience, and it’s one that already trusts you enough to have done business with you.
What an Email Marketing Setup Actually Looks Like for an SMB
You don’t need expensive software or a dedicated marketing team. A functional email marketing setup for a small business has three components:
1. An Email Marketing Platform
Tools like Mailchimp, Klaviyo, or ActiveCampaign give you a proper sending platform - one that handles unsubscribes legally, lets you segment your list, and provides open/click data so you can see what’s working. Most have free tiers that are sufficient for lists under 500-1,000 contacts.
2. A Simple Welcome Sequence
When someone joins your list, send them a short sequence of three to five emails over two weeks that introduces your business, explains what you do for customers, and shares something genuinely useful (a tip, a guide, a checklist). This builds familiarity and trust before you ever make an offer.
3. A Regular Send
Monthly is the minimum. Fortnightly is better. The content doesn’t need to be elaborate - a useful article, a behind-the-scenes update, a customer story, a seasonal offer. The goal is to stay present in your customers’ inbox so that when they need what you offer, or when a friend asks for a recommendation, your name is the one that comes to mind.
Social Media Is Still Worth Doing - Just Differently
This isn’t an argument to abandon social media. It remains valuable for visibility, brand awareness, and reaching audiences who don’t know you yet.
But the goal of social media should be to drive people onto your email list - where you own the relationship - rather than hoping the algorithm will keep delivering your content to them indefinitely.
A simple approach: use social media to attract and introduce. Use email to nurture and retain. Use both to sell.
The Retention Advantage Nobody Talks About
The final, underappreciated case for email is what it does for customer retention.
Acquiring a new customer costs five to seven times more than retaining an existing one. Yet most small business marketing budgets are heavily weighted towards acquisition - ads, SEO, social media - with almost nothing allocated to staying in touch with people who have already bought.
A simple monthly email newsletter keeps your existing customers warm, reminds them of services they haven’t used, generates repeat purchases, and turns satisfied customers into active referrers. It’s the highest-ROI marketing activity most small businesses aren’t doing.
If you need help setting up an email marketing strategy or deciding where to focus your digital marketing budget, get in touch to find out how YourStuff can help you today.
Photo by Solen Feyissa on Unsplash
