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Myths and False Beliefs about Email Marketing

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Photo credit: Image by Muhammad Ribkhan from Pixabay

Do you want to know the real reason I offer educational email marketing services as my primary marketing service?

It’s because it works, and I like to be ethical and actually help my clients succeed.

By the end of this free 5 educational email series you too will understand why Email marketing works better than any other kind of marketing.

But first I want to start by debunking some common myths and false beliefs I have heard people say when I first talk to them about my services.

False Belief #1 – ‘Email marketing doesn’t work. Nobody reads their email anymore. Everyone in on social media instead.’

In fact, my experience and the research on this prove the opposite is true.

Email usage is higher than social media use. It is not an ‘outdated’ form of communication.

Here are some revealing stats to back this claim.

In a study conducted by Porch Media Group, 89.45% of all Americans over the age of 15 use email. The highest percentage of users are between 35 to 44 years old (93.6%) and the usage rate is still high after the age of 65, at 84.1%.

A whopping 99% of email users check their email daily, some as much as 20 times per day, for work and personal use. Porch Media also reports that on average, people aged 35 and older spend an average of 5 hours per day using email.

In comparison, only 63.9% of the world’s population uses social media. The average daily usage is 2 hours and 21minutes (as reported by Smart Insights, Global social media statistics, February 2025)..

Furthermore, this study also report that most people give email first priority , with a reported 58% of email users checking their email before they check out social media or the news sites.

So, in sum, more people use email more often than social media, so Facebook and Tiktok and Instagram won’t get you and your products more exposure than email marketing.

Myth #2 Paid Ads are Expensive, but they give a higher ROI than any other kind of advertising or marketing.

Nope.

Research proves that email marketing has a far higher ROI than paid ads.

In fact, email marketing provides a much higher ROI than any other type of advertising or marketing.

Digital marketing researchers report an ROI of between $39.00 to $42.00 per dollar spent on email marketing, which is double the ROI of the next closest form of advertising studied and reported on.

In a comprehensive study by Omnisend (graphed below) that evaluated ROI across different media channels, the ROI for email marketing was documented as $40.00 for every $1 spent which is much more than keyword ads at $17 per $1 dollar spent, or SEO, which provided an ROI of $22.24 per $1 spent or banner ads, which only had an ROI of $2.00 for each $1.00 spent.

Here is a graph that shows email ROI compared to the next best ROI options.

The graph above shows the results of a comparison by Porch Media Group: Leading by Data, across different kinds of advertising and marketing channels, email marketing came out on top.

Myth #3 No one opens corporate, or ‘branded’ emails or newsletters so email marketing doens’t work.

Research by Opt-in Monster indicates that at any given time, 40% of users report that there are at least 50 unread emails in their inbox.

So how can email marketing be effective? How can you send emails that get opened?

Research indicates that by using an opt-in strategy works well, compared to bombarding a user with unwanted emails or generic newsletters that people think they might get around to reading if they have time, and then never have time to read. The open rate for newsletters is actually quite low.

Instead, use ghostwritten articles that land in a person’s inbox, personalized with their name in the opening, and you will find the open rate significantly increases.

Research proves that the key is to provide relevant and valuable information that solves a pressing problem for a person, so they are inclined to look for the emails you send in their inbox and are grateful for your help in solving their problem.

This can be done very effectively with 5 email mini-courses that people opt in to receive.

Emails with discounts or newsletters have much lower open rates.

Myth #4 I already have a newsletter sign up on my website. I don’t need more email marketing.

In fact, newsletters do no have a high sign up rate.

The average newsletter sign up rate as reported by Klipfolio’s email conversion rate benchmarks was only 2% across all industries, and up to 4.22% depending on the industry and quality of the newsletter.

This is because of a few reasons. People don’t want to spend time reading general information about your company or products; people only want information relevant to them and their problems and needs. They don’t want to sift through a newsletter to find what they need to know, or feel they have wasted their time by reading through a newsletter that doesn’t help them in a practical way. They prefer emails with information tailored to their specifics needs and wants, not emails listing everything a store is selling or all the services they might one day have a need to use.

Company newsletters are usually very general, because they try to be all things to all customers, and as a result, they meet the needs of no one. They push what you want the reader to know onto the email user, rather than target solutions to problems the customer has asked for or needs in that moment.

Educational emails are a different form of communication.

In fact, they are the opposite of a newsletter.

Educational emails are highly targeted to solve one problem for one type of customer, and the customer has opted in for this specific solution, not for general information. As a result, if a person has chosen to sign up for 5 email mini-course that answers a burning problem they have, then the open rate is very high.

How high?

Nicolas Cole, one of the founders of the first Digital Writing Agencies in the USA, conducted extensive research on email marketing and in particular, educational email marketing campaigns, that proves this point well.

Among the 2000 + customers they have written educational mini-courses for over the past 6 years, the open rate for these opt-in courses is between 30% and 70%,and the conversion rate into sales (e.g. product sales or booking a call) is between 50% and 70% of all users who sign up.

Myth #5 I don’t think my customers want to learn and take a ‘course’.

All good sales is education, which any successful salesperson will tell you.

To get more sales, and convert your readers into raving fans and loyal customers who buy things from you, it’s important to think from the perspective of your potential customer, not your own perspective.

You need to cater to what THEY need to know, not what YOU want them to know.

Decades of marketing research has concluded that people only buy when there buying intent is high, which means that a person is so bothered by something that they are actively searching for a solution for it. When buying intent is high, most people use a search engine to find answers and options for solving their problem.

If the customer has already bought products or services from you before, they might type your name or website directly into the search engine, but chances are they are searching for a solution using keywords in a search engine, or they type the problem they are having into the search bar, not your product name or personal name. They probably don’t even know you exist.

So, how can you get them to your site or a place where they can see your products and services and click and buy them?

You first need to solve their problem, a problem that has become so bothersome that they are actively searching for a solution today, and then you need to beat out the competition by helping them realize how your product or service will help them solve this problem, and in fact, help them come to the realization it is the best choice for particular types of people and for the specific problems they are having.

Many companies think that their paid ads, website content such as an FAQ, or a newsletter covers this aspect of sales and marketing for them, but it doesn’t.

This is because people are rarely emotionally ready to jump from an ad that has a few words describing your product or service to clicking the ‘buy now’ button on your website.

Similarly, people are not ready to go from an ad that has a few words and an enticing image to landing on a website that overwhelms them with information. People have the time and patience to read through your website to find the information and best solution for them, and quickly click away (in fast, people make a snap decision about whether to stay on your site within the first ten to twenty seconds after arriving on your site, according to the Neilsen Group usabily studies. Jakob Neilsen adds “to gain several minutes of user attention, you must clearly communicate your value proposition within 10 seconds.”

Obviously, it is difficult to do that when you are trying to meet the needs of many different target audiences, or if you are selling multiple products and services, each of which helps solve a different problem for people.

People need an easy, intermediate step. They want a quick and easy way to find exactly the information they need in order to be able to solve their specific problem.

This is where education comes in.

Educational emails provide this intermediate step in the sales journey.

They capture the attention of people by focussing on problem they are having. They are the intermediary between the paid ad or social media post and your website or payment platform. The website serves the role as confirming the choice of purchase in the mind of the customer. it isn’t want ‘gets you sales’. It’s at the end of the sales journey, and the main role is to provide a place to pay.

Educational emails that target a specific problem add a much needed step in the sales journey that has proven to convert the curious into paying customers better than typical emails or other forms of education delivered on platforms intended primarily to entertain (e.g. Youtube, Instagram, Facebook) instead of sell (e.g. Amazon.com). An added benefit is that your educational material is fully within your control, and doesn’t rely on the whims of people’s opinions to communicate the facts about your products and services or bad photos that random strangers take and post online.

Educational emails work because they help a person understand their problem fully, have their feelings and the consequences of not solving the problem acknowledged, discover their options for solving this problem and come to the realization on their own that your solution (your products and services) are the best way to solve this problem.

When you hit the nail on the head in terms of describing the emotions and feelings around this problem that the reader is experiencing, something magical happens. The person feels you truly understand them and their problem and they start to trust you as the best person to solve it for them.

When people are educated, they feel well informed and able to make their own decisions, and this empowering approach makes a big difference. People like to feel empowered, not ‘sold to’.

No one likes to feel ‘sold to’. When people see an ad and are taken to a website, they feel sold to, not educated. When people see an ad that presents a way to solve their problem, and they click to sign up for the emails that help them understand their problem and the options to solve it, they don’t feel sold to, they feel well informed. And ready, intellectually and emotionally, to make a purchase.

One reason educational emails work because they are so convenient.

Emails that arrive in your inbox is more convenient than going to a search engine and typing in search terms and hunting and pecking through the results lists until you find information that answers your question or solves your problem.

They are convenient because emails can be read when you have time, and are not hard to leave and go back to if interrupted.

They can also be easily saved for future reference, and easily found later, if they contain truly valuable information that the person wants to read again and digest or learn thoroughly. This is not the case with videos, which are viewed more as entertainment, and which can be difficult to find again later.

Myth #7 AI can do all my email marketing for free.

While AI tools are quickly developing, in my experiments and tests, they still leave much to be desired and will not replace writers, especially ghostwriters, any time soon.

I found that the auto generated text produces grammatically correct tex, but it lacks depth and compassion. There is no catchy hook that deeply resonates, or anything that serves up a big ’emotional punch’.

Furthermore, the stats and research cited by AI tools (e.g. Genesis, Claude.ai, Chatgpt) is often completely fabricated and overly generalized from the information available. This has been dubbed ‘holograms’.

This has happened to me numerous time. I have typed in a search, and been impressed by the quick response to my question by Genesis, the new Google AI tool. In fact, it was exactly the inforamtion, or research study, that I was hoping to find. But when I asked for the source of the information, Genesis admitted there was no source data or website available to cite. It was completely made up.

Furthermore, the AI tools are programmed with algorithms, and as we all know, algorithms are proprietary and not transparent, so you don`t really know why one website was quoted and not another. This opens the door to pay for placement type strategies that can mislead consumers. The upshot is that if you are a new service provider or product producer, unless the search engines already consider you an ‘expert’ or ‘authority’ on a subject (something that usually takes years), your website will not get listed in the results or quoted as the top information source for a keyword search. AI may not ‘know’ about you or your website and so, your information will not be easily found online with AI search tools.

In the upside, using AI tools to create ads can be very time efficient and useful. Sometimes AI can suggest a concise way to phrase something that works really well and helps you meet the strict word counts of paid ad spaces.

AI can also help channel information and to tailor it to answer people’s exact requests and needs.

But using AI tools to create emails and educational content is not as effective. First of all, this can trigger AI checker tools, which are surprisingly accurate. However, I know some copywriters who have been flagged as using AI generated, but was in fact 100% human created).

And significantly, marketing research done in the last half of 2024 noted that that there is a big backlash to AI generated content amongst consumers. People do not like AI generated content of avatars. This fits with human behaviour noted in the past, which has proven time and again that people only buy from people they feel they know, like and can trust.

People are far more likely to buy products from someone they believe is an expert who truly understand their problem, which is amply demonstrated in educational emails by the CEO or founder of the company, or a trusted expert in a field, than by a Brand or corporate entity or from an ad that they sense is AI generated.

People want real insider’s tips, not generalized advice from an AI bot. People want to know your personal story, which and AI tool cannot summarize as well as you can.

J.M. Lacey explains this phenomenon well in the article “How AI Generated Content Alienates your Audience and Why Custom Content Sells”

This has created a trend in using ghostwriters as opposed to AI content tools. Ghostwriters are able to use their talents and skills to ask the right questions of CEOS and Founders, and pull out the best information that people really want to know and would benefit from knowing.

In my experience, the people I have interviewed don’t know what they know, as in, they don’t appreciate the value of what they know and skip over it.

And AI tool doesn’t know how to ask realy good questions, or to keep asking until the golden nugget of wisdom surfaces at last. An AI bot doesn’t recognize what is a golden nugget of wisdom that others experiencing a problem that the CEO has solved would deeply appreciate.

And AI bot doesn’t know when to ask a person to back up and ask more probing questions to uncover something that would be very valuable for the readers to know.

An AI bot can’t create original content. They only know how to use the body of information that already has been published online.

The reason this matters is that people are valuing authenticity and originality more than previously, as a counter trend to AI.

AI tools have their place, and many copywriters and ghostwriters and marketing managers use them, but the game has changed.

The reason educational email marketing works so well is that you can deliver content that is considered very valuable to those who signed up for the email series , told from your unique perspective, and crafted to be compelling and worthwhile.

This builds rapport and trust, and as I mentioned previously,

people only ever buy from people

that they believe they know, like and can trust.

(not AI bots).

AI lacks the human heart that is the core of all effective marketing and advertising and leads to sales.

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