Is Substack Good for Email?
A quick Google search will tell you that Substack is absolutely good for email marketing. Not only does it make it easier for people to find your newsletter, but it also saves you significant time and money. Let’s break this down.
Why is Email Marketing Important?
Email marketing allows you to get alerts and content directly into people’s inboxes. In a world full of social posts and media outlets demanding your attention, our inboxes are one of the last places where you can curate your content so that it’s just for you.
Why Does This Matter?
Well, if you’re going to market stuff, like a book, you’re going to need to reach people. Specifically, people are who have raised their hand and said they’re interested in the content you’re making. Sending them emails is a way for you to let them know your book is out, where you’re going to be attending a reading, a webinar you might be hosting, etc.
Why Can’t I Just Email Them Directly?
For personal email (let’s just use Gmail as an example), you’re limited to sending 500 emails a day. Now, you can send more, but you’ll have to pay for Google Workspace, which is $7/month for the basic plan. Now, before you shrug and say, “This ain’t bad,” I would say, “Hold on,” because even with Google Workspace, you’re still limited to 2,000 email sends and 10,000 recipients.
For someone just starting out, it’s not bad. But sending emails and managing people's data is something else entirely.
What the Hell is GDPR?
GDPR stands for General Data Protection Regulation, and it’s a compliance regulation used for email marketing. This means:
People’s data is being used and taken care of responsibly
People have given you consent to send them emails
People can easily opt out of your emails at any time
There is a lot more to GDPR compliance (but these are the big three). These regulations are always changing in the name of companies and businesses* being held accountable for how they’re managing people’s data. In other words, GDPR is a very good thing, but it can also be a major pain in the ass to understand and stay current on.
Owning Your Domain
In the spirit of GDPR compliance, every email campaign manager is now requiring you to “verify your domain.” What does this mean? Well, a few years ago, as long as I had my livebytheshelf33@gmail.com email, I could set up an email campaign manager where I could manage email templates, campaigns, and lists for free or a modest fee. But now, you need to have an email where you own the domain. So, to do this the right way now, I would need to create an email via Google Workspace (or Outlook) and have the domain be “livebytheshelf33.com,” and that would mean the new email would be something like “hello@livebytheshelf33.com.”
If you already own the domain for your website, you’re halfway there. If you’re not and you’re on a base version of WordPress, Weebly, etc., then you’d need to buy the domain, and then you’d need to pay for Google Workspace.
Enter Substack
With Substack, you don’t need to worry about any of this stuff. They handle the data management, the compliance, etc. And you get to send pretty and valuable emails to your followers. The platform makes it straightforward to find newsletters covering topics that are important to them, and writers can grow their audiences. And that means both parties can worry less about data management and more about what really matters to them—consuming content, creating content, and, most importantly, getting the word out about content.
Sidenote: The only thing I will say is that if you have your “Subscribe to My Substack” linked on your website somewhere, I would note that you use Substack for your email marketing and then link to their data management policy.
