We’ve all been caught completely neglecting our email marketing from time to time… no judgment here! But, when I actually take the time to keep my email list up to date and consistently send emails, I always see a huge return in engagement and conversation. Once you get the hang of it, email marketing is truly a simple and great way to authentically and individually reach your potential clients.  Today, I walk you through how to build your email list to get you pumping out those emails! I talk about where to start, what platform to use, why to offer free resources, and spill all the email marketing tips I know! Ready to become a frequent flyer in your potential clients’ inboxes? Let’s dive in!

 

Social Media Reality Check?

What if I told you that social media is not the end-all, be-all, of your marketing plan? Trust me, I wholeheartedly believe in the power of using social media to sell your products and services but if you’re solely relying on it to host your business – you’re building on borrowed land… WHAT?! I hope this isn’t a reality check for you, but you do not own the rights to your social media account and unfortunately, I have seen several people lose access to their accounts and lose thousands of followers…yeah, I know. That is every business owner’s worst nightmare! This is exactly why you need to start an email list now and get people onto your own property to loyalize those followers that you have even further. However, I will be the first to admit that I have been absolutely terrible about keeping up with my email marketing. Sometimes I feel like saying “hello…hello…is anyone out there?”. But most often, to my surprise, when I do send out those emails, my list is engaging with what I send and I am always impressed! Starting an email list will show you who your warmest leads are as well. This will allow you to segment your online community so you can engage with those warm leads more frequently. Talk about a win-win right?! Even if you only have a few people on your email list, I guarantee it will benefit your business if you just send them a few emails. Take it from me, I have had an email list for years now and it’s not massive, we’ve got a small but mighty crew hanging out in the newsletter community, but when I send out sales emails, we do get conversions. With that being said, let’s dive in on how you can start your email list!

 

Email Platforms

First, you need to figure out which platform you want to host your email list on. Right now, we are on ActiveCampaign, but we have previously been on Mailchimp, and then we transferred things over to Flodesk. We switched to ActiveCampaign because we wanted to be able to track and delineate our email funnels as well as be much more precise. ActiveCampaign has a lot more email marketing capabilities so we decided to invest and upgrade as we’re going to be starting with paid advertising and driving more traffic to our email funnel, this will be a much better option for us, but there is no shame in using the free version of Mailchimp or using the $20 Flodesk (maybe more now)! All platforms are relatively the same unless you are doing some super technical email funnels, then you’re going to want ActiveCampaign or something of that nature.

 

Freebies

To build your email list, you’ve got to give people some sort of incentive to join!  By offering a free resource, you’re going to help drive people to your email list. It’s essentially an exchange of currency: you’re giving them something for free and they’re giving you your email address. Start by identifying a problem that your ideal client is facing and try to make it fit the majority of your audience, that way you will get the most opt-ins since it will help solve most people’s problems within your audience. This can be a video format like a master class or a free challenge of some sort, you can also do a little quickie PDF downloadable guide but the secret to the success of a free resource is making it super simple so that it’s easy and fast to consume.  I’m sure that you’re much like me and you want to over-deliver and give your audience the best thing possible, but that is going to do a disservice because it’s going to take too long for the people who are downloading it to implement. You want it to give them a quick win so your audience is more loyalized and trusts the strategies or offers that you provide!

 

Landing Page

Now you can create an opt-in page for the free resource. You’re going to need some sort of landing page and this will be available for you within your email marketing program – whichever one you choose. Create a super simple landing page where people enter their names, email addresses, and if possible, I recommend adding their Instagram handles, that way you can go and interact with them on Instagram and send them a follow-up in a few days after they have downloaded your free resource to check in and see how the implementation and execution is going. This is a great way to build a quality relationship with potential leads and further loyalize them to your brand!

 

Email Nurture Sequence

Once your audience opts in for the resource, you will have this triggered email nurture sequence that will be automatically delivered to the people who have opted in over the next several days. I’m going to give you a quick run-down of all of the different emails that you’ll want to include in your nurture sequence. This nurture sequence is going to deliver the goods!  Start by introducing yourself and showing why you’re qualified to help them solve their biggest problem, then you’re going to solve the problem, then add value and an extra bonus on how to really execute the resource to the full capacity, the next email will review some sort of bonus offer that will help them even further. I like doing this since these people will most likely be cold coming into your audience and by adding in a video in this email specifically, they can see your face and get a little idea of your personality.  Email five will share what’s next in the journey for them, whether that’s a rundown on how frequently you’re going to be sending emails to them now after they have opted in or by offering them one of your products or services which I wouldn’t recommend if this is the first one you’ve ever done.  I would recommend keeping these people in your general email sequence and shooting them an email once or twice a week! That wraps it up, you have five emails in your email nurture sequence and you will do this every single time you release a freebie because the emails will tie back into the purpose and the benefit of what that free resource was.

 

Social Media Support

Craft your social media content to support the launch of your free resource! You’re going to want to build up your content for a few weeks before you share that you have a free resource available to your audience. The reason being is that it might become a be a shock to your followers that you have an email list and you kind of want to tease that you’re getting this stuff ready and that you’ll have this available coming soon. You want to prime the audience to understand that they actually will need this free resource to achieve whatever goal that they have in mind.  In the past, I have released a freebie called “3 Ways to Blow Up Your DMs” and before releasing this free resource, I made people aware that it was possible to wake up and have people in their DMs that were interested in working with them. I also talked about how engagement doesn’t need to be that challenging and if you spend some time doing it every single day, this is going to be super simple for you to execute. I gave them a couple of teaser strategies to kind of help them get started and then I launched full force with the free resource and I had a ton of people download it and execute + implement it on their social media. Went over like gangbusters!!  Get on your Instagram stories, tell people to download it when you launch, and then when or if you can collect their Instagram handle, find people who have downloaded your free resource, reach out to them and ask them how they like it. Don’t be afraid to check-in and ask for feedback because this is a great way you can get social proof from people who have downloaded it, looked it over, and executed it, they can give you some good feedback which you can screenshot and share to your Instagram stories to say “Hey this person loved it and you probably will too so head to the link in my bio and get the free resource now!”. Then after you have launched it, I would continue to promote it depending on how long you feel like but don’t give up after one day, people need to see something 12 times like there’s the rule of 7 in marketing.  However, because content indentation is so real in the online space right now, I would recommend shouting it from the rooftops for two weeks as a constant reminder to head to the link in your bio to get the free resource!!

 

Newsletters

The last step is to queue up weekly or bi-monthly email newsletters to keep your list engaged. As I’ve mentioned, I have not taken this step into account for myself… but it’s so important to keep your audience super engaged and interested in what you’re up to! Pre batch these emails and add them to an automated cadence, you can do this in just a couple of hours one day per month to batch out your emails and have them be automatically sent out. It doesn’t have to be super hard and you can do it, I believe in you!!

These are simple steps to start building your email list however if you are struggling to come up with your first freebie or how to come about having people sign up for your list if you’ve launched a freebie and it’s just not hitting home with your audience, send us a DM! We would love to hear from you and help you get started, don’t be afraid to reach out. For more tips like this, find our podcast The Sherose Show, and follow along with our blogs!