MBA1689 How to Grow an Email List From Scratch

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It's absolutely free to download so go ahead and head on over to 100 MBA NET and download it today. In today's episode you will learn how to grow an email list from scratch. Whether you're starting a new business or a new website or your current email list is just a list of tire kickers and you need to blow the who up and start over. This episode is for you. I'm going to give you a game plan on how to grow your email list steadily with high qualified leads. Too many people obsess about the size of their list and we want to make sure we do both. With social media becoming more and more crowded, it's becoming a gold rush in the next few years to get as many people's emails so you have access to their inbox. Email still the highest converting tool for marketing. So let's grow that list. I'll show you how. Let's get into it. Let's get down to business. One of the reasons why people say the money is in the list is because email converts better than anything else out there. The thing about email is you can't ignore it. You have to deal with email. You have to open it, you have to read it, you have to archive it, you have to do something with it. You can't just ignore or thumb through it like a news feed on social. This is why access to your ideal customers inbox is vital. Our inboxes are the most sacred place in our digital world and you want to be in those inboxes. So growing your email list should be a top priority. So how do you get started? How do you actually grow your email list the right way? And this lesson is applicable whether you're starting from scratch or you need to blow up your whole email list because it's just not serving you anymore. And this is very common. If you've been in business for some years, this is something that we've done after three, four, five, six, seven years. You're going to have people on your email list that are just not responsive. They are bogging your list down. They're affecting your open rates, they're affecting your reputation, your email delivery reputation. Because the more people that don't open your emails or have it in their primary inbox, the more these email servers give you a lower reputation, meaning that maybe this sender is not sending quality stuff. So it's actually in your best interest to have quality leads that are open all your emails. So let's start with step one. And step one is setting the rules. Okay? You have to set some rules for yourself. And this is one golden rule. Quality before quantity. You want to make sure you get quality leads. People that actually want to be on your email list and want to participate and read your emails, and that's the priority. Then we focus on getting as many people like that on our list and grow that list. So how do you make sure you have quality leads? Here are a few tips. Number one, when you're asking people for their email address, whether you're giving them a free downloadable, they're joining your newsletter, they're registering for a webinar, ask for their name and email. At minimum, a lot of people, they ask just for the email, but you want to get their name because that way you can address them personally in your emails. And it's just an extra step and a little extra effort from the part of the person who's subscribing to show their commitment. Number two, double opt in. Double opt in means when somebody subscribes to your newsletter or signs up to get a freebie, they don't get it directly. They have to first confirm they want to be on your email list. This is actually quite common practice for a lot of email marketing softwares like Mailchimp and ConvertKit. And it's what they recommend because it ensures that they actually want to be on the email list. It also requires them to take action on an email, which increases your email deliverability reputation. So what you're gonna do here is you're gonna switch on double opt in. And what happens is that when they give their name and email address on your form, the first email they get says, hey, please confirm you wanna receive emails from company X. They're gonna click a button to confirm. And once they do that, they're on the list. And then they'll get whatever email sequence that you have set up if they don't confirm they're not on the list. This also is an extra step to see if people are committed enough to go through a little bit of friction, a little bit of resistance to be on your list again. You want people that want to be on your list that are willing to click a few buttons to make it happen. Number three, when they first subscribe to your list, this is when they're going to be the most interested. This is when they're going to be the most responsive to any calls to action. So you want to capitalize on that moment when they first join your list. So that first email you send them, you want them to take some sort of action, even if it's something simple like clicking on a link to read a blog post. Anytime somebody takes any action on an email, this increases your reputation, this increases deliverability. This makes sure that your emails land in the inbox and on the promo folder or spam. So that first email needs to be some sort of action reply. Click on a link, get them to register for a webinar. The point here is that you have them now, you have their attention. Get them to do something, even if it's just clicking a link to download whatever they opted in for instead of just putting it on the page after they sign up. So just to recap, my ideal flow for getting people on my list is I have an opt in on my website they sign up, they get a confirmation email to double opt in. They confirm they want to be on my list. They then get an email from me automatically now that they're on the list, thanking them for being part of the list, giving them what they signed up for. Like for example, at 100 MBA net right now we have our breakout business roadmap. And you'll, you can actually go and see this flow right now if you sign up and on that first email there's a link where they can click to download the roadmap again. Getting them to take action, getting them to interact while I have them next. You want to make it your mission that everybody on your email list looks forward to your next email. And the only way to do that is to win them over with the content of your emails. People will give you a few chances when they're on your list, so when they get their next email, they'll open it. If they're disappointed, they may give you another chance. Most likely they'll lose interest in your newsletter, in your emails, if you don't win them over in that first kind of first broadcast after the whole opt in sequence. So this is where you gotta kill them with content is what I say, great, valuable content. Whether it's on your website or curated content that's amazing videos or blog posts on the web, you want people to say this email is worth opening every single time. I'm never disappointed. So we talked about quality and how to maintain that quality and get people opening your emails. Let's talk about growth. How are we gonna grow this email list properly now that we focused on quality? Let's talk about sales scaling. So many businesses and many blogs, many websites, they go crazy with opt ins. They have a million calls to action, they have popups, they have things on the side, they have banners and they're offering, you know, five, six, seven, eight different things to get somebody's email. What I want you to do is just focus on one thing, one powerful thing that people want in your audience and offer it throughout your website. That way you can really focus on a great funnel, a great email automation, a great nurturing sequence. Don't spread yourself thin. Focus on one often. Two, make sure it's front and center on your website. It should be the top thing on your homepage. Your goal is to get their email so that you can build that relationship and nurture them so then they can eventually be a customer. So don't be shy about it. Ask for their email with an opt in on your homepage. You could put it even in the footer of your website. So it's on every page. Put it in the header of your blog, put it on the side column. If you have a side column on your blog, the point of your website is, yes, to talk about what you do and how you serve your audience, but it's also to collect emails. So have one call to action say, hey, download this thing. Get it for free. Give me your email, give me your name. Next. Drive traffic to your site. And before you do that, create a dedicated page. This is called a squeeze page. Where there's no header, there's no footer. All they can do is opt in for that. Give me that freemium that you want to give them. Whether it's a downloadable PDF, whether it's a video, whether it's a small tool, whatever it is, create a dedicated page that is basically nothing. But give me your email. This is what you're going to get in exchange. No scrolling, no nothing, just a very simple page. Now, when you have that page, you're going to drive traffic to it in every way you can, passively. What that means is you're going to change your profiles on social media to include this link to the page. So when anybody checks you out on social, they go there, whether it's Instagram or Twitter or Facebook. Change your profile links. So instead of putting your homepage, put this link. Change the footer of your emails or the signatures of your emails to include this link. Run a contest for people to share or retweet this. Post this link, and the person who gets the most retweets or shares, they get a prize. Even if it's just like, you know, a $50Amazon gift card. Get creative about how you want to drive traffic. You want to go paid ads? Go ahead and do paid ads. The point here is that you want to make sure you're doing everything you can to have eyeballs on this. Opt in next. Let's go hyper speed. The fastest way for you to grow your email list is big surprise. Run webinars. Webinars are great value for your audience. For your potential customers, they're used to just giving their name and email to register for a webinar, you get the contact, you get them on your email list. You deliver a webinar, even if this is an automated webinar or a live webinar, you do once a month, like an open Q and A. This is a very simple way for you to grow your email list quickly. I've done this over the years it's the most effective way I found. Another way is you can leverage webinars by having guests and you can do like a live Q and A or an expert session. And guess what? The guests can invite their audience on social to this open Q and A to this Ask me anything and you're getting people from a different audience to register and join your email list. In the same vein, do some joint venture or partner webinars where you invite somebody to talk about their product or service to your list and vice versa. You can go ahead and speak about what you do to another audience and whoever's speaking sets up the webinar and they collect the emails. That way it's an exchange. It's an easy way for you to get in front of another audience. Get on Podcasts Podcasts are a great way for you to grow your list because people that listen to podcasts are tech savvy and they're on their phone us already so they can easily go ahead and follow your call to action. Always have this link handy, whether it's to your next webinar or to your opt in page and it should be an easy link to follow. So for example, if I want to invite people to my next webinar on a podcast, I can easily just say webinar ninja.com workshop it's easy to hear and to remember. Understand that growing a solid quality email list will take some time. What you want to see is steady growth. You want to see 5 new subscribers a day, 10 new subscribers, 50 new subscribers, 100 new subscribers. You want to see that steady growth, that trend moving up. Take a look at how many subscribers you're getting every day now in your email marketing software and set some goals and set some actions to set those goals. Let's just say, hey, I want to get 100 new emails every month and not do anything to achieve that. What are you going to do to increase that number? Implement those action items and see the results.

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Your number $30 first month and $25 after with autopay not available if with Metro or T Mobile in the past 180 days guys, growing your email list is one of the best, best, best things you can work on, you can focus on in your business. But as you grow your email list, you'll understand that not all subscribers are created equal. Some people over time will lose interest, will stop opening emails and you have to prune your list. And just like I mentioned at the top of the episode, if you don't do this often, you'll find that your email list will be an absolute dud. It will be filled with people that don't open your emails. So prune your email list as much as possible so you don't have to blow the whole thing up one day. A few years down the line, what you want to do is maybe every six months take a look at who is not opening your emails up, send them a message, ask them are you still interested in getting emails from us? If so, reply or click this link and we'll know to keep you on the list if they're not opening up your emails. If somebody hasn't opened your emails in three months, this is somebody who's disinterested and you want to send them an email like this to see if they're still interested. If they're not, unsubscribe them. You're paying for somebody who is not serving your business and doesn't want to be served. I know sometimes that's hard because it's like I work so hard to grow my email list to a certain number and now I'm going to cut it down by 20%. I'm not so thrilled about that. Yes, but you want quality. Remember, priority one is quality and you want to serve the right people. Thanks so much for listening to the Hunter Ombie Show. If you love what you hear, hit subscribe right now on whatever podcast you use to listen to podcasts, whether it's Apple Podcasts or Stitcher Radio or Spotify or on every single platform. By hitting subscribe you get access to all our archived episodes. Over 1600 episodes. And the only way to get access is to subscribe. Also, if you got something from today's show, if you thought it was useful, if you thought it was interesting, if you had an aha moment, share this episode on social with your friends and family. It helps us grow the show and reach other entrepreneurs just like you. Thanks so much for listening. Before I go, I want to leave you with this. There are things in business that you have to invest in. You have to take the time. It's going to take a while. It's going to take dedicated, consistent effort. Like content marketing, like branding, like your actual product. Email marketing is one of those things. You need to see this as a long term game. This is not something that you're gonna, you know, celebrate and feel like you won the lottery of email marketing in one month. It's gonna take a few months, a year, two years, and it's gonna take some of your attention. But it's worth it because access to people's inboxes is like gold. Thanks so much for listening and I'll check you in tomorrow's episode Q and A Wednesday. I'll see you then. Take care. Of gas, snacks, tolls. This trip is draining my wallet.

Yeah, but we'll be with family.

You're in a good mood. What's your deal?

What's my deal? I saved at Metro with no activation fees and I got one line of 5G for just $25 per month. Kept the phone I love and a 5 year price guarantee on my top.

Tuxt and data detour to Metro.

Get that more for your money feeling only at Metro by T Mobile.

Just bring your number $30 first month and $25 after with autopay not available if with Metro or T Mobile in the past one.