How Do I Grow An Email List Of Potential Customers, No Tire Kickers?
Omar Zenhom and Nicole explain how to build an email list of actual buyers, not tire-kickers. Your lead magnet determines who signs up, so use a paid challenge or gated content instead of a generic freebie. Place opt-ins in prime spots, score contacts by engagement, and prune inactive subscribers yearly to keep your list profitable.
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A big email list filled with tire kickers is worse than a small email list filled with buyers. Today's Q&A question comes from Fabian, and Fabian asks, how do I grow an email list filled with potential buyers? I love this question 'cause it's a great question. You're aware, Fabian, that not all email lists are created equal. Most people are chasing a large email list or trying to increase the size of their email list, and they neglect the quality of the list. And I'm here to tell you, Nicole and I have built multiple businesses, off the back of quality email lists, especially with our software company, Webinar Ninja. We're going to share a lot of examples and I'll show you what actually works when it comes to building a list of potential buyers. Nicole, thanks for being here and helping me here on Q&A Wednesday.
No worries, Omar. Let's get into it.
Nicole, back when we were running our software company, Webinar Ninja, before we got acquired by ProProfs, how much did our email list matter?
I remember it was everything. Now you definitely took the lead on this. I had, I learned so much about what it means to have the right email list and what all the moving parts of your CRM and your email list. And I know that we had copywriters on our team that wrote each weekly email. We sent multiple emails. I know you're going to have a ton of information because it was pretty much what drove most of our sales, right?
1,000%. And my number one tip, if you take anything from this episode, is whatever you offer your audience in exchange for their name and email address, your lead magnet, your bribe, whatever you want to call it, this is what's going to allow you to increase the quality of that subscriber. So whatever you're putting out there attracts a certain type of person, a certain type of demographic, a certain type of buyer. So it's a signal like you're, you're putting out in the world, hey, if you're this type of person that's interested in this, then you're going to join the list. So if they join the list and then you're unhappy with them, it's probably because your lead magnet or what you offered them for free is not attracting the right type of buyer.
Okay, you're going to have to— this is one of the things I had to understand and learn so much about email marketing. All right. And you said lead magnet. Maybe a lot of our listeners and audience knows what that is. And you said bribe as well. So what is a lead magnet?
It's a piece of value, something free that you can offer. This could be a guide, this could be a cheat sheet, this could be a template in exchange for their name and email address. So basically you're offering value for free. So people could say, hey, I want to learn more about these people. I want I want to get this free guide or this template, so I'm going to give my name and email address so I can get that sent to me. And then now they're on the email list. They're going to continue to get emails from you, whether it's your newsletter, your offers, whatever it might be.
Okay. So the lead is the person that's eventually going to be hopefully the buyer.
The customer, correct.
The customer, right.
So back in Webinar Ninja, our number one lead magnet was actually a paid thing. We offered a program called the Automated Webinar Challenge. Do you remember that?
Yes, I remember how much you invested in that and how— successful that was, how many people came in through that challenge.
Yeah, at Webinar Ninja, we started with just live webinars, and then soon we launched a new type of webinar called automated webinars, which is exactly what it sounds like. It's, you have a webinar that's a recorded video that people can watch, and they can then see your offers, all that kind of stuff, and buy your products off that automated webinar. So it was kind of an up-and-coming, this is circa 2016, it's an up-and-coming kind of trend, and what we did is we created a program, a 30-day challenge where they can And create their automated webinar with, of course, our software. And we would show them step by step how to do that, how to write the email copy, how to create their landing pages, how to follow up, how to make offers, all that kind of stuff. So what was great about it is it was a 30-day challenge. So our free trial was 14 days. So they would sign up to use the software, implement what they learned in the challenge, and therefore they would continue to be a user once they saw results from their automated webinars.
Yeah. Challenges is something that I've realized really works for people. I think especially people that are on the fence. I've seen it work in the fitness industry at gyms, obviously in our case with the software where you wanted them to get a result. It really got those people who are like, oh, do I really want to do this? Let me try. And the challenge kind of gave them that timeline and that deadline to implement and then eventually, yeah, get converted to being our customers for, you know, a longer, longer term. That was really powerful. But I also remember that we had an email opt-in box pretty much everywhere on our site, right? Like at the end of every blog post that we posted, you know, it was— do you want to speak to that? Because I do think like the challenge was one thing that we did as a, as a lead magnet, but didn't we always have that opt-in box everywhere else?
Yes. I'm going to talk about that in a moment, but I do want to just quickly say Like, just dissect a little bit. Why did that challenge work so well? Why did it attract the right buyer? Well, because it was very specific. It was like, hey, if you want to run an automated webinar, I'm going to show you how to do it.
Mm-hmm.
And I know that you can't do it without software, and I'm the software provider. So it was a good match. I'm not getting somebody who's just like thinking about it. This is somebody who's actually willing to do the work. They're willing to invest money too, to learn how to do this. But also, they're not just like, hey, I want to make more sales. and they're not interested in webinars. This is somebody who's really interested in running a specific type of webinar, automated webinars.
Yeah.
So the more specific, the better, because it's gonna attract a little bit more of a targeted customer. Now, you mentioned that we had a lot of opt-in boxes. Our goal at Webinar Ninja, if you hit our website, is I want your email.
Mm-hmm.
I want your email. All right? I'm not gonna let you go without my, without an email. So we had opt-in boxes at the bottom of blog posts, like you mentioned, but we also had like, if they visited for the first time, we give a little popup where they get a, you know, a discount code.
Mm-hmm.
So for the first month on Webinar Ninja, We also like split tested extended trials. We, we had a free trial, which is an opt-in in itself. They get to use the software for free for 14 days. We just wanted to make sure that if anybody landed on our website because they found it through SEO, a blog post or an article, or they learned about us from a competitor or a comparison site, that they didn't leave without putting their email address. Now, the reason why I did this is because once they leave your website, there's no way to contact them. There's no way to give them an offer.
Right.
They're gone forever. So if you can give them even something of extreme value, something that you would sell so that they can leave their name and email address, this would allow them— allow you to then follow up with them, invite them to your next sales webinar, invite them to take on a new offer that you have, a new product. They're in the loop. You have direct contact to their inbox. And we always say that your inbox these days with social media and all these things that we've thumbed through or the feeds, those are very easy to ignore. But your inbox is something that you have to deal with.
Yeah.
You have to check it, you have to archive it, you got to do something.
Right. And I want to just go back to what the thinking behind the bigger picture strategy is. We make the assumption that when they're visiting the website, they're interested in— in our case, it was webinars, but they land on your website, whatever business you're in, you understand that someone's likely to be interested. And then our thinking was to capture their email was to then not just send them sales offers, it was to educate them, to provide them with more information. really, that's like the bulk of our content was always very educationally kind of driven.
Yes.
And so that then through that education, then once an offer was made to, you know, there's a discount, we're running a sale, or we're running, you know, Black Friday or something, then it's like a no-brainer because you've already— they've already like learned to trust you and gotten some stuff from you in the past. So that's kind of like the bigger strategy and thinking around it, isn't it? That you don't just take their email and then you never reach out to them with anything because I think a lot of people do that, don't they?
Yeah, a lot of people kind of ignore their subscribers. So 2 things that you kind of remind me of. Number one, the question is like, how do I have a list of buyers? Well, you have people visiting your website, especially your homepage is the most visited page on your site. Your opt-in box where they give their name and email address for whatever you're going to get for free should be in the hero section, in the top, without them having to scroll. It has to be like prime real estate. This is where you got to use it because you can't guarantee they're going to scroll. You got to make sure that they see that as soon as they hit your page. That way you capture them before they leave. Number 2, when they sign up, we made sure that we had an onboarding sequence. Basically, they're free. They're not a new user, but they're a new subscriber. So we had basically a way to nurture them the first 7 days. We would give them, you know, really good content. We would give them courses, videos. We would highlight some of the features that we had with that. Like, it's a bit of a soft sell. Like, hey, did you know that Webinar Ninja does XYZ? Especially being software, you know, people are shopping around. It's good to highlight these things as a comparison shopping.
Yeah.
And with any product or service, you have competitors. They're going to look at other people as well. So, if you're top of mind and you're giving them, you know, an email a day or maybe an email every other day, And giving them something of value, they're going to start thinking about you as a serious contender for their hard-earned dollar.
Yeah. And that's, I think, what I learned was how strategically we did that. Not in the strategic, like, you know, oh, it's like this is in a manipulative way. We were really invested in teaching people what we thought was the best practices when it came to webinars, and just to help them make that decision. Because I've seen so I don't know about you, but I land on so many new websites now where that pop-up comes up. Like you're saying, a place to put your name and email should be very top of the scroll. I see it now everywhere with pop-ups. Most websites, maybe they're most ecommerce websites, we might have to talk about different business types. The first offer is get 10%. Put your name and email so that you'll get 10% off your offer, 15% off, some sort of discount.
Right.
Which I'm like, okay, I don't know. I'm curious to hear what you think about this because I might not be ready to buy Buy right away. And so many times that email's gone to the promotions tab or spam. So I'm wondering if there's a better strategy, because if I don't get that discount code or I'm not ready to buy, and then I never really hear from this company again, is that really effective? Like, is that putting me on a list and am I going to be a buyer eventually?
Are you saying that you signed up for the discount or no?
Well, yeah, I've signed up. Say I've put my name and email for the discount. But then they haven't really followed up with anything, with anything else.
No, they need to follow up. Everybody's got to follow up. Once you're on your list, you have to have that onboarding sequence because again, you got to be top of mind. They got to make sure that they see your name and your company in their inbox. They understand what you offer. They're not— the buyer doesn't know your business and your offerings as much as you do. So, it's good for you to have a sequence where you kind of showcase, hey, we have these types of meals. Did you know that, you know, our average meal has X amount of protein in it, blah, blah, blah. So, whatever it might be, I believe, especially in e-commerce, people are not generous enough with that opt-in discount.
Yeah.
Why do I say that? Because I know how much it costs to acquire a lead. Like, if you ran an ad on Facebook to acquire leads for your company off cold traffic, it's going to cost you a lot of money per lead. It's going to cost you $30, $40, $50, sometimes $100 per lead. This is not a customer. This is a lead.
Yeah.
Right? So, why don't you give a generous offer? Like, say, for example, your average product is $50, right? Why don't you give them a $50 gift certificate? Here's a $50 gift certificate and they get to see your product for free. Or maybe you give them something a little bit less, like a $30 gift certificate, and then they have to, you know, spend $20 or something and they have to pay for shipping. That's fine. But the point is that that would really wow them and you would get the email.
Yeah, maybe I was a bit in a roundabout way. Trying to get to a point, like I suppose for e-commerce, is the best way to get those people on an email list and make sure that they're buyers, not tire kickers, just a discount? And then that's one question. And then what is maybe a better way, a more guaranteed way to get people who would be likely buyers, not tire kickers for say, I don't know, professional services and consulting or tech and SaaS? I guess we spoke about tech and SaaS through the book.
Yeah, I think it's very important for business owners to know the data. So if you look in your dashboard, look at Google Analytics, and you have noticed that it takes 3 visits for somebody to buy, right? Then maybe you want to offer this discount after the second visit. You don't have to be the first time they hit the website. You know, you can do that through cookies. You could figure out like how many times this IP has hit the website. So this is a good way. And then the first time you offer something different, maybe offer like a buyer's guide. We used to do that. Like we had a comparison guide between the other softwares that are out there for webinars. That way, like, hey, we know you're shopping around. Why don't you take our guide? It shows you the pros and cons of all our competitors, and you can decide what is best for your needs.
Okay, so those are the lead magnets. And then I think you want to talk about how do you make sure that you don't just build a list that's just, you know, it's growing in numbers, but it's not actually a good quality list? Like, how did we prune that list? I know that you were really big on this. Constantly making sure that our list was clean.
So there's 2 things here. There's like, how do I attract the right person through the lead magnet? And then also, how do you prune? So let me do the first one. The first one's really about what is that lead magnet about? And a good way to create a very effective lead magnet is to understand who your best customers are and what were their motives to become a customer, right? Mm-hmm. So it's good to analyze, to talk to your customers, to interview them. We talked about Deploy Empathy by Michelle Hansen, a great book on this topic. But this is going to allow you to give you a blueprint to attract more people like your best customers. So, for example, we have a guide on the 100 All In B website called The Escape Plan. And it's basically people that are really in pain. We understand that people have 9-to-5 jobs that they hate. We called it an escape plan because people feel like they're in prison. So the point is, is that, hey, we want people that are really frustrated in their current situation. Why? Because I know from experience and the other people that I've talked to that have been a part of the $100 MBA. You need somebody that is really inspired and frustrated of their situation to take that leap of faith into becoming an entrepreneur because they gotta be in a situation where they're like, anything's better than this. And if that verbiage, if that wording attracts that type of person, I'm gonna get somebody who's an action taker and is willing to pay $100 a month to join our program or even just to listen to our podcast consistently. And that would be a perfect fit. So, Understanding who your best customer is and understanding how to word your lead magnet to attract them using the same pain points that that person had, you're gonna win.
I think you just said it. It's really the pain point that you've got to address and it's got to speak to it. Maybe some people hold off giving something that is probably like, oh no, this is gonna actually be in the content. I don't want to give everything away that's gonna be gated, you know, behind— like it's gonna be something that I charge for. But really the way that you're gonna get someone who's super interested is Directly speaking to that pain point.
Yeah, I really believe giving your best for free. Really, what people are paying for is either convenience or access to you if you're a coach or just something that's a service or system done for you. So, really, the information, the best information should be out there in your marketing. And to your point about pruning your list, every email marketing software has some way to score your contacts or your subscribers. And you'll know based on the score if they've opened your emails, they have clicked any links in your emails, they have replied to your emails. So one of the things that we do a lot of is we ask our subscribers to reply, especially in the early days when they join our list, because a reply is a good signal to Gmail and the other email providers that this is not spam. Let's put them in the inbox, not the promotions tab. This is actually a correspondence.
Mmhmm.
So something like, you know, what's your biggest challenge right now in your business is something we ask. And please reply. I will— I read every single email. I try to reply as much as I can. But the point here is that You know, you're getting them to take action. This will increase the score. Now, if no one's taking action, say for example, they've been on your list for a year, I like to prune the list at least once a year, and you could just unsubscribe them. You don't have to have someone on your list that's not actually opening your emails, reading your emails, clicking on links. Somebody that's just dormant, they're not actually consuming the content, so they're not really being nurtured.
Does that hurt your deliverability if you've got too many dormant people or your—
the score? It doesn't hurt your deliverability as long as they don't hit spam, but it's It's hurting your wallet because you pay for every subscriber, like the plan that you're on. Like if I have, let's say, 50,000 subscribers on my email list and then after I prune them, it's like 35,000, but they're all quality, I'm going to pay less every month for my email subscribing service. There's no reason I'm paying for people that are not— they don't want to be served. They don't want to be helped and it's okay.
Right.
Another quick tip I want to give is you want to capitalize on the fact that when somebody subscribes to your email list, they are the hottest they'll ever be. They are the most interested they'll ever be. They've just been on your website. They've been shopping around. They're looking, they're interested. They're gonna be the most compliant then. That means that you, you wanna ask them maybe to take a survey, a quiz, reply to an email like I mentioned. Maybe you can get them to read a blog post that's really gonna orient them and understand what you actually do and maybe some case studies. This is when you got them the hottest. So capitalize on those early subscribers, meaning that like you should have an automation in your email list.
Mm-hmm.
So when they subscribe, don't wait 3 days. You could just Literally give them an email immediately that gives them value, that asks them to take some action of some sort. One of the things that we do when they subscribe is say, hey, thanks for being here. Reply with your biggest challenge in business. In the meantime, here are 5 episodes that we recommend. Get them to listen to these episodes. They're taking action and they're more willing to take action when they're new on your list.
Yeah. Taking action also means that they'll end up in their primary inbox too, right? If you get them to click.
Yeah, clicking helps. Replying is the most powerful thing. But even just, you know, opening the email more than once is a signal from, from Gmail if they go back to it and read it or whatever it might be. I hope you're enjoying the show. If so, hit subscribe so you continue to learn here on the $100 MBA Show. We have an upcoming episode I don't want you to miss. We talk about why people that are sharing their revenue publicly is absolute BS. It's actually not good marketing. It's not helping you in any way. It's actually just kind of boosting your ego, making you feel good. What should you do instead? That's what we discuss in the episode. Hit subscribe so you don't miss it when it comes out. There's something I need to stress that's super important when it comes to growing your email list. A lot of people are trying to just grow their list as big as possible without repelling the wrong people. You need to say, we are not for you. Okay. One of my favorite examples of this is Andy Morgan. A friend of ours who lives in Japan. We had him on the podcast. He's a personal fitness coach online. And on his website, very early on in the website, he says, I am not for these types of people. If you don't know how to work out, you've never been in the gym, if you are just trying to lose weight, you're not interested in building muscle, I don't train women. He's just very specific. I'm very good with men, but that's not my expertise. Like, he has a whole list of things. Like, if you are this, this, this, this, this, I'm not for you. And the reason why this is so powerful is because the people that are the opposite of that are gonna feel seen. They're gonna feel heard. They're gonna be like, yes, this person is exactly for me. They're not for everybody. They're niche. And that is very important because one, you don't want the wrong people to join your email list and get disappointed.
Mm-hmm.
You wanna set up expectations. 2, you're gonna attract the people that you are meant to serve even more because they're gonna be like, yeah, I've been shopping around and no one's, you know, saying what they're not for or who they don't serve. this person's a little bit different and I feel like probably a better choice for me because I fit in that category. So if you're just trying to attract people without repelling people, you're going to have just some people are coming in that are really not the right customer for you. Would you agree with that? Yeah.
I think like in the beginning, like I said, you know, you really took the lead in email marketing. I remember thinking, oh, someone's unsubscribed. You know, when your list is really small and they're, and you know, you're seeing all the subscribers come in and then you see the unsubscribe and you're kind of like, Kind of stings a little bit, and but I remember like you were saying that that's fine, that's fine. You just like that's fine, that's fine, that's fine. And really, I understood this point a lot later. It's like it's totally fine. It's actually really good because you understand that that you're not going to be for everyone. Okay, there might be another layer to like who are the people that are staying on the list. That's when tags come into it. Like you can see if they're tagged with different. tags in the email so you know like, oh, this person's interested in all of these things. That makes up a very clear picture of who is interested versus, okay, someone who signed up then left. Rather than worrying about the fact that that person left, focus more on who's staying and learning a little bit more about them versus worrying about the people that have left.
Yeah. And you can apply this to anything in life. And there's examples all around us. I love looking at the music industry because music is often polarizing.
Mm-hmm.
And that's good because that means they have raving fans, like people that listen to death metal. Maybe that's not your thing, but people that love death metal, they're like, they're so obsessive about it and they listen to it everywhere and they go to the concerts and they wear the merch. People that love jazz, there's, you know, some people think it's elevator music and this is boring. I don't wanna listen to jazz. Like people are like, no, you don't get it. It's improvisation. It's amazing. Blah, blah. And that's what you want. You want people to have strong feelings, whether it's positive or negative. The worst thing in business is being vanilla, is being ignored. You want to make sure that you have haters a bit, but also raving fans.
I agree. So what's the tip then to get the tire kickers off, like to get the people that haven't made up their mind? You said that you'd prune annually. Don't you— do you think maybe there's a case for pruning a little bit more frequently, like say every 4 months?
One strategy that I use that really helps is that you could just send an email to the people that you're thinking about pruning. Say for example, there's 100 people on your list that haven't opened or clicked on anything, you could just say, are you still interested in XYZ? Whatever you offer. Are you still interested in personal fitness or personal finance? Whatever. That could be the subject line. And then just be like a one-liner. Hey, are you still interested in this? I noticed you haven't opened any emails. If so, click this link or reply to me and let me know. And if they don't, then you know that's permission to remove them.
Right.
And you could do this as frequently as you like. You could do this every 3 months, 4 months, whatever it might be. And I love this email because it gets people off the fence. And we did this at Webinar Ninja a whole bunch of times. We learned this actually from Dan Martell, who was our coach, our SaaS coach, and it was called the reactivation email. And the subject line was quick question in lowercase. It felt like very personal. And there was just a one-liner that says, are you still interested in running webinars? In our case. And if so, reply. And it just looked like a very personal email. It was not— it was plain text, no imagery or newsletter-y kind of looking email.
Mm-hmm.
And it got a ton of replies. And it got me to say, oh, if you are still interested, join our next live webinar. It's this. You don't have time? Just sign up anyway and watch a recording. And it got people off the fence and got them to buy.
Just a quick side question, perhaps. Do you think people spend more time chasing social media followers and those kind of vanity— those metrics, I suppose I'm calling them vanity metrics, but versus focusing on email? I mean, that's I think your point is that this is where you're going to make sales. It's great to have a large social media following, but it's if you really focus on your email list and even if it's small, but it's really committed and interested, you're going to, you know, get further ahead than having a huge social media following.
There's a reason why they say the cash is in the list. Like you're going to make far more money with a larger email list than millions and millions of followers on social media. You don't control social media, you know, especially nowadays where the algorithm is towards the content you're creating and not your followers. You know, Gary Vaynerchuk talks about this all the time. You know, he has millions and millions of followers, and you can get more viewers with less followers based on your content now on social media. So, and you can't reach out to them. There's no way you can email them and message them. Like, that's not your property. You're kind of building on somebody else's land.
Yeah.
Your email list is yours, and you can be able to nurture that email list, invite them to other offers, other events, let them know what you're doing. You're starting a new business and you want to tell them about it, you could do that. So definitely, I would say 100 email subscribers is far more valuable. I would say like 100x more valuable than 100 followers. We know a lot of people in our space that have humongous email lists and are nonexistent on social media, you know, that I know personally that have hundreds and hundreds of thousands of people on their email list because I've, you know, presented for their audiences. People have huge blogs with subscribers that have been around for like 20 years plus. And, uh, yeah, they have like 400 followers on Instagram and they are multi-multi-millionaires because they know the cash is in the list.
I think that phrase is very sassy. The cash is in the list.
It's something you learn very early on in online business.
Cash is in the list.
So Fabienne and everybody who's tuning in, really, I encourage you to optimize for quality in your list. It's better if we have a quality list that's growing slowly than a fast-growing list of people that are not really interested in buying what you have. You want buyers. You want people that are actually going to buy at some point. Maybe they're not going to buy immediately, but they might buy in the next few months. And they're in the market and they're just trying to get all the facts and all the information that you can provide so they can make a decision. Remember, your job as an entrepreneur and as a marketer is to help people make a decision, whether it's to buy your product or service or not. That's still a decision, but you want to get them off the fence, and that's why having them on the email list and nurturing them is so important. You also want to make sure that you value your email list subscribers and give them value. Don't just pitch them. You know, I mentioned Gary, but he always says like it's a 3-to-1 ratio, like 3 value and then 1 offer. I actually— we don't make a lot of offers because I really believe that if you love something and you are getting a lot of value, you'll find out, does this person have something for sale? I'm going to go to the website and see if they have a product, a service, a book. I've done this to Plenty of times, you know, outside of business and out of entrepreneurship, you know, you, you listen to a song, you're like, what's this song? Does this person— are they going to perform live? I want to figure out, are they coming to Sydney? I'm going to buy a ticket. Like, you're just so in love with what they do. So just give value. You can give an offer here and there. You know, I like to maybe give an offer once every 10 emails. Um, that's like a dedicated offer, or even could just be a PS in the email. But the point here is, is that if you are valuable to your customers, if they see you as a consultant, somebody that is seeing them and valuing them and and you have their best interests in mind, they're going to find out what you sell and they're going to buy it. So just see your email list as a way for you to build a relationship with people. I hope that helps. Thanks, Nicole, for helping me out today. It's been fantastic. If you want to have a question answered here on the show, if you want me to answer a question, Nicole and I will discuss it. Just go to 100mba.net/q and we'll answer it right here on Q&A Wednesday. I hope you enjoyed today's episode. If you want to continue learning here on the $100 MBA Show, Just scroll back. We have over 2,800 episodes, but this one specifically you might be interested in. It's all about why most podcasts never make money. I go into the details. I give you the statistics. I show you from my own experiences, cuz this is not the only podcast we had. We had other podcasts and we had a failed podcast before this. So we show you the economics of podcasting as well. If you're interested in running a podcast or if you're just curious about the business of podcasting. Thanks so much, Nicole, for being here. And we'll see you next Wednesday here on Q&A Wednesday. See you then.
Thanks.
Bye.
