I typed in my email address — you know the junk one solely reserved for email marketing from people I’d rather not actually hear from — and was about to hit “Sign Up”.

But something didn’t feel quite right as a wave of worry rolled through me, so I quickly cleared the sign-up form and reconsidered…

Email marketing is a tricky game.

On the one hand, you’ve probably been told a bazillion times that you need a list, and should always be focused on growing that list.

You probably have some opt-ins, landing pages, content upgrades scattered around the internet to entice people back onto your list. Maybe they’re converting, maybe they’re not, but hey, you’re trying.

On the other hand, you probably have a junk email address that you use just to sign up to people’s lists from whom you don’t really want to hear from, but do want whatever glimmering freebie they’re dangling in front of you to entice you back to their list.

If you’ve looked through the addresses on your own list you’ve probably realized that nope, you’re far from the only one using this technique, I do it too.

Many of us recognize the necessity of building our list, of owning the means of communicating with our audience, but feel a little bit sleazy about the whole opt-in process.

We feel like we’re just tricking people into signing up, maybe because we don’t believe our opt-in is actually that useful, maybe because we know that even when we’ve found a genuinely useful opt-in ourselves, we don’t really want to get all those additional emails from its creator.

The Target We Should Be Aiming For

Over the past couple months, I’ve been binging on Seth Godin’s Akimbo podcast. I’ll listen to 2–3 episodes a day, and now that I’m nearing the end of the back catalog, I’m beginning to worry about where I’ll get my next fix once I’m fully up to speed (maybe I’ll work through his 7000+ blog post catalogue…)

Given my obsession, it surprised me to realize that I hadn’t signed up for his newsletter yet, despite being a long-time admirer.

I suppose I hardly needed reminding that he was there when I was opening up my phone a couple of times a day to cue up the next podcast episode, and had browser tabs on both my computer and phone permanently opened to his blog…

Regardless, I was not on his list, so I trotted over to my already-open browser window, quickly found the signup form, and hesitated…

I was about to submit my email address for my email-marketing-only account, when a wave of fear rushed through me.

“I don’t check this account that often,” I thought. “What if Seth sends out something new and I miss it??”

I quickly erased my junk email address and typed in my personal one.

I was about to hit submit when again I hesitated…

“I don’t typically have my personal email open during the day. What if Seth puts out something new and I don’t see it until the next morning?”

Again, I cleared the email form and this time entered my primary business address, the one reserved for clients and other important, fancy people.

I still felt like this might not be enough, but since there was no option to submit my phone number and I thought it might be a step too far to find out where Seth lived and look up real estate listings on his street, I settled for my work email address and hit submit.

Become Indispensable

Over the next few days I found myself thinking more and more about what I had done and why I had done it.

There was no opt-in. No need to entice me to sign up. The email list wasn’t even mentioned on any of the podcast episodes or blog posts I read.

Instead, I had voluntarily gone looking for a way to sign up.

Isn’t this what we should all be aiming for as creators and entrepreneurs?

To be of value to the people we serve that they go out of their way to deepen their relationship with us?

No need for tricks, freebies, incentives. No feeling you’re imposing on people’s lives every time you hit “send” on a new email to your list.

Just people who really, truly want to hear what you have to say, and are in fact waiting for it.

So How Do We Do This?

Obviously, Seth Godin has a multi-decade headstart over most of us, helped create email marketing in the first place, and is one of the premier thought leaders around business and marketing.

But we shouldn’t be working to compete with Seth Godin.

Rather we should be working to become to our audience what Seth is to his.

Working towards providing insight, thoughtfulness, resources, and value to the people we serve that they can’t find anywhere else.

We can’t do that by writing another listicle, rehashing the same content that’s already been published ad nauseam in our niche or industry, even if it’s helpful.

If we want to become indispensable to our audience, we have to work on developing our opinion, our point of view, our philosophy about the work we do.

This is hard. It’s scary even.

It’s hard for internet trolls to dispute a listicle based on facts, stats, or generally accepted wisdom (though they’ll give it a shot anyway).

But publish an opinion or subjective viewpoint?? You’re setting yourself up for a world of criticism.

You also, however, are opening yourself up to being a breath of fresh air to your audience. Someone who sparks ideas they haven’t heard before, who challenges the established way of doing things because you know there’s a better way.

This takes bravery.

It takes time, energy and thought to develop your ideas, to build stories around them, to learn how to convey them so that people get it.

But if you’re looking to create change in the world, sooner or later you’re going to need to step up and become that indispensable person to a specific group of people.

People who sign up for your newsletters with their work email addresses, text you their phone numbers just so you have them on file, and look into the real estate market in your neighbourhood — even if they back off when they realize that might be a little weird.

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Want to hear more about building an audience around work that matters? I think you might enjoy these reads!

https://medium.com/@jeremyenns/people-dont-understand-marketing-36e60826516fhttps://medium.com/@jeremyenns/people-dont-understand-marketing-36e60826516f