You know you should build an email list.

Someone told you. You read it somewhere. It's been on your todo list for months.

You still haven't done it.

I get it. Email feels old-fashioned. It feels spammy. Building in public on Twitter feels more modern, more dynamic, more... fun.

But here's the thing: email works. It works better than almost anything else. And the longer you ignore it, the more opportunity you're leaving behind.

Why You've Been Avoiding This

Let me guess your objections:

"It feels spammy." You've received a thousand bad marketing emails. You don't want to become that.

"I don't have anything to say." What would you even write about? You're just building a product.

"Building in public on Twitter is easier." You get immediate feedback. Likes, replies, dopamine.

"I don't want to annoy people." What if they don't want to hear from you?

All of these feel valid. None of them hold up.

Why Email Wins

You own the list. Twitter can change their algorithm tomorrow. Your reach can disappear overnight. Your email list? That's yours. No platform sits between you and your audience.

Direct access to attention. Email lands in an inbox—a place people actually check, regularly, with intent. Social media is a firehose. Email is a letter.

Higher engagement. Open rates on a good email list crush any social media engagement rate. People read emails.

Works while you sleep. Automated sequences, newsletters that drive traffic for years. Set it up once, benefit forever.

Email vs. Social Media

Let me be blunt:

A Twitter follower is not a reachable person. Your tweet might reach 5% of your followers. Might. Algorithm decides.

An email subscriber is permission to reach them directly. Not everyone opens, but nothing is filtering you out.

Platforms change. Platform rules change. Email has been around for 50 years. It's not going anywhere.

What to Send

Here's where people get stuck. What do you actually write?

Not promotions. At least, not mostly. The occasional product update is fine. Constant selling is how you get unsubscribes.

Genuine value. Insights you've had. Lessons from building. Tips that help your audience. The stuff you'd share with a friend.

Personal updates people care about. Not what you had for breakfast. What you shipped, what you learned, what's hard right now. The behind-the-scenes of building.

Answers to questions. What do people ask you? Answer it in an email. Useful content that positions you as helpful.

Starting Small

You don't need 10,000 subscribers to start.

You don't need to email weekly.

One email per month is fine. Consistency matters more than frequency.

100 subscribers is enough. That's 100 people who chose to hear from you. Start there.

Quality over quantity. 100 engaged subscribers beat 10,000 disengaged ones.

Not Being Spammy

Here's how to do email without becoming what you hate:

Only email people who asked. No purchased lists. No scraped emails. People who explicitly signed up.

Deliver more value than you ask for. 80% helpful, 20% promotional. Maybe 90/10.

Make unsubscribing easy. And guilt-free. If they don't want to hear from you, let them go gracefully.

Write like a human. No corporate speak. No marketing jargon. Write like you're emailing a friend.

The Compound Effect

Here's what happens over time:

100 subscribers becomes 500. 500 becomes 2,000. 2,000 becomes 10,000.

It compounds. Slowly at first, then faster.

Each subscriber is a potential customer, a potential advocate, a relationship.

When you launch something, you have an audience ready to listen. That's worth years of work.

Your email list is your most valuable marketing asset. Start building it today.

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