216: Grow Your List 10X Faster By Leveraging Existing Audiences

Foreign welcome to the Creators MBA Podcast, your go to resource for mastering the art and science of Digital product entrepreneurship. My name is Dr. Destiny Kopp and I help business owners generate consistent revenue from their digital product business without the need to be glued to their desks. Hi there, Destiny here. Today we're tackling something that many of you struggle with growing your email list, especially when you're starting from zero. But here's the good news. You do not have to build your audience in isolation. In fact, the fastest way to grow isn't creating more content. It's not perfecting your lead magnet. It is leveraging other people's audiences. So today I'm going to walk you through exactly how to ethically borrow established audiences to jumpstart your email list growth. And I'm going to share some of the methods that I have found that works better than anything else for getting quality readers to your newsletter. First, let's talk about why this strategy works. Before I get into any of the specific tactics, I want to expand upon why leveraging other people's audiences is so powerful. The first thing is you get an instant credibility transfer. So when somebody with an established audience recommends you, their trust factor kind of rubs off on you too. Secondly, when you are accessing people who are already interested in what you have to offer, what your niche is, these aren't just random people out there in the world. These are very qualified leads. The third thing is you can reach hundreds or maybe even thousands of potential subscribers without spending a dime on advertising. And that is huge, my friend, when you are just starting out. And finally, these partnerships create valuable connections with other creators in your space. And that can lead to all kinds of opportunities down the road. Now let's get into and I want to walk you through my four favorite methods for tapping into existing audiences. The first one is newsletter swaps. Newsletter swaps are pretty straightforward. You feature another creator's content in your newsletter and and they feature yours and theirs. Even if your list is tiny right now, you can still find people out there, other newsletter creators who are in a similar growth stage as you. And here's how you can make it happen. Look for creators who serve a similar audience but might not be direct competitors. Ideally, find creators that have a similar similar or slightly larger subscriber count than yours. And when you reach out, craft a very compelling pitch that explains why a swap would benefit their audience specifically, so you want to be very clear about what unique value you can offer their readers. I do have a tool to make this process a lot easier I want you to check out the Newsletter Prepare Profit Club app. It is basically a matchmaking service for newsletter creators who are looking to grow together. And I'm going to link to it in the show notes. The second method is participating in bundles. These are content bundles and they bring together resources from multiple creators into one package, usually offered for a limited time. So basically, there's going to be a business owner curating this bundle. They're going to ask you to contribute something valuable, maybe a guide template or a mini course. All the contributors are going to promote this bundle to their audiences. And here's the key part. Everyone who contributes get access to the potential leads from the bundle. So basically what's going to happen, there's going to be a landing page where all the gifts are listed there. People who are signing up for the bundle, they're going to go to this landing page. They're going to pick the gifts they're interested in and sign up. When they sign up, they're going to go to your specific landing page to opt in to your gift and to your newsletter. And that's how you grow your your leads and your email list. Method number three is podcast guesting. So appearing as a guest on podcast in your niche can also significantly boost your visibility and credibility. Podcast guesting works because these listeners are spending a good amount of time with you getting a really deep connection. Plus, these podcast episodes can continue to generate leads for months or years. I have to be honest with you, podcast guesting does have some drawbacks. It's pretty time intensive, so you're going to need to prepare, you're going to need to record, you're going to need to follow up, you're going to need to pitch other people to be a guest on their podcast can be difficult and time consuming and the results can also vary. Some shows have highly engaged audiences that will take action, while others might not drive much response at all. That's why I do think podcast guesting is valuable, but it's not necessarily on my top recommendation for list building specifically. Now, one method that I absolutely love and I do it myself, and it would be one of my top recommendations for you is speaking at virtual summits. And you get some of the highest quality leads here. And let me tell you why. First, you're getting a pre qualified audience. These people have already demonstrated interest in your topic by signing up for the summit. Secondly, you get a visual connection. Attendees are going to see your face, presentation and teaching style, which builds a stronger relationship with you. Third, being featured alongside recognized names Elevates your expert status, you're positioned as a peer with other authorities in your field. Fourth, most summits have been built in systems for speakers to collect leads. So if you want to maximize summit speaking opportunities, here's what I want you to do. One of the things that I would recommend is to get on the email list of some of the leaders in your industry and see what they are promoting. What summits are they promoting? If any of them look good to you, follow up with that host and say, you know, if you do this again, I'd be interested in speaking here. That's a really good way to get involved there. But I want to make sure that you are fully taking advantage of your speaking opportunity here. And there's a couple of things that you can do. First, you're going to want an irresistible lead magnet that's specifically relevant to to your speaking presentation. So when it's time to present, focus on delivering exceptional, actionable content that showcases your expertise. And you're going to follow up and have a very strong call to action that clearly articulates why the person watching your presentation should sign up for that gift and for your email list. Okay, the next thing I want to talk about is setting up your email system for your new subscribers. So no matter which of these audience leveraging methods you choose, you want to make sure that your system is properly set up to welcome people who are coming in to your world. At a minimum, you're going to need a welcome email that goes out immediately after signing up. In this email, you're going to set expectations and deliver whatever resources you promise them. Here's a crucial decision you're going to need to make next. Do you put these new subscribers directly into your regular newsletter sequence or do you send them through a dedicated welcome sequence first? Now, for some of these methods especially, especially like summit speaking or participating in a bundle, I recommend that you add that new email subscriber directly into your regular newsletter flow. And here's why I would recommend this over putting them in a welcome sequence where you're sending them an email a day for the next week or so when somebody is an attendee at a summit or signing up for the gifts in a bundle. Here's the thing, they're already getting a lot of emails from that particular event and from other people who have signed up. I've done a lot of testing and what I found is just sending them that one email that delivers the thing I promised them I would send them and then put them directly into my newsletter. I generally send out my newsletters on Sunday. So if they signed up during the week, maybe on a Wednesday or Thursday, when it came Sunday, they would get my regular creators MBA newsletter there and there. You know, I'm going to continue to nurture them and give them my regular content that I would normally give everybody on my email list. So it does maintain that momentum with them after they initially sign up with me without overwhelming them. However, if you're not emailing regularly yet, or your regular content isn't designed to nurture new relationships, then I would say doing some type of lightweight welcome email sequence might be better. The next thing I want to talk about is tracking your growth channels. You need to track what's going on so you know what's working and what's not working. A couple ways you can track this is use unique landing pages for each audience source so you can see where your subscribers are coming from. If you are speaking at a particular event, set up a landing page for that event and so you will know in your email service provider, okay, all of these leads came from this event. The other thing, if you're a bit more advanced, you can certainly set up UTM tags, so that would be another way that you could track where they came from. You can monitor your engagement metrics like open rates, click through rates and conversion rates by the people who came in from that particular event and that will help you decide what methods are actually working to deliver the highest quality subscribers for your email list. And there's some things you definitely want to avoid here. The first thing I would say avoid over promising just to get more signups. You don't want to sacrifice lead quality for quantity by making unrealistic claims. The other thing is don't neglect following up. These new people are coming on your list. They need attention. So don't just get them on your list and then neglect to send out your weekly newsletter. You need to be emailing them on a regular basis. So that's very, very important. Okay, so now let's talk about your action plan. I'm going to give you a very simple action plan that you can follow in the first month. The first thing I want you to do is set up your email foundation, get your email list set up, get the template for your Newsletter and create one to two powerful lead magnets. In the second month, implement two to three newsletter swaps and apply for one virtual summit. In month three, consider participating in one virtual bundle and continue those newsletter swaps. In month four, be at your first summit and analyze your results. Now in month. 5 I want you to start doubling down on the methods that are delivering the best results for your specific situation. Building an email list doesn't have to be a slow and painful process. When you are leveraging other people's audiences, especially through these events, you can accelerate your growth dramatically while providing genuine value to your new email subscribers. The key to remember about this approach is that it's about reciprocity. Always focus on how you can deliver exceptional value to the audience that you are borrowing. When you lead with generosity, list growth becomes a natural byproduct of serving others well. So before I sign off here today, I'd love to hear which of these methods are you planning to drive first? Drop me a message respond to any of my emails if you're an email subscriber and let me know if you found this episode helpful. Please please share it with a friend who's also building their email list. I would really, really appreciate it. Until next time, keep growing that email list by leveraging other people's audiences. Talk with you soon. Thanks for listening all the way to the end. I hope you enjoyed this episode today. If you like the show, I'd appreciate a review on Apple Podcasts or your favorite podcast platform. Have a great rest of your day and bye for now.