The One Thing

The One Thing

.

In between the painstaking hours of doing inbound and outbound marketing, I took time to read a book to keep myself motivated. 

.

It was The ONE Thing -The Surprisingly Simple Truth Behind Extraordinary Results by Gary Keller. It’s a relatively short focus-driven book that continuously hammers in a single message, which is to, well, do ONE thing. 

.

However, I reached a moment of realization in chapter 5, which is what I want to share with you today.

.

In Chapter 5, in bolded, underlined text, wrote “Multitasking is a lie.” 

.

From a scientific perspective, that made total sense. Facts are facts. The studies on multitasking were true. Humans are not hardwired to focus on two things at the same time. (Have you ever tried talking on the phone while doing math homework?)

.

Not only is “multitasking merely the opportunity to screw up more than one thing at a time” (thanks to Steve Uzzell for that lovely quote), it takes an immense amount of effort to execute. 

.

I’ll use a real-life example: email marketing. 

.

In today’s digital landscape, marketing is a multi-pronged way to engage with people. We have Facebook ads, billboards, pop-ups, guerilla marketing tactics, etc. Each of those domains require a stalwart team of creative minds to execute on a continuous basis. 

.

Sure, the results do eventually match the effort. But it does not even compare to the efficacy of email marketing. 

.

I’m not saying this because I’m biased either. Email marketing has been tried and tested for years, and it still holds one of the top 3 leaderboard positions in marketing ROI for eCommerce businesses—trailing just behind word of mouth marketing. 

.

Why?

.

Email marketing multitasks for you.

.

You can automate an entire system of letters that send to your user based on their behavior to assist them throughout their natural journey. 

.

Instead of manually emailing each user a thank-you message after they make a purchase from your store, an automated message with a thank-you message, a uniquely generated coupon code for an upsell, and 6 other customized suggestions based on the user’s behavior can automatically be sent. Millions of times. 

.

The effort required is absolutely minimal to the amount of reward you get from email marketing, and that is why it is so incredibly powerful.

.

All my clients tell me they wish they had started email marketing earlier. And they could have, considering that emails are almost 50 years old…

.

But going back to multitasking—it’s nearly impossible to overlook how much work a machine can do for you.

.

To everyone who would ever want to promote their services, help their audiences understand who they are, what they stand for, what makes them special, what they care about, why customers should share their business to their friends, and literally anything else about their business, email marketing can do it automatically for you.

.

Focus on the one task of creating a few automated email flows, and it will continue multitasking for you until the end of time. 

.

If you’d like suggestions or tips on how to get started, let me know in the comments below!

Jasper

Co-founder of Grab Digital