5 Strategies to Grow Your Email List by The Thousands Per Month (4 Are Free!)
Episode 417: Show Notes
Every single month we add thousands and thousands of people to our email list, which sounds bananas because when we started getting to the first 10,000 subscribers, it felt unbelievable. It was a lot! So, we want to give you guys a little bit of a vision of what it looks like to grow your email list at a rapid rate in today’s episode. Several of the concepts we are going to cover could be 100% organic. You do not have to utilize paid strategies at all.
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Now, some of these things we definitely have put dollars behind, but some of the concepts without paid dollars are the same! There are more ways to grow your email list than you’re perhaps aware of, and we are going to cover our top five today! We might come up with a few others too though, and just throw them in! So tune in and join us for the ride as we get into the best ways that you can keep those subscribers on the up and up!
Large Email Lists Don’t Directly Translate into Greater Revenue
We used to think that having a huge subscriber list was all that, but since then we have realized this isn’t actually the case. One can get into the numbers, start forecasting, and believe that if one does X then Y will happen. What we mean by this is that it can be tempting to think if you just put enough dollars into growing your list then sales will go up too. Things aren’t as simple as that though. Small email lists can actually produce amazing revenue. We know some business owners who only have a couple hundred followers but their earnings are in the multiple six-figure range. So while it is important to grow your list, just remember it isn’t quite the cut and dry strategy for earning more that you might think. Another thing — as you scale you will find you need to start spending more to grow your list than you used to. This is just the way it is. At the end of the day, email lists are great because as opposed to social media followers, or SMS and chatbot-based strategies, you truly own your email subscribers!
Two Helpful Statistics Our Email Platform Measures
There are two types of engagements that our email platform measures, one which is active and the other, passive. If a person clicks into an opt-in and stops there, they get marked ‘not active’. There is a middle ground, where if a person clicks in and stops at some point then they get marked as active. If you’re opening emails and clicking links then you’re active too. So the algorithm isn’t quite exact but it gives a pretty good indication. There are two statistics that can tell a lot though. One is our active subscribers. We have 38,000 of them, which is up 9% in 30 days! We can also tell how many we received in the last month: just under 5000. Of those, over 3,500 are active, which means that after our recent big launch, over 3,500 of these new subscribers are engaging. This means we are targeting the right people, putting good content out, and emailing a good amount of times. The second statistic is the interaction trend. This refers to the average opens and clicks over our last 10 campaigns. These campaigns aren’t automated strategies, but engagement through things like an email blast and our challenge broadcast campaigns. So if interaction rates go up, we know that active subscribers are going up too! Make sure you head over to our template shop where you can sign up for our membership package that will help you level up your email game through its provision of extra background knowledge, 30 days free use of our favorite platform, templates, swipe copy, and a whole lot more!
Using Content Upgrades to Drive Traffic and New Leads
It’s time to share some strategies and our first one is the idea of the content upgrade! How this works is that you produce great content through your favorite channel, be it YouTube, podcasts, or whatever. In this content, you offer a freebie that promises an upgraded level of content that the listener should opt into afterward. You should always think of your content as something that takes a listener down a path, the logical last step of which is a paid product! So you can think of this paid product you offer and then work backward from there to create the free content that acts as the pathway to it. People think they need to guard their content but this is a misconception, and who would really take the time to wade through all of your free content anyway? People want it neatly packaged which is why you can offer the same content in your paid package as you do in a more spaced out way in the free stuff. We have an opt-in like a boss bundle at our creative template shop so make sure you check that out too!
Recouping Dollars and Gathering Data Using Organic and Paid Tripwires
Strategy number two is predominantly a paid concept but can also be translated into an organic one with similar effects. This is the concept of the tripwire, which is a process whereby you create a freebie opt-in that leads the client to a thank you page, upon which they will find a small priced offer. We recommend this offer to be between $7.00 and $37.00. The great thing about this strategy is it helps you recoup some dollars you spent on the opt-in and also gives you a lot of information about which of your clients are buyers and which are freebie seekers. The organic version of this is to simply have no priced offer on the freebie page, and this strategy is effective because while it doesn’t recoup dollars, it still gives you lots of info about your clients’ interests. Try to have around three of these at any given time, and tweak them as you see who is engaging the most with which. The desired end goal is to have one main tripwire active, which has proved to be the most effective. May successful people have a main tripwire running for years!
Winning Subscribers through Summits and Challenges
Our next strategy can end up being a lot of work but also presents huge rewards. This is the concept of the free or low priced summit or challenge. We have done both and can tell you for sure that summits especially take a lot of work. Last year we upped our subscribers by tens of thousands by using these two strategies though. Our entire team spent a third of their time working on summits so make sure if you choose the summit over the challenge, that you know it will be worth your time. These strategies are attractive to people because they show huge value over a short period of time and people think they will get a lot out of them. The challenge can be a safer option than the summit because it only involves you, and can also generate as much activity as a summit. The key endgame for both of these is to finish the experience off with a paid offer!
Using Webinars in a Variety of Ways to Grow Your Email List
The fourth way to grow your email list we cover today is the webinar! The great thing about webinars is that in today’s climate you can even host them on Instagram! You can use the Live option and then gather emails for the people who sign up for it in advance. If people end up joining half-way through without signing up that is fine too because it becomes a different strategy. Hopefully, they will like you and sign up later. We do recommend a private platform though. Zoom is amazing and you should definitely get ConvertKit so that you can boss up your follow up sequence. As your list grows though don’t think this will translate directly into more webinar sign-ups. Whoever tells you that is spending a lot of ads. But there are some paid options such as the tripwire and direct-to-webinar approach which will generate traffic on a budget.
Higher Conversion Using the Opt-In Tripwire Strategy Without the Opt-In
Our last strategy is similar to the opt-in tripwire on except it cuts out the opt-in! What we mean by this is that sometimes it can be more effective to just advertise for potential clients to go straight to your low-cost product, rather than couching it in a thank you page. If your product is sexy enough you will literally have people paying you to join your email list. The great thing about this strategy is that you are not losing people who might be willing to buy in the same way as you might in the opt-in tripwire approach. Our Trello for business offer has been so successful that one in every ten people buy it! So try out this strategy and see which one converts better for you. People will often buy the free product and then go on to sign up for something more expensive after that. If you think about it, one person is then paying for you to get another 4000 people to sign up in the future, some of whom will then escalate to more expensive offers too! Remember, these strategies take a lot of work, so don’t try them all at once. If you need help with this then head over to our creative template shop and sign up for the membership where we will guide you through the process and give you a bunch of tools to make it totally easy!
Quote This
If that low priced offer is sexy enough, people will literally pay you money to get on your email list.
Highlights
Large Email Lists Don’t Directly Translate into Greater Revenue. [0:03:40.1]
Two Helpful Statistics Our Email Platform Measures. [0:09:04]
Using Content Upgrades to Drive Traffic and New Leads. [0:13:02]
Recouping Dollars and Gathering Data Using Organic and Paid Tripwires. [0:23:51]
Winning Subscribers through Summits and Challenges. [0:26:13]
Using Webinars in a Variety of Ways to Grow Your Email List. [0:30:38.6]
Higher Conversion Using the Opt-In Tripwire Strategy Without the Opt-In. [0:35:00.4]
ON TODAY’S SHOW
Abagail & Emylee
The Strategy Hour Podcast
We help overwhelmed and creative entrepreneurs break down their Oprah-sized dreams to create a functioning command center to tame the chaos of their business. Basically, we think you’re totally bomb diggity, we’re about to uplevel the shiz out of your business.
KEY TOPICS
Email list, Subscriber ratios, Revenue, Active subscribers, Inactive subscribers, Content upgrades, Tripwires, Summits, Challenges, Webinars, Paid products
