Let go of "building an email list" -- focus on growing an engaged audience
George Kao argues that entrepreneurs should stop fixating on "building an email list" as a metric and instead prioritize growing an engaged audience. He cites low average email open rates (typically under 25%, often 10–15%), criticizes lead-magnet/freebie-driven signups as attracting uninterested subscribers, and recommends meeting audiences where they already consume content while being consistent, authentic, and relevant. He shares examples (his own list trimmed from ~13,000 to ~1,000 engaged subscribers; a commenter reporting 25,000 subscribers with >10,000 never opening emails) and positions email newsletters as an optional convenience service, not the primary goal.
Questions this video answers
November 12, 2019.
Typically under 25%; often around 10–15%.
He said he had built up about 13,000 people and later reduced it to around 1,000 engaged subscribers.
A commenter reported 25,000 people on their email list, with over 10,000 never having bought anything or opened an email.
Chapters
One of the questions that I've gotten asked so many times in the past 10 years in helping entrepreneurs grow their business is, George, how do I grow my email list? How do I build an email list? Have you thought of that question? Have you been struggling with this? I hope that this video will show you an alternative to building an email list and actually why it's not a good idea to fixate on building and growing an email list. Okay, so if you got this idea of growing an email list, you probably got it from some other marketing expert, right? Oh, the most important asset in your business is your email list. And so you've got to do everything you can to grow your email list, because that's the most reliable thing, the reliable way for you to stay in touch with your audience. You don't control Facebook's algorithm. You don't control YouTube's algorithm. The only thing you control is your email list. That's what they all tell us, isn't it? All right, here's why that's not true. Okay? If you look at the average open rates of email newsletters, email lists, email, you know, campaigns, etc. The average open rate is under 25%. And many of them are more like under 20% or even 15%. If you Google average email open rate, you will even see people saying, well, you should look for about 10 to 15% open rate, but it's certainly under 25% as the high part of the average open rate. What this means is if you send an email to 100 people, your email list. If your email list was 100 people, you send an email, you can expect somewhere between 10 to 25 people to actually even open it. Okay, let's get that clear, first of all. Secondly, just because they opened it doesn't mean they read the email. Right? They may find your subject line extremely scintillating because you have learned how to do email subject line copywriting, which, again, I don't recommend. I think subject lines should be accurate. Yes, subject lines should be. Should be. If you have several options, pick the interesting one. But all of the options in your subject line should be accurate and helpful. So to, when they open the email, says, yes, this is what I was expecting and I'm so glad I opened it. So many subject lines. Email subject lines, right? You look in your email inbox, they're so amazingly scintillating. Oh, what a great subject line. You open it and then you're disappointed. If you have that experience with an email newsletter again and again and again, you're Going to stop opening the email newsletter because every time you open it, you're kind of disappointed by the, by the contents of it, right? So subject lines should, should be a good summary of what to expect. Should be an interesting summary of all the different. You might write three to five to ten different subject lines and then pick the one that's most interesting. But all of them should be accurate, right? So Anyway, just because 10 to 25% of of your subscribers open your email doesn't mean they're going to read it. And just because they read it doesn't mean they're going to care about your message. So instead of building an email list, which, what happens when you have that fixation is that you become, you have this soulless, soulless numeric metric of gotta grow the email list. Whatever I need to do to grow the email list. Oh, that means I should create a telesummit. Creating a telesummit or a virtual conference is the most popular method of building an email list. Other popular methods include having a freebie. Oh, a wonderful video series. They opt in, they get a great video series or a great email, whatever it is, Some, some freebie bait to get them to join the email list. Those are some popular methods. Other popular methods include, you know, doing free webinars. But you know, you really are putting them on an email list that will keep selling them on things. Okay, so when you have this fixation on building an email. So that's why I want you to stop asking me about building an email list, because that's not the right focus. That will get you to do things that grow the numbers, but don't grow the relationship. What, none of. What none of us need an email list, right? All of us, what we really want is a wonderful roster of clients, a waiting list of people who can't wait to work with us. That's what you want, don't you? And before that, what you want is an engaged audience of people who are eagerly looking forward to your content. Isn't that more important than growing an email list? Would you rather have an audience that cares? Okay, I've already said that you can't control your email list because you can't even control how many people open it, whether or not they even receive it, by the way, because a lot of email newsletters go into spam because why the audience isn't engaged. The audience doesn't really care. You build an audience with a freebie, with something free. They you got them to sign up. So first of all, let's talk about the freebie. I don't even think a freebie is a good idea. Don't get people to sign up for your email list by dangling a carrot because what they want is the carrot rather than the ongoing communications from you. What you want is people who join your email list because they are really engaged and want the ongoing communications with you, don't you? Or do you just want a bunch of people getting the free carrot and then kind of getting annoyed when they keep getting emails from you? Even though you said in the fine print they're going to keep getting emails from you. They weren't really having that intention. They want that freebie. It's not a real email. It's not an, it's not an email audience. It's just an email list. Okay, so I don't hold your desires ransom with a free gift. A free gift, but oh no, it's not really free. You got to give me your email list. You got to give me your email address to get the free gift. That's called holding your desired ransom, you know, until I give you that free gift. So I don't do that. What I do is I give my, my, my best free content is given where you are, wherever you're watching this. Some of you are watching this on YouTube right now. Some of you are watching this on Facebook. There's basically the two places some of you found this through LinkedIn or through medium.com or through browsing my website or through the search engines, whether it's Google or YouTube or something else, or Facebook. You found this wherever you are searching and wherever you are and you are here consuming this video, it wasn't because I forced you to give me your email address and that. No. And by the way, some of you prefer to say, some of you are saying, I like George's content and I prefer to be reminded about his newest content or his best content through an email newsletter. And so I do provide an email newsletter as a service of convenience to you. The email newsletter is not to force you so that now you can have my free content. The free content, I reach you where you are. That's much more effective, isn't it? So because wherever you are, I reach you there. And then, you know, if you come to my website and you notice, oh yeah, I actually do want to receive an email reminder either once a week or once a month. There's a choice. I give you a choice, right? I would receive an email reminder of George's newest content once a week or his best content once a month. Great. It's great. Be great to get that. Okay, then you'll get that as a service of convenience to you. And as you'll notice in my email newsletters, at the bottom of my content newsletters is an advertisement of my next thing. It's at the bottom. Once I've given you the service that you expected, the free service, then at the bottom there's a, hey, by the way, if you want to engage with me in my services or my products, here, here is something, right? So think of an email newsletter as a service of convenience, as a generous act, not as a, I better control my communications with you. Because the only thing you can, the only thing any of us can control is our own behavior. And here's what I mean. All we can control is whether our content is consistent so that our audience can rely on us, that we appear reliable. Like, oh, I can expect George's videos to be on Tuesdays and Fridays. I can expect that. You can expect that, right? Oh, I can expect that. George has a new course each month. Okay, I can expect it. You got to become reliable so that your audience looks forward to your content because they know it's Wednesday now or it's Tuesday now or it's Sunday whenever you send out your content. Okay? That's the only thing you can control is your consistency, your authenticity. You can control that because you can say, well, I'm going to do my energy, reboot my grounding practice so I can show up in a way that is transparent with my values and with my intention that I'm here to serve them, that I'm here to try to help. I'm here to inspire. Or alternatively, sometimes you are here to sell, to say, hey, I'm here to tell you about my upcoming course. I'm here to tell you about my service. That's fine, too. You need to be consistent with that, too, but it needs to be authentic. The intention of what you. Are you here just to give your content, to tell a story, to inspire, to help, or are you here to sell your service? It's all good. You just have to be transparent and authentic with your intention. And then relevance. That's another thing you can control, is to notice of the things you teach and inspire and give online or wherever you give content, which things are most relevant to people. Notice that. You got to study that. Your data. You got to study your data for your content to notice, oh, what's relevant to them, then whatever's relevant. You know, okay, maybe I should create more of that because that's really what's helping people. That's really what's inspiring people. That's really what's connecting with my audience. So you can't control your email list, okay? Because you can't control how many people open it, whether they care, whether they're gonna then buy your things. All you can control is your own consistency, your authenticity, your relevancy in your content and what you can control to meet them where they're at. So where does your audience, you know, where do you enjoy posting content? Maybe you enjoy Instagram, maybe you enjoy Twitter. I don't know what you enjoy, but show up there and meet them where they're at. They might consume things on medium.com they might consume things on Pinterest. I don't know where your audience most likes to consume things. Meet them where they're at. You can stop your fixation on email list. What you really want is an audience who looks forward to your content. Because if you have the audience's attention because you're giving them consistent content, then you have the privilege to of telling them about your services and your products. That's really what we want, is their attention. So I hope this helps and I would love to see your comments below and let me know if this is relevant to you and if you have any questions. And in the meantime, I'm going to go and take a look at my. I'm doing this on Facebook Live right now and some of you are watching this elsewhere, but I'm going to go and see if there are any comments on this post and I'm giving you a chance to comment while I'm scrolling and trying to find something here. And yes, thank you to Ida and to Brian for your comments. Those are the comments I'm able to see here anyway. And Brian says I have 25,000 people on my email list. I did some segmentation last week. Over 10,000 have never bought anything or even opened an email. They will be removed from the list. It's a hit to my ego. No more 25,000 email list. But I'm going to take the hit and clean up the list. It will also save me some money. Absolutely. I love that, Brian. Thank you. I did a similar thing a couple years ago. I had built up an email list of about 13,000 people, you know, and most of them didn't care. Most of them weren't even opening. Right. Yes, I built up an email list using, you know, those savvy method marketing methods of building an email list. But then when I removed the ones who actually who didn't care, who didn't open. I ended up with like a thousand right like people who had recently, more recently opened my emails and who might actually care. So I kind of restarted my marketing list. Yes I had built but I had built that 13,000 over years. If I had done things authentically I would have probably even more than a thousand you know of authentic engaged audience members. So anyway thank you for sharing your example and I have a similar experience as you. So anyway I hope this helps and until the next video I hope you'll shift your mindset to realize that yeah I'm just going to reach people where they're at. I'm going to be consistent to be authentic, to be relevant and then people will, the right people will find me and will stay will give me their attention and that's where you can sell your services and your products. Okay I hope this helps take care of.
