If there’s one thing that I’m more passionate about than helping you build your website, it’s helping you build your email list.
Think about this: Anyone can put up a homepage, an about page, a work with me page and contact page online, but how do I know that there’s an actual person behind that website that’s going to deliver on what all that copywriting promises?
If I go to your website and you’re leaving it up to me to figure out how you can best serve me and you’re not telling me what the next step to take with you is and making it super easy for me to say yes, chances are I’m not going to do anything.
.
I’m going to go find the website that grabs me by the hand and says, “I understand why you’re here. You don’t know what you don’t know and I’m going to walk you through solving this problem. You’re in the right place. Start here.”
That starting point is the freebie that you offer to get people onto your email list.
And getting people onto your email list just the first hurdle.
Email marketing builds trust.
When you run an online business, the number one thing that will set you apart from everyone else doing what you do is the know, like, and trust factor.
If I subscribe to your email list and then I consistently receive valuable content from you week after week in my inbox, that tells me you’re legit. You treat your business like a business, and if I buy something from you, I can expect you to deliver and continue to serve me.
When you are in consistent contact with your subscribers, it tells them that you’re not just some random person who might be here today and gone tomorrow, so spending money with you won't be a risk.
Another thing that builds trust is creating consistent content for your blog. You’re showing up, week after week to deliver value to your community.
Consistency builds trust.
So if you want your business to succeed, your number one priority should be growing your email list, and then serving that list by continuing to deliver value and then presenting them with opportunities to go deeper with you by purchasing your products or services.
I posed the following question in our Facebook Group because I wanted to really understand what our community thinks about email list building:
I’m going to tackle all of those questions, but first, a little story.
I was writing this blog post while camping this past weekend, and my eight year old niece Ashley came up to me while I was typing away at the campfire with my morning coffee and said, “Can I help?”
“Sure,” I said. “If you had a website, how would you let people know about it?”
“Put it online,” she said.
“What would you do next?” I asked.
She thought for a minute, and then said, “Write a story about it.”
“And what would you do with that story?”
“Put it on Facebook.”
“Any other places?” I asked.
“Twitter,” she said from behind her pink stuffed elephant wubby I got her when she was born.
“YouTube!!!! Instagwam! Snapchat!”
“Buzzfeed!” my nephew Alex yells from across the campfire. “And your local news station.”
“No!!!” Ashley yelled at him. “Why would the news care, Alex?”
“Put it on Google!” she yelled. “And maybe when I make the story, I can put it on the app store so people can buy the story. And then I can make a paper book called Ashley’s Story for People to Buy for one dollar. And then I’ll do commercials on Facebook. And then I’ll make a shirt that has a unicorn wearing a shirt.”
“Wait,” I said. “How is a shirt that has a unicorn wearing a shirt about sharing your website?”
“It has my story on it!” she said, impatiently. “And I’ll make a YouTube channel about it. And if they saw my YouTube channel and they liked it, they might search it up on Google.”
And then she hopped on her pink razor scooter and rode away.
Um, she pretty much nailed it.
How to build an email list
- Step one is to create your website so you freebie has a place to live.
- Step two is to create a share-worthy freebie that solves a problem so that people want to go deeper with you (and spread the word about you).
- Step three is to consistently create stories that inspire, educate, and entertain (also known as blog posts or podcasts or videos or live streaming) to lead people back to your website where you’re making it really easy and obvious for people to see your freebie and sign up for it.
- Step four is to share your stories on social media channels where your target audience is hanging out, and pitch them as guest posts on other people’s websites that serve a similar audience, and be interviewed about them on other people’s podcasts or blogs or live streams. Once you have a product or service to sell, you can also pay for ads to promote your free content to get people onto your email list, knowing that eventually you’ll recoup your investment when those people become customers.
- Step five is to consistently email your stories to the people who signed up for your email list to continue to provide value to them and from time to time give them opportunities to learn more about other products and services you offer than can help them.
How to find out what your subscribers want to read about
Ask them!
I was listening to a this podcast episode with Pat Flynn and he had some awesome questions that you can ask to find out what your audience wants to learn more about. One of the best places to do research is to find Facebook Groups where they are hanging out, and simply ask questions like:
- What are you struggling with most when it comes to ?
- What is something you do every day related to that you just absolutely hate?
- What do you think about that could be done in a better way?
- If you had a magic wand, what is something you would change about ?
Answers to those questions will help you create compelling content that will not only attract new subscribers but also serve your existing ones. As you start building your email list, you can ask your subscribers the exact same questions!
How to find the time
BFF, I'm gonna give it you straight. You'll never find the time, you have to make the time.
If you’re running an online business that you want to be scalable – meaning you’re serving multiple people at once and able to make more money in the same amount of time instead of working with people one on one and trading your time for money – you’ll be spending the majority of your time in steps 3 and 4 above to bring new people in and continue to engage your current email list because you’ll have automated the rest of the sales process.
You’ll have built the website, set up the freebie, and set up the automated email sequence that shares information about how you can serve your audience and then invites them to take the next step and buy your product or service. That’s something you build once and it’s done.
Then you can either spend your time promoting your content, or you can spend your money buying ads to drive traffic to your content, but you still need content.
It’s imperative to make the time for this because if you just build a website, your audience will not come.
It’s your active creation of new content and active promotion of it that will drive traffic to your website.
Think of every new piece of content you creating and share is like planting little traffic seeds all over the internet.
You start with just one, but eventually you’ll have hundreds or even thousands of seeds growing and sending you traffic from all over the internet.
When you create awesome content and share it on social media, you’re upping the chance not only for it to be shared, but for other people will link to it from their blog posts which helps with your SEO rankings.
Things like batch creation and scheduling of content can help tremendously when it comes to saving time, like setting aside a Saturday to write a months worth of blog posts and scheduling them to publish in WordPress, and using social media scheduling tools like CoSchedule to share them.
When to sell
Selling and promoting in every single email is sure to turn off your email list.
They’ll know that every time they open one of your emails you’re going to be asking them for money. Ew.
It took me a long time to figure out a good balance, and I should have just listened to Gary Vaynerchuck, who in Jab, Jab, Jab, Right Hook says that you give, give, give, then ask.
So every few emails, you’ll remind them of how they can take the next step in their journey with you.
Maybe it takes them a year before they’re actually ready to do it, but you’ve been there for them the whole entire time and they’ll think of you first.
Yes, it’s a lot of work.
There are a lot of things you need to learn to pull it off, like creating graphics and how to best leverage each social media platform, how to optimize for SEO and making sure you’ve got your email opt-in forms strategically placed on your website, how to make the videos, how to make those podcast episodes, how to get guest posts, etc.
But once you know how to do it, you’re empowered to create consistent content to grow your email list and grow your business.
And the best part about creating consistent content to serve my audience is that I get to spend most of my time researching and writing and creating content around my passion. I get to engage with people who want the same things I want. I get to spend time doing what I love – it’s really the dreamiest part of online business!
