#38 - Ultimate beginners guide to list building

I don't think that you should put off growing your list just because you haven't quite a hundred percent nailed exactly what your offer is or who your target market is yet.

This is the Doing It Online podcast with your Host, serial entrepreneur, 6 and 7 figure funnel strategist and super nerd Kate McKibben, where every week we're here talking nerdy and sharing the things that actually work to help you do what you do online, but better, easier, and with a ton more profit too. Are you ready? Let's do it.

Hey. Hey everybody and welcome to the Doing It Online podcast. I'm your host, Kate McKibben from HelloFunnels co. And today we are diving into one of my favorite topics and that is list building. And as much as I love nerding out on all the more advanced, more crazy sophisticated and, you know, high tech ways that we can do list building and help you to grow and convert and nurture your list, today I really want to actually focus on going back to the start and give you a ultimate beginner's guide. Because I know so many of you out there listening to this are really at those starting phases of growing your list. And yes, maybe some of you have been at the starting phases for a while. So I wanted to dig into what really works, how to get starting, how to kickstart your list building and hopefully get out of that starting phase. And I'm going to share some of my own favorite tactics, some things I did that back when we were starting that still work now, as well as lots and lots of gold nuggets of advice all around list building. So grab a pen, grab a piece of paper, get comfy, grab a drink of your choice and let's dive on in. So today guys, as I said, today we're going to be talking all about beginners list building or getting started or restarting building your list. And I'm going to do this Q and A style because I have been asked recently so so many questions and over the last, you know, 12, 24 months, even inside our equals Empire community, one of the questions that comes up a lot, particularly for those who've jumped in at those beginning points, is, okay, how do I grow my list? So let's go through it this ways. First question that I have is, I think a great one, and that is how soon should I start list building? Because I know a lot of people are almost hesitant to start list building when they're in those phases of trying to figure things out, right? You're still not A hundred percent sure what your business is going to be or, you know, maybe even what your offers are going to be. So it can kind of feel almost counterintuitive to start talking about this stuff, start getting people onto your list if you're not really even sure what that list is for yet. So I really have two schools of thought on this, and really it comes down to what feels right for you. But I totally believe that you cannot start too early and that it's okay that over time, you are going to pivot, you're going to change what your focus is. You're going to probably, you know, niche down, you're going to change offers. You know, this is the journey of business. Along the way, there are going to be people who've joined your email list who all of a sudden are not as relevant anymore, and that's okay. But there's also going to be people who are going to pivot with you. They're going to grow with you. Their journey is going to be very similar to yours. So I don't think that you should put off growing your list just because you haven't quite 100% nailed exactly what your offer is or who your target market is yet. Because there's still going to be people coming in in these initial phases who are gonna be right for you, and they're gonna come in because they are attracted to you and your brand and your way of doing things, even if those things are different. And I've got some great examples of that. You know, I'm on business number three now, and I still have people on my email list from business number one, and they have very, very vastly different, but they have followed a journey similar to mine, and so it made sense for them to kind of keep along for the ride. So. So short answer to a long bullshit version of a long answer is that you really should start. I would start a hundred percent from day one. Like, as soon as you have a. Some sort of web presence, some sort of social presence, it's time to start list building. Because no one in the history of online business has ever said, oh, I wish I'd started building my list later. All right, question number two. How many people do you need on your email list before you can make or sell an offer? This is also a question that I love. And because the reason I love it so much is because I think people seem to, again, be in two really distinct camps here. You either have the people who are like, hey, I've got 10 people on my email list. Great. I can stop focusing on this building. I'm going to go and create my offer now. And then they're, you know, they're disappointed when it doesn't, they don't have an amazing launch out the back of it. Not to say, you know, in brackets here, that launching isn't a great list builder on its own, provided that you have some budget that you can chuck behind it. But usually we recommend an inside Our Equals Empire program. It's actually one of our first milestones we recommend for people is to get a thousand people on your email list before you make your offer. And this probably is why it also makes sense to make sure you're building that list and, you know, communicating regularly with that list from as early as possible. Because getting that, getting over that initial little bit of where it's just like your mom and your cat and your best friends and maybe a few old clients on your email list, it's a frustrating point, but it's a point that everybody has and a point that everybody gets kind of stuck at. And we're going to dive in a bit later in the episode into some things you can do to kind of really kickstart past this. But I just wanted to say for all of those who are at that point, like, oh, I've got 20 on my list or 30 on my list, a thousand sounds so far away. And I really just want to get rolling and get started is that, you know, just take a breath, slow down, you can't run before you walk. Okay. When you are creating any kind of online business or any kind of business at all to, you know, you could have the best offer in the world, but if you don't have people you can offer it to, you know, it really doesn't matter. And your email list is that as is your social media following. I've always been a bit more old school here. I prefer to focus on building an email list versus building, you know, if you could only do one or the other, probably focus on building the email list over the social media following just because social media is so fickle and there's a new one every second week and, you know, accounts get shut down and all that kind of stuff. Email list is a bit more stable, a bit solid, and you actually have more control over it. However, having said that, because I've kind of gone off on a bit of a tangent is that, you know, what I was trying to say is, yes, I know for people listening who think, wow, that's high, that's really discouraging. I don't mean it to be discouraging, I mean it to be realistic. And I want you to know that you can actually, if you're doing the, you know, following the right strategies, even without a budget and with some sort of budget, you can get there faster. You could do that in say, three to six months. And in that time, I'm not saying don't go out there and don't, you know, making some offers, don't be trying to do one on one consults, don't be trying to, you know, get your stuff out there. But if you're wanting to create an online course or some kind of leverage group offer, if you're wanting to go, you know, to do a launch and all that stuff, there's a lot of time and effort that goes into that. Okay? No matter how many people tell you that it's the fast and easy way to make money online, it's not, it is a great way to do it, but it's, it's time. It is time. It's planning, it's effort. Creating a course takes time. Creating a launch takes time that takes. You're away from a lot of things and if you're, I want you to work as smart as possible. So if you're going to put that effort in, if you're going to go through all of that, then you want to make sure you're going to get the reward at the end. You're going to get the conversions and the sales. So you need. That's why I say aim for a thousand, because it means you're going to have enough people on your list to make it worthwhile. But you know, that's not to say like we did an episode, I think it was actually the last episode, not the one before that where I was talking about, you know, how you can start getting your first clients even with a small list. So maybe go and listen to that if you're like, hey, but I'd like to make some money and make some sales in the meantime. But I would just recommend if it's an online course model that you're going for just because I know how much effort does go into the back end of that. I think I definitely wait till you have a thousand people on your list and there are better ways, more effective, more profitable ways that you can be making sales and converting and making offers in the meantime though. So all, all the caveats and the brackets around that. I hope that makes sense. Next question, and this kind of answers the previous one is what is the quickest way to Grow your list. So this is what everyone wants, right? You want to know what is the shiny magic silver bullet unicorn strategy that is going to take your list from 30 previous clients, your mom and your cat to that thousand, two thousand, ten thousand, you know, whatever it is. And I can say that I've tried pretty much all of them with my very first business, which was a fashion blog, believe it or not. This is one of the things that really gave us a kickstart is in the first year we got over 25,000 people on our email list and that was, you know, really, really instrumental to us. And in that business model, which was a publishing business model for us to be able to monetize and all that kind of stuff, you don't need that many people, you don't need them that quickly. If you've got a course business, you can be profitable way sooner. Why I like this business model so much better. But you can definitely use some of those strategies to get you that kickstart. So there's two again, I don't know what is with the number two today. It just seems to be how these, how my thoughts are forming. But there are two types of list building strategies and they both have their pros and cons. And I recommend people use a bit of a mixture of both. And it's sort of we take people inside our programs through, you know, a mixture of both, particularly at the start and I'll explain more so it makes sense. But basically you've got what I would call your quantity strategies and then you have your quality strategies. And at the start a lot of people, and even later on in business a lot of people kind of focus on the quantity strategies because they're going to give you those quick wins, those big numbers. Unfortunately, when alongside those you're going to find that you get lots of unsubscribes, the people may not be as targeted as you would like. You might get lots of like spam flagging and all of that not great stuff. So while it can be good to sprinkle throughout your strategy a couple of quantity based strategies and I'll explain what they are in a second. I would, day in, day out would always recommend that people actually spend the majority of their time and focus on the less sexy, less exciting, but will pay off better in the long run. Quality strategies. When I say quantity strategies, I mean things like competitions. Like competitions can be a brilliant way to add a couple of hundred, if not thousands of people to your email list. If you nail what the offer is, the setup and your things like that. And if you're able to sort of give it a bit of a push at the start, another way too that I would put under the quality, the quantity, sorry banner would be things like summits and also any kind of JV venture because you just kind of, particularly if they are a bigger person in your industry, quite often you can get a lot of sort of those, let's call them freebie seekers who are just like, oh cool, another free thing. And they just jump from free thing to free thing to free thing. And they're, you know, so you'll, you might get that, that big boost but they may not be all your most targeted and most ideal clients. However, within that you are going to have great people as well. So like I said, you're going to get this boost and often just people get a little disappointed by the impact of that boost because I think they're expecting a lot higher return for the numbers. So example with my first business I said we got about 10,000 new subscribers in one hit by doing a joint competition with a bunch of other related businesses. And unfortunately my email subscriber, so my email system was like, hey, what's this? How did you get 10,000 new subscribers? This seems dodgy. And they sort of like shut down our account for a while and they would only let us keep half of them. And then like our open rates tanked after that because the people weren't really that interested to hear from us. They just wanted to win the prize. So, you know, lots of lessons learned there. Yes, it was great. But also as I said, it had it downsides. The quality lead strategies though, those are the tried and true and my favorite one of those and the one I would recommend for anyone listening that you kind of go and really focus on is come up with a killer opt in at this point in your business there is no such thing as being too generous. There is no such thing as over teaching, over giving or any of that. I heard someone say, I wish I can remember who it was say on a podcast the other day that you know, information is free and the VA and that actually most people can probably Google most solutions, right? But the reason that they come and they want to work with you or they want to invest with you is because they want to actually connect with you or it's the experience that you're able to offer while they go through that information. The way you're able to put it in a certain order make it easier. The extra tools you're going to add, your perspective all of that stuff. So there's going to be people out there who are always going to just google the free and usually, you know, not to the best results, but there's people who really value that experience, that really value having someone to ask questions, who really value how you do things. And no matter how much great information you give to them, that's only going to be proof to them that you are the person they want to work with. So at this point in your business, you absolutely cannot be over be too generous. You cannot over give. And I would 100% recommend coming up with some really, really killer, really, really valuable opt in, or I call it an opt in bribe that you can then go and it can be like your signature opt in bribe and you can just promote the pants off it. You can promote it everywhere, like time and time again. That is the strategy that I recommend to people and that gets them not just the most leads, but the best leads. So yes, you can spend a bit of time making sure you're sort of starting to get clear on who your target market is and the problem that you're solving. I mean, that's business 101 stuff, right? And then you're going to come up with something that is just super, super juicy and valuable. And then you're going to absolutely, like I said, promote it everywhere. You're going to add, go through all your blog posts and make sure it's got links to it. You are going to try and get on two podcasts and do JVs and things like that, jump into Clubhouse, all that stuff and you know, include a call to action where appropriate. Back to that opt in. You're going to do social media content, talking about problems related to that opt in and then use that opt in as the call to action if they want more information. One little bonus tip I would recommend here, particularly as you're getting started. So I'd probably make the assumption that you haven't unlocked things like swiping up in IG stories and things like that yet. If you don't have that number of subscribers is I would recommend going and getting what I call a pretty link which is basically coming up with an easy to say, pronounce, remember and spell URL that you can tell people to go to to get your opt in. And that might just be your URL, you know, forward slash freebie or something like that, but you want to be able to tell people where it is as well as write it down so that if they're having to go off and find it Themselves, it's super easy for them. Another thing that I would always highly recommend people do, particularly if you're getting started or at any point in your opt in is actually looking to add things like subtle and smart pop ups. I've done a whole other episode on that as well. Scroll back and find it. But how to make pop ups that aren't annoying because they really, really can help to amplify all the other promotion that you are doing. So every time you're sending people to your website, you know, greatly increases the chance they're going to get onto your email list. As long as I said you do it right. So as long as the offer is amazing, as long as you do it in a way that's not really, really irritating to people. So that's probably my, you know, my number one piece of advice is make it as valuable as humanly possible right now. You cannot over give, promote the pants off it. Make sure it's really, really easy for people to actually opt into it and you know, just get out there and promote, promote. And if it is proven to work really well, you might want to put a bit of a Facebook budget behind it. But go out, prove it first. Okay, so next question is what do I do about unsubscribers? And I love this question as well because I totally understand how people kind of like, it kind of hurts, right? Like it makes you sad. You feel like you've done something wrong when you see people unsubscribing. But it is a lesson that every online person who has any kind of online presence has to sort of come to terms with at some point. And that is that unsubscribes happen and it's okay. In fact, it's actually a good thing if you think about it because when it comes to most email software, you get charged based on how many people you have on your list, right? So you don't want to have a bunch of people who don't want to be there. And the thing is with pretty much all businesses, all niches or pain points, is that the time span of which you are going to be interesting and relevant to people. It's not forever. It has a. You'll find that there is a time frame, like for example, if you have a business that is helping people want to plan and do weddings, obviously that that's going to be maybe, you know, six to 12 to 18 months, that that person is in that phase of life and then you know, all fingers crossed for them that they're no longer going to be interested in planning a wedding after that. You know, obviously Covid reliant at this point, but the same goes for anything. You know, if people, if you help people get started with business, eventually they're going to move out of the starting phase and go into a different phase. If you're helping people with different points of their health, either they're going to solve that issue or that issue's going to get worse. Or they're just going to stop, go, oh, I can't fix this and move on. Like, it's just, you know, they'll find different priorities, different things happen and that's okay. You don't need a massive list. Like I said, it really is about quality over quantity. And if people are self selecting out because you're no longer ringing their bell or you're no longer talking about stuff that they're interested in, that's totally fine. So the answer of what do you do about unsubscribes Is nothing. You wish them well. You don't. If it is upsetting you try and find a way of hiding that stat from your dashboard. So you just don't see it. I mean, unless you are getting like 10, 15% of unsubscribes with every email, in which case I'd say, all right, there's some disconnect here. You know, the, what you're talking about in your emails is obviously very different to whatever your initial promise was. So whatever your opt in was or whatever, however else people kind of found you. And you, you may want to try and figure that out, but usually it's, it's a handful of people and as your list grows, that number is going to grow because it's sort of a percentage thing, right? You know, we actually go through and unsubscribe people who haven't been, you know, active on our email list because we want to make sure the people are there, really want to be there. So don't let it bother you as if it is upsetting you seeing that number. Try and hide it and just try and wish them well. It's a better place to be. So they go, okay, I'm happy for them that they no longer need this help, that they've sorted it out. Great. Make more space in your universe for people who are going to need more help from you to come in. All right, so next question is, what is a good open rate? Nice and easy question. Great. So first of all, I'd say basically anything over 20% is considered good for your day to day emails. However, if it's your first couple of emails, so hopefully you guys have all got a welcome sequence. If you don't got enough episode on that as well, go back, check it out. But those first few emails that people get from you, you want to be trying to get at least a 50% open rate, because that's really going to be indicative of how your delivery of your emails is going. So are they actually landing in people's inboxes? Are they seeing them? If they're not, you may want to go and Google email deliverability. You may want to reach out to your email service provider. There might be some things they can do around that. But that would be my guide for standard emails, 20% or more. And those for your first few emails, you want to be aiming for like 50% and above. And in that same vein, the next question is how do I improve open rates? So again, there's a few things you can do with open rates. It really is down to two key things. One is consistency. So people have to sort of be expecting to hear from you. If you're only really emailing people when you've got something to sell, it's not going to do you any favors. Come up with a schedule that you can stick to, whether it's once a week, once a fortnight, twice a week, whatever it is that makes sense, and then stick to it. And then the second thing with open rates is it really is about that subject line. And one of the things I love is with most email service providers these days, you should be able to, particularly just for standard emails that you're sending out, like newsletters and things, you should be able to do AB testing or split testing of your subject lines. So we use ActiveCampaign that lets us do it. So we always come up with two really different subject lines for our standard newsletters. And what we do is we set it up for. It goes out like super early in the morning, I think. First one goes at like 6am and we say send 5%, 5% of people on our list. Subject line A, another 5% subject line B. Then we'll leave it an hour, see which one gets the highest open rate and then that's the one that we will send to everybody else. So it's a super easy thing you should be able to do with just a couple of extra clicks in your email and it can make a really big difference to subject lines. Sorry to your open rates. Like we've been playing with this recently and it's kind of getting us up to like 25 up to 30% open rate, which as I said for a standard email is fantastic and lucky. Last question, and this is, you know the person who's asked this is definitely a girl after my own heart. And that is what are your favorite tools for list building? So if we're talking about sending emails, you'll know that activecampaign is my favorite. I've tried them all and I come back again. Yeah, ActiveCampaign is absolutely the best. You only need the light plan for most things that you're gonna do. Unless you have you want a full on sales CRM which you're just doing courses and programs you generally don't need. So pricing is comparable with most other ones out there, but the functionality is just above and beyond. It's super easy to create normal emails. Their actual building out of funnels and automations and stuff like that is the best in the biz. Love it, love it, love it. Couldn't recommend it enough. As for actually collecting emails, there's probably two tools I recommend and like one sort of extra one just because I know some people love it but I never, I've never personally used it but I think it looks good. So first one is Thrive Leads. If you have a WordPress site, our site is on ShowIt + WordPress we're able to use this and it enables us to automatically insert little sort of like nice beautiful little boxes into our blog posts which promote, you know, different opt ins and things. And it's got all kinds of cool logic behind that. It also does other things like pop ups and bars and. But we're not fully using it to its highest potential right now because we also have Convert box and we use convert Box because it works across any platform. You know, it allows us to put things even on our checkout page if we wanted to. Convert Box has been great for us. The logic, it's still not actually quite as clever as Thrive Leads. So if you just had a WordPress site and we're going to pick one or the other, probably go Thrive Leads. It's also cheaper. But Convert Box, if you aren't using WordPress and you want a great option, Convert Box is great. One of the other things I love about it is it's a one time payment lifetime license at the moment. I'm sure they'll take it off at some point or they keep threatening to. They could end up being like ThriveCart which has been coming off lifetime license for the last four years I think. And then runner up is another one Which I know is really popular, which is hello Bar. That's a monthly fee. It is. Again, it's really intelligent, really easy to use, really easy to get started. Works across all platforms. So that's another one that I would recommend. But that is pretty much it for my beginner's guide to list building. Guys, I hope this has been useful. Let me know what has been the biggest aha for you or what you're going to go and implement right now just by hitting me up on Instagram @hellofunnels either. Tag me there. She's a DM. Can't wait to hear what you get up to. Good luck with your list building. Just remember, guys, that every single person who comes onto your email list is a human. So even if your email list is, you know, 20, 30, 40, 500 people, that is still 500 humans who have said, hey, you seem cool. I want to hang out with you a bit more and find out more about what you do. If you focus more on that, it's always going to seem, I think it's almost just so much better. It's much more fulfilling than being like, oh, I don't have hundreds of thousands of whatevers. Those are people. If they were all standing in your living room, it'd be crowded. So that was my last point. Anyway, guys, I'm gonna head off. I hope this has been valuable. As I said, if you loved it, please share it. It means so, so much to us, to me, to help get that word out there and help as many people as possible to kick ass with their online businesses. Make sure you check back in next week where I have a excellent, super exciting episode for you guys. I know you're gonna love it. Can't wait till share it all with you then. And until then, guys, keep doing what you do and I'll see you all on the Internet. Bye.

Thanks so much for listening to the Doing It Online podcast. If you love this episode, don't forget to subscribe and leave us a review. And if you're ready to take your online course sales to the next level with your own six or seven figure funnel, let Kate show you exactly how today at stealmyfunnel.

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