George Kao built a 15,000-person email list over eight years, then deleted 90% of inactive subscribers to keep only engaged readers. He segments his list into three opt-in groups by content type and frequency, arguing that honesty about what you'll send builds real relationships instead of vanishing open rates.
Questions this video answers
August 11, 2017.
Eight years.
More than 15,000 subscribers.
About 90%.
Three lists: a monthly content list, a weekly content list, and a workshops/coaching list.
Chapters
One of the most common questions I get is, George, how do I build an email list? And as somebody who has been building an email list for eight years, I'm going to give you some of my top lessons in this video. Okay, so let me start with saying that the ways that we're typically taught to build an email list either are annoying to the website visitor or it feels slightly dishonest. And let me, let me explain, you've experienced this or you go to a website and then you're trying to find some information or trying to check out some business and then you get this pop up that you know you have to close and the pop up says, oh, get our free gift or join our email newsletter by putting your email and it's not what you expected. Okay, nowadays maybe people expect it a little bit more, but it's not, it's. The bottom line is it's kind of annoying experience. Some people are only slightly annoyed, some people are very annoyed. And it's just not a great way to start a relationship with an email subscriber. Even though the fact is, yes, you will get more subscribers if you use a pop up opt in. But again, it's not a great way to start the relationship. And you will find that your open and click rates for your email newsletters are not as high as if you did not use the pop up opt in. In my experience, the second thing about the way that mostly it's taught is that it's slightly dishonest, right? Because you subscribe to somebody's email newsletter, you're trying to get the free gift or whatever ebook or video course they have for you and then you start getting a series of emails over time trying to sell you other things. You didn't expect that. And so it's not a great way to build. And so the first four years of my business, I built an email list of more than 15,000 subscribers using those kinds of methods. I did it through offering a free webinar to people teaching something. And then everyone who signed up for my free webinar was automatically put into my email newsletter to get further promotions of things I was trying to sell and further content. And I built an email list of 15,000. And I was getting my open rates were on industry average or even lower than industry average over time. And this is what a lot of marketers don't tell you when they're teaching you email list building strategies is that they're teaching you to do things that are not building a great relationship with your audience and your Open rates for your email newsletters. How many people open your emails will keep going down over time because it's not a great relationship. And so a few years ago I changed the way I build my email list and I decided to become a lot more do things that were a lot more authentic to me. And I actually removed 90% of my email newsletter subscribers. People who hadn't opened my emails for months. I decided to remove them. I said, you know what, I'm just going to try to build a list of people who really want to read my emails now. And I have never looked back. I got those 90% onto a spreadsheet just in case I regretted it, but I never imported them back. And here's my little dog buddy finding something to dig. A little bit of a quick diversion here. So let me tell you how I am now building an email list. I do it by being honest with people about what kind of email they're going to receive from me and how frequent. So I give people, I have three email lists now. I have a monthly list where, where people get my best recent content for the previous month. They get it once a month, they can join that list. Or I have a weekly email list which is my newest content. They get that once a week. And then I have my so called workshops and coaching list which is people who want to hear when I'm selling my next workshop or when I have openings for my coaching. So in other words, I'm really clear with people what they're going to get. The people who sign up for my my content email, my monthly email newsletter, they're not going to get special emails trying to sell my next workshop, et cetera. In other words, an agreed upon type of content and frequency of content is typically not done when people build their email list. And that's what I recommend. And my open rates for my emails are double, double what most of my peers are getting. So I know that it's working. I have a full business, so it's working. People open my emails and they love it, etc. Etc. I'm going to have more to say in the notes of this video because it's getting a little bit long, this video. But the bottom line I want to suggest to you is think of your email list not as, ooh, these are people that I'm going to sell stuff to. But think of it, a lot of times people teach us to do an ethical bribe, right? Ethical bribe, really? That's the language they're using which is like, oh, bribe them to join your email list. See, the way that we're taught to relate to our subscribers is not it's not ethical, I don't think. It's not human. It's not really based on friendship. And that's really how I look at my email list and my subscribers. It's more like I'm building a friendship. So that's really the bottom line is how do you want to start that friendship and how do you want to nurture that friendship over time? I hope this is helpful and always open to your comments and questions. And as I mentioned, I'll have more detailed ideas and thoughts for you in the notes of this video. Be well.
