Email is Your Business Backbone
It holds your business together, gives it form and strength, and offers dexterity
This is Week 2 of the Email Mastery Series - A Making Time (Season 3) Preview
Last week we identified the 8 types of email used by every business.
You may have been thinking: "But how do these actually work together?"
Great question.
Here's what I've learned after 15 years of building organizations where time after time, email emerged as a central to growth:
Having the right cards doesn't guarantee a winning hand.
You also need to play your (email) cards well.
One of my favorite pastimes is making business analogies. A reliable go-to is comparing organizations to the human body (itself a complex organism).
If money is like oxygen, sales are the lungs. If strategy is the brain, culture could be the heart. Leadership is the blood that connects the two (or vice-versa).
Something like that.
In this analogy, most leaders who think of email as just another communication tool might see it as one of several sensory organs, used to send and receive signals with the environment.
That's too reductionist.
Why?
Because email isn't just an organ.
Email is the backbone that hold your business together.
(And if your backbone is broken, good luck getting any movement.)
The Connection Game
Your customers don't care about your "8 email types." They don't see your departmental flowcharts or your fancy tech stack.
They experience a series of connected moments. A journey.
Hopefully, a transformation.
Look across industries and sectors, and what's the most frequent and reliable system connecting those moments and keeping the customer transformation on track?
Email.
Now this isn't to say email is sufficient on its own.
Rather, while other experiences may fuel demand, generate revenue, and deliver actual value, it's email that links these altogether.
Let's explore how this looks across the lifecycle.
The Demand Connection
Social media gets attention. Content builds authority. Events create trust.
But email maintains the relationship between everything else.
Think of it as your business's nervous system:
Content strategy: You create brilliant insights. Email ensures people actually see them.
Social media: You acquire followers on rented real estate. You retain subscribers on a list that you own.
Event marketing: The webinar ends. Email is where the real relationship evolves.
I've mentioned recently that email has been shown to generate ROI well beyond competing channels. The truth is, this can be an exaggeration given how much email relies on content, media, and various platforms for audience discovery and trust building, especially early in the funnel.
(The age-old debate in the marketing world is all about attribution)
However, whether or not you think email can return 36x every dollar spent or not, it's hard to find a single dollar of revenue that doesn't rely on email somewhere to get the deal done.
This is true with marketing-driven sales motion, and it's even more the case with sales-heavy ones.
The Revenue Connection
In my consulting work and my time at Box, every deal that closes relied heavily on thoughtful and timely use of email.
Just some of the common email touch points that cultivate and propel opportunities include:
The pre-call emails: personalized, relevant, helpful messaging that supports qualification and motivates the prospect to have a conversation
Booking confirmations and reminders: Clear agenda + prep materials = confidence, not confusion
Post-call follow-up: Discussion summary + next steps + addressing concerns
Proposal delivery: Context and relevance, with a dash of urgency (not just an attachment dump)
Decision nurturing: clearing objections, supporting the process, nudging action
The best sales organizations foster the practice of sending the right emails, to the right people, at the right time.
They also blend automation and the human-touch, integrating emails with calls, meetings, and texts to give customers the experience of unparalleled support.
The Value Connection
Your product or service might be brilliant. But if customers can't figure it out, they'll think it's broken.
Perhaps even worse, if they forget they have it, there's no way they'll renew, expand, or refer you down the line.
Email bridges the gap between purchase and mastery, and when paired well with the product experience, is central to strong CLV.
Here are some of the phases and events of the post-sales experience that rely heavily on email:
Onboarding: Turn confused and distracted customers into confident users
Feature announcements: Drive awareness at a minimum, adoption when done right.
Community building: Connect users to each other, tell stories, and feature customer innovation
Advocacy campaigns: Transform top customers into promoters
The best companies get this: email isn't just marketing. It's customer success at scale.
The Complete Journey
Here's what backbone-level integration actually looks like:
Prospect sees LinkedIn post → clicks blog article → downloads guide → joins email list → receives welcome sequence → gets webinar invite → books discovery call → receives proposal follow-up → becomes customer → enters onboarding sequence →stays active and matures →upsells, cross-sells, and advocates
Email is the thread weaving everything together.
The CEO Reality Check
Leading a small business? You might think you don't have time to dive deep on for email strategy.
Well sure: according to Michael Porter, CEOs average 62.5 hour work weeks, with 72% spent in meetings.
(Ever heard the phrase “That could have been an email?”)
When you're not in a meeting, chances are a lot of time is likely spent in an inbox.
Email is either taking up too much time, with not enough return, or it's under-utilized, failing to fill the gaps or take over for activities that are more expensive than they have to be.
So the question isn't whether you have time for email strategy.
It's when you'll make time to take your email game to the next level.
Meanwhile, if you're not solving this, at least some of your competitors are solidifying the backbone to their business… while you're missing the chance to have email work for you and your team while you get some much needed rest.
Next Week: A New Strategic Framework for Email
This brings us to next week's question: How do you prioritize which emails to work on next?
I'll share a new 2x2 framework that turns email chaos into systematic growth.
But for now: What's one place where better email integration could strengthen your business backbone?
Send me an email (or message) and let me know. 😉
-Joe
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