Overheard someone at a coffee shop say their small biz doubled sales after ditching email marketing entirely

I was sitting near this woman who was talking about her little candle shop, and she said she killed all their email campaigns 6 months ago and just focused on TikTok and Instagram reels. She claimed their monthly revenue went from $4k to over $8k without sending a single newsletter. It made me wonder if I'm putting too much effort into building an email list for my own side gig. Has anyone else seen a real bump from dropping traditional email?

3 comments

3 Comments

samflores1mo ago

Her TikTok blew up because she probably hit the algorithm right when candles were trending as a cozy vibe thing. Its not really about ditching email, its about trading one channel for another that's hotter right now. My buddy runs a small t-shirt shop and he tried the same thing, dropped his email list and went all in on reels. First two months were great, then his views dropped off a cliff and he had to beg his old email subscribers to come back. Email is like a safety net, TikTok can disappear overnight if they change the algorithm.

carter.joseph1mo agoTop Commenter

Did @samflores' buddy rebuild his email list or just start over from zero?

harper9141mo ago

That whole "traded his email list for TikTok" thing reminds me of my cousin who ran a small BBQ rub business. He got obsessed with Twitter threads in 2020, thought email newsletters were dead, and deleted his whole list of 2,000 subscribers. He spent six months writing these long threads about brisket techniques and gained like 10,000 followers. Then Twitter changed something with the algorithm and his reach dropped to almost nothing. He had to start a new email list from scratch and only got back about 300 of his old people.