How to Build Your Email List Fast
Believe it or not, email is still one of the best ways to market your business. It is estimated that there are 4 billion active email users right now (and that number is projected to increase). According to MarketingSherpa, email is STILL the most preferred marketing channel that most consumers want businesses to communicate with them through.
And not only is email your consumer’s favorite way of communicating but your list is YOURS. It belongs to you. If Instagram shuts your account down, you lose all of your followers. However, that email list you’ve built, you own it and will always be able to market to them.
So now that you know how important email is, you might be wondering how the heck you build an email list and fast? In this blog, we break down our best kept secrets to build your email list.
Everybody Loves a Freebie
Raise your hand if you love a freebie! 🙋♀️(I’m guessing so do your customers!) Which leads us to say the best way to get people on your email list is in exchange for something free. This is what we call an opt-in.
Typically an opt-in is either a discount, a free checklist, workbook, video workshop, an e-book, etc. It needs to be something of value that your customers would be willing to give you their email address in exchange.
It’s worth mentioning that emails are like a currency these days. Many of us get infiltrated with emails on the daily so consumers tend to be picky with who they decide to give their email address too. Your opt-in has to offer real value otherwise you’re not going to get that exchange.
For example, a Social Media Manager may have an opt-in that’s a list of 30 content ideas. If you’re a Virtual Assistant your opt-in may be 20 tasks you never knew you could outsource. If you’re someone who sells physical or digital products you’ll usually have an opt-in for a certain percentage off their first purchase. Last example, we’ve seen Case Study opt-ins be really successful across all kinds of service-based industries. It’s a great opportunity to showcase results you’ve already accomplished and how you could be of service to potential clients.
How to Create a Valuable Opt-in
Now that you know freebies are the way to go to collect emails, we now want to cover how to make sure you’re creating valuable opt-ins.
Your opt-in should have a goal of solving a problem your audience may be having. What’s nice about “giving away” valuable information is that if your freebie helped a potential client in any way, then there’s a good chance they’re going to come back to your website and make a purchase.
Your freebie helps to establish your position as an expert, and that if your audience needs extra help, they should come to you first. All those touch points, will eventually lead to a sale. A good way to think about it is, if they get all this value from you for free, imagine the value they’re going to get from you when they purchase from you.
So, don’t skip on the value! Put some time and effort into creating a really amazing opt-in.
The Best Place to Showcase Your Opt-in
Besides creating the opt-in itself, you might be wondering where do you showcase your opt-in? How do people sign up for it?
What we’ve done in the past, is put opt-in sign ups throughout our website. The one that you might be most familiar with are website pop-ups. That’s when you go to a website and a pop-up shows up announcing that they have a freebie available to you.
However, there are other places on your website to showcase your opt-in. For example, you could place your opt-in sign up in the middle of a blog as a way to break up your content. You could also place one at the end of a blog or even along the sidebar. You can also promote your freebie on social media such as Pinterest, Instagram or Facebook.
Don’t Forget the Follow-Up Email Sequence
Now that you have your opt-in in place and ready to go, the next important step is to be sure you’re following up with your new subscriber (these new subscribers are definitely warm leads). Now that you have their email address, let’s put it to good use.
You can create a 3-4 email series that helps you cultivate your new subscribers into potential clients. You should include an introduction/welcome and also some sort of action provoking email that is either booking a discovery call or filling out a form. Whichever CTA makes the most sense for your business.
Go get 'em Tiger! We have all the faith that you’ll be collecting emails in no time AND turning those warm leads into clients. As always, we love bringing you resources to help you run a successful business so go check out the Creative Template Shop for templates and more resources.
Ready to Uplevel your Email Marketing?
You ready for the best news? We created a FREE opt-in called Email Like a Boss where we literally take you step by step through creating your opt-in, sharing and sending your opt-in, and creating your welcome sequence.
In this course, we give you sooo many opt-in ideas and we even separate them out from industry so there’s definitely something for everyone. Not only that but we also walk you through how to set up a Flodesk account and then how to create your welcome email sequence too!
While we’re talking about welcome email sequence there are email templates in the Shop as well as Launch Email Copy for you to get started with.
So just do the thing and sign up for Email Like a Boss, it’s totally free but it’s definitely packed with lots of value.
P.S. speaking of Opt-in…this is ours! Let us know how we did 😜
