The Importance Of List Building

I want to talk about a topic that I have spoken about before and the reason I'm talking about it again is because it is so, so important. And that is list building and building your email subscribers. As you know, when I interview guests, I always ask them if they could go back in time and give their younger selves one piece of business advice, what would it be? And if I asked myself that question, it would be, hey Rob, start building your email list sooner. And if you're wondering why, because maybe you spend a lot of time doing social media and that delivers some leads for you, just consider this that when you build your list, you are building an asset in your business. When you are building your social media profile and followers, you are building an asset for someone else's business. So that's what we're talking about in today's episode. Really, really important topic. So I really hope you stick with me and let's get on with the show. Accelerate your agency's profitable growth with tools, tips and value added interviews with your host agency own and coach Rob DaCosta. This week's episode of the podcast is sponsored by Cloudways. Cloudways is a managed cloud hosting platform that is loved by agencies around the world. With Cloudways, agencies can focus on growing their clients whilst Cloudways takes care of all the hosting related complexities. Now Cloudways is offering an exclusive discount for the agency accelerator podcast listeners. So visit cloudways.com and use the promo code agency15 to get 15% off for three months on the hosting plan of your choice. Your ideal target customer is looking for you and it's your job to help them find the solutions that your agency offers. Now I'm sure you'll agree with this statement, but how do you deliver on it? Well, a simple statement deserves a simple answer. And, and the answer is you build and nurture your email list and when your prospect is ready, you convert them into a client. That sounds so simple, right? But let me ask you a question. Why is it that so many agencies and freelancers and businesses generally don't focus on building their email list? I just want to Share with you 7 important facts about why building an email list is so important and so much more important than just so solely focusing on social media as a different option. So here are seven facts that I've researched when I was preparing for this episode and they are quite striking. So first of all, you're six times more likely to get higher click through rates, through emails that you send out instead of posting on social media. And email is 40 times more effective at acquiring new customers than social media. Number three is that a really good regular email marketing campaign can generate up to 80% of your website's traffic. And then of course from there you can start engaging with your ideal target customer. Number four, and this is so important, is that you own your email list whilst you rent your social media. That means with your email list you are building a genuine asset in your business, whereas with social media, you're helping build someone else's business and building an asset for them. And remember, because you own your list, you're in control of what happens to it. But when you rent social media space, they can change their terms and conditions and how things operate and that means that you could lose access to them. And the example I've been using most recently is Donald Trump and his 100 million Twitter followers, or whatever the number was, and he'd lost all of those overnight. And if he'd have been smart enough to encourage those people to join a mailing list, then he would still have a direct one to one relationship with those people, whereas I suspect he probably just lost all of those followers. And the fifth stat I wanted to share with you is that email is the most scalable way to make sales with new customers and then to build deeper relationships with with those customers. Number six is that you can reach far more potential customers with email than you can with social media. Just remember that when you post on your social media dashboard and you might even have, say, a thousand followers, that doesn't mean your content is going to be shown to those thousand followers. In fact, it's probably only going to be shown to about 2% of them. And if they really engage, then the algorithm will show it to more people. Whereas with email, you're in complete control of how many people see your email. And of course, if you use email automation, then you can be really smart and really targeted and that means you can start to send very specific messages to specific groups of people. And the last point, number seven, is that for every one pound you invest on your email list, you can expect a return of 42 pounds. And, you know, there just aren't many other platforms that you can get that kind of return on investment from. So I hope that you agree with those stats and find them pretty compelling. They're not things that I've made up, they're things that I researched in preparation for, for this episode. And I hope that's making you think that email marketing should be on the top of your agenda, if it isn't already, as I Said I have focused on building my email list really in earnest for the last probably four or five years. But I wish I'd started 20 years ago and then my email list would be 10 times the size of it is. The maths is pretty simple here. You know, guys, if you've got 100 people on your list, then you might be able to convert one of them today. But if you've got 1,000, you can probably convert 10 of them. And, and then if you've got 10,000, you can convert 100, and if you've got 100,000, you can convert a thousand. I mean, it's just a numbers game and we need to focus every single day on building our list and getting new ideal target customers or ideal target prospects to subscribe to our list. Now, so far during this podcast, I've been comparing sort of either or social media or email marketing, but of course it's not one or the other. You know, smart marketing would do both. And my recommendation to people is to use social media to drive traffic to your list or to a certain page on your website where they can download something. And that kind of brings me on to the next topic, which is, okay, Rob, I kind of buy into email marketing and I've tried to do this before, but I just can't grow my list. And so what do I need to do? So let me give you a few quick tips on exactly what you need to do first. First of all, you need to go back to basics here. You need to have a clear niche. And when you have a clear niche, you can identify exactly who your ideal target customer is and what keeps them awake at night, what their core pains are that your product or service can help solve. So for example, if they are an e commerce platform and you provide web development for E commerce, then creating something that is really simple for them to use and re engaging for their customers and easy to upload new products to and so on would be one of the things that they're really looking for. And maybe that's one of the pain points they have. Or maybe you do SEO and PPC for E commerce and one of the pains that your audience has is that they're not getting enough eyeballs on their e commerce site so they're not making enough sales. So the pain that you can solve is driving more traffic to their e commerce platform. So you need to have a clear niche and then you can define exactly who your ideal target customer is and then you can identify some of the core pain points that they have that your product or service can solve, and then you can create a really compelling piece of content. And you're going to make this gated content. In other words, they have to fill in a form, give you their name and their email address, and then you will send them that piece of content. That lead magnet, that could be a PDF, it could be a video, it could be a checklist, it could be a template, it could be a quiz, it could be a whole number of things. Anyway, you're going to, they're going to pay for this with their email address. And then once you have their email address, it goes into your email automation software and you start communicating with them through the emails that you're going to send. Now, I recommend that you send emails every single week and you create a content schedule so you know exactly what you're going to send. Now, one of the reasons for doing this is because you need to understand that your prospect is ready to buy when they are ready to buy, not when you want them to buy. Yes, of course, you've got to nurture them and nudge them along that buyer's journey, but you need to understand that your buyer is ready to buy when they. They are ready to buy, and they're ready to buy when they're in enough pain. And they know that your product or service can solve that pain for them. And that's why regular communications is really important. That's why sending one off emails is going to do absolutely nothing. And if you've done this in the past and you've sent sporadic emails and you're thinking, well, I've tried it before, Robin, it doesn't work. It's because you're not doing it consistently. You need to be in your ideal target customers inbox every single week. Now, it's not a big deal to do this. If you have a content schedule so you know exactly what you're going to write, then it's not that hard to write your emails. It's much harder when you sit at your desk and you go, oh, I know, I need to write an email. I listen to Rob's podcast and I agree with what he said, but I don't know what to write. If you're in that scenario, you're so much more likely not to do this than if you've actually sat down and consciously created a schedule for the next two months. So the next eight emails that you're going to write, which, let's face it, isn't that difficult to come up with if you have a clear niche and you really understand your ideal target customer. Now, there's four types of emails that you're going to send, and I'm not going to go into them in a ton of detail today, but I just wanted to introduce you to them. So there's the greet email. This is the email you send when someone first comes into your world. And then there is the imprint sequence of emails. And these are the emails that you send to imprint on them your credibility and exactly what you do. And also imprint on them that you understand them and the challenges that they face. So that's the imprint sequence. The next sequence is nurturing. And this is where you're moving your prospect down the buyer's journey to get to the point of taking the next step, which might be booking a call with you or asking you to write a proposal and so on. And then the fourth type of email is your regular weekly emails. These are your broadcast emails. So there's four types of emails. Greet, imprint, nurture, and broadcast. And you need to make sure that you have a balance of all of those four types. At this point, I just want to reinforce the value of email marketing and I want to enforce it by telling you that I get probably 80% of my business through my email list. Yes, of course they hopefully listen to this podcast. They might look at stuff on my website, they might have attended one of my webinars, but they'll be on my email list and I will be staying front of mind with them because they receive my weekly emails. Another reason for sending emails regularly is, is because human beings are like sand timers. And every time you communicate with your prospect, you've refilled the sand timer. And if you don't communicate with them again before that sand timer runs out, then they'll forget about you and they'll go and buy from someone else when they are in enough pain. So you need to keep refilling the sand timer. And one of the ways you do that is through your emails. So if you're still with me, you will agree that building your list and sending really value added content is super important. But you may also think, I get this, Rob, but I just haven't been successful before or I don't know where to start, or maybe your list growth has hit a brick wall. And if that's the case, I hope you'll indulge me for just two minutes while I tell you about my new program which I have launched this week and I am super excited about it. And it's called the Build, Nurture and Convert Blueprint and basically this program gives you everything you need to get started or to for sure all the growth and conversion of an engaged email list. So head over to dacostacoaching.co.uk email marketing course to read more and of course I'll put a link in the show notes. Basically, this program takes you through everything from putting your systems in place to start with, putting the right email automation system in place, creating your lead magnet, that piece of killer content that's going to get your ideal audience to download, creating a landing page or a sales page for that killer content, and then creating your sequences of emails and as I said, using those four different types and then once you've done that, nurturing those people so that you can then convert them into clients. Now what's really exciting about the program, if you're listening to this live, is for the next seven days during our launch, you can get a 20% discount, which means you're just going to pay 167 pounds for the program and that gives you lifetime access, including all new content in the future. So it's a bit of a no brainer to invest £167 and get your handheld through the entire process of setting up, building and converting your email list into loyal, raving clients. I'm even going to give you a complete sequence of emails that you simply need to tailor for your own product or service and then you can plug it into your email system and you're ready to go. Now, I put this program together because A, obviously I know how important it is to build your list and what a valuable asset that is for your business, but B, I know that a lot of agency owners struggle with this and therefore they don't do it. So I want to give you the kind of A to Z on exactly what you need to do to get going and then expedite it by using some of the templates that I'm providing. Now, when you create your content, and I've spoken about this many times before, you need to take a value first approach in that you need to make sure that the email content is providing 80% value and 20% selling. Because of course, if all you did was make your email sell, sell, sell, then people are going to quickly unsubscribe because they don't know, like and trust you. But on the other hand, if all you do in your emails is provide value, then people will see you as a fantastic resource, but they won't have a mindset of wanting to buy from you. So make sure you get that balance in your emails between 80% value and 20% selling. And again, in the Build, Nurture, Convert blueprint, I outline exactly how to do that. So I hope, if you made it this far, that you are convinced about building your list and if you want some help with that, reach out to me and join the program. But if not, please, please, please make sure that you start building your list and you create your eight weeks worth of content. So you're emailing your list every week. And by the way, if you're thinking, yeah, but Rob, my audience will get fed up with me if I keep pestering them with an email. No, they won't. Because if you are providing value, why on earth wouldn't your audience want to receive that value? What you're actually doing is building empathy with them because you're showing them you understand them and the challenges they have and you're building credibility with them by giving them some value and giving them starting to give them some of the solutions that they need to implement in order to overcome the pain that they have. So please don't think emailing your list once a week is too much. A lot of people email their list every day or three or four times a week. I'm not sure suggesting that. I'm suggesting once a week regularly. I've been doing this diligently for years now and a lot of you will be on my list and you know, know that I implement exactly what I'm outlining in today's podcast. So I hope you found that useful. Another quick episode, and it's touching on a topic that I've spoken about two or three times before, but maybe giving a slightly different angle to it in this episode and sharing with you some really startling facts about why we need to be focused on our email list. So I hope you're convinced and I hope that you are taking some actions away from today's episode to start building your list or start growing your list or start regularly emailing your list if you already have one. If you found today's episode useful, please consider leaving a review on Apple podcast because that helps me get in front of more people just like you, so I can help more people. Other than that, have a great rest of your week and a great weekend and I will see you next Thursday for the next episode of the Agency Accelerator Podcast.