Robin Waite built $300k annual revenue from a 6,000-person email list by creating high-value lead magnets, running a dozen-email onboarding sequence, and using list swaps and podcast appearances to grow. He keeps offer cadence at roughly one pitch per three to four emails, balancing promotion with consistent value.
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Every single person that you can get into your email list will have a dollar amount or value which is attached to them being in your list and being a potential customer. Hard to say exactly what that might be, and it will differ from business to business. But for me, and this might surprise you, I know that for every person that's in my email list, their customer lifetime value is typically worth about $50 a year, and they traditionally stay in my email list for several years, which means that there is hundreds of dollars. If I can get just one person into my list. Now, actually, I've got close to 6,000 people in my email list now, and that generates for me on average about $300,000 a year. So each person is worth £50 a year to me in that list. And if I can get them to stick around and engage with my brand, then they might well potentially become a client. Now, I know that there's gonna be some questions which you'll likely want to ask, such as how do you actually get people into your email list? How do you then take those people from your email list and turn them into customers? And I'm gonna go through a few of the techniques which I've used over the years in order to attract and engage people into my email list, and then over a period of time nurture them so that they have a desire to then want to join the Fearless Crew and become a client and work with me in the future. One of the first things which I will say though is that, and this trips up a huge number of business owners, building an email list does take time. And the challenge with that is, as a small business owner, you don't have a huge amount of time. And a lot of business owners treat the task of getting people into their email list a little bit like Noah's Ark-style marketing, one by one by one by one. And so, one of the things I'll be sharing with you is not how you can get just one person into your email list next, but how could you get 1,000 or 2,000 or 3,000 people into your email list just through one really valuable partnership. It's something which I've talked about on my channel before, and it's worth reiterating. So, we'll be digging into that a little bit later on in this video if you do want to stick around. But first of all, we're gonna hear a short word from one of our partners, Uncle Matt's Hats. The number one thing which prevents business owners from achieving their goals generally is their mental health. One of the most stressful things that I've discovered in life is running a business. And actually, any person in their right mind, if they knew what I know about running a business, probably wouldn't do it. But hey, look, this is why I'm partnering up with Uncle Matt's Hats, because I wanna raise awareness around mental health for business owners especially. 1 in 4 people this year are gonna have some kind of a mental health crisis. And in this week alone, 84 people will have committed suicide down to mental health issues which they're experiencing. And I think there needs to be more organizations doing things like what Uncle Matt's Hats are doing in terms of giving back to support the various mental health charities and organizations that are out there. There are 15,000 of them alone in the UK, and what Uncle Matt's Hats are doing is for every garment which they sell, they give 10% of the profits to Hub of Hope, which is a directory of those 15,000 organizations. I hope that you'll be able to support a friend in need, whether that be directly, your friends out there, your colleagues who are running businesses. Sit down and have a coffee with them and ask them how they are. If you can't do that, please go and grab one of these hats because every penny of that profit which is going towards those charities is a penny well spent in my opinion. So if you were like me starting out, all of the experts and gurus and mentors which I took on, they all said you've got to have an email list. The value is in the email list. That's where you make your money. And so I did start to build an email list and then got disheartened very, very quickly because it was a struggle. It was literally like impossible to get 1 or 2 people into the list, let alone get your first 100 or even 1,000 people into the list. And over the last 8 years since I've been running my coaching practice, I've had to improve that process and gradually make my messaging stronger make the assets which I share with people much more valuable, which then in exchange, people then wanna join my email list so that they can get those valuable assets in return. So this is my first tip when it comes to building an email list, is make sure you've got something of really high perceived value that is going to not feel like it's taking time or money away from— out of somebody else's pocket, so that they actually want to sign up to it. Now, as you know, I've got several books. Books are a really high perceived value in terms of a gift, £10, £15, £20 even, and I would almost urge anyone, rather than than sending out a PDF or a digital copy of your book, get into the habit of sending out, posting out signed copies of your book to people who ask for them. And the reason for this is, well, again, I've had to hone this over the years, but the price to print a copy of a book, a small one like Take Your Shot, is only £2 a copy, so about $2.50. Postage-wise, you can get it shipped pretty much anywhere in the world for $6. So for what is $8 to $10 per lead, where you know that the lifetime value of that client is $50 at least in the first year, if not more beyond that, then spending $8 to $10 in order to get that lead into your database, knowing that you're going to monetize it on the back end, shouldn't be too much of a constraint or a strain on your resources. And if you just set a really simple goal to maybe ship 50 books a month, that's only, you know, 50 books a month, it's going to cost you about, what, $400 to $500 to print and ship those books. But over the course of a year, you've now built your email list up to 600 people already. And if just 10% of those people engage in your product or service, especially if you're a coach, a consultant, or a freelancer, and what you sell is worth several thousand dollars. 10% of that audience converting out of 600 means you might have up to 60 clients spending several thousand dollars with you. So you can see that there is the potential there to convert some of that into paying clients. It's just the challenge for a lot of people is getting over the mindset of, if I invest this money now, I might have to wait 12 months in order to get a return on that investment. But trust me, every time I've focused on leading with value from a marketing campaign perspective and getting people into the email list, I've always managed to derive an ROI from it. One of my greatest strengths is because I'm probably very pigheaded, maybe a bit stubborn, but also it makes me a very patient person. So I don't mind investing into resources and assets that I can share with people to help build their trust so that they will eventually come and join the Fearless Crew and maybe become a client and we work together. And then obviously they get an ROI from that further down the line as well. So have a really valuable asset. It could be a short video series which you have gated on your website. It could be a book which you write over the next 6 to 12 months, for example. It could be a newsletter which you send out with really valuable insights and tips on a regular basis. And the key thing is, if you're gonna promise something like sending out a regular email newsletter, at least, like, stick to your word and make sure if you're gonna promise to send it out weekly that you do actually send it out weekly. The amount of times I've signed up to newsletters and then, you know, I get 3 or 4 and then they just kind of disappear. One of the things which I would recommend is that when you set up your email list, create a nurture sequence of maybe a dozen emails so that right from the word go, that when somebody signs up, they at least get a dozen emails with some value in it straight off the bat. The other thing that I recommend as well in terms of being able to convert people into clients further down the road from your email list is to also get them in other communities, other areas where they can derive value from being around your brand. So things like a Facebook group or maybe the new platform Skool, which is out there, but building, you know, or even a WhatsApp group, you know, try and encourage people in your nurture sequence to go and join an experience and engage with you in other areas, other media. Because what that does is it introduces other touchpoints and it means that you can also get to know people in your email list a little bit better if they're engaging with your content in other community-based sort of groups, WhatsApp chats and things like that. Other ways to get people into an email list would be to make sure that you're adding some significant amount of value. So it's not just about the perceived value from the thing which they're going to get back. But how can you actually add value to somebody's business in exchange for their email? One of the ways which I do this is I've created a scorecard, the Fearless Pricing Scorecard, which is on one of my websites. And we encourage people again, we drive traffic into that page. They're going to get asked 40 questions. So it's quite an in-depth scorecard. But in answering those 40 questions, they're going to be learning things about themselves and about their business, which they could then take insights from, apply to their business, and potentially make some more money from it. And at the end of that, they also get a score, a rating off the back of doing the scorecard. They get links and tips to valuable resources which may also help their business, and also invitations to come and join us in our community, and also links to the book. So again, I'm looking for creative ways to not just get people into one specific marketing asset. I'm looking for ways to get them into my ecosystem as a whole. Because in my email app, I know that if somebody has downloaded the book, joined my Facebook group, read the first dozen emails which I've sent out, done my scorecard— if they've done a number of these different things with within my ecosystem, then I know that they're more likely to potentially want to come and hang out with me and the rest of the Fearless Crew on one of my business accelerators. So, it shouldn't just be about one asset. You might need several different ways to draw people into your email list, rather than just focusing on one single campaign. Again, I see too many business owners who get very disheartened because they run this campaign and get 10 subscribers, and they think, oh, email marketing is not for me. Well, it's because, one, you probably didn't do it for long enough. Two, you weren't persistent enough with it when you were doing it. And 3, you didn't have enough routes that people could actually come into your ecosystem, into your email list. And the reason this is so important is because people consume media in lots of different ways. So for example, you obviously like YouTube, you're sat here watching this as a YouTube video, or maybe you're listening to the audio as a podcast, or maybe actually you've searched for something on Google and ended up on one of my blog posts, for example. Or perhaps you've actually gone to Amazon and bought the book first before you've then come into my world. So people consume media and business information in a multitude of different ways. So that's the reason why you need this whole ecosystem of different marketing assets and communities and ways for people to engage with you. But each one of those wants to then funnel people in to jump into your email list, and that's where you can then start to nurture them. So that segues nicely into— so now you've got some people into your email list, how do you— what do you do with them? How do you actually convert them into paying clients? Well, again, first of all, within that email list, make sure you're adding some significant value. So you've got that initial nurture sequence, but also make sure that you're sending them regular updates throughout the year as well. It doesn't have to be like 2 to 3 times a week or weekly or even monthly. You don't have to have set times to do it, but if you feel inspired to share a valuable bit of information with your audience, pop it into an email, ping it off. It takes less than 10 minutes to write a short, you know, email of maybe up to 300 or 400 words, maybe link to a video or a podcast which you've done. But again, it just concierges people to your next piece of content for them to continue to build trust with you. I think if you go and lay down promises in order to do a weekly, like, newsletter to people. I think it can put a lot of pressure on yourself, especially if you're busy. I know a lot of my clients have got young families. They don't have time to sit doing, like, a weekly newsletter. But what they do have is pockets of time where they can come up with a piece of content, and if they want to, they can send an email out. And that works incredibly well. If you've got a really good open rate and click-through rate on your emails, you will still be able to leverage email to start a conversation with somebody, and then they might go on to book a call with you or a consultation, and from there become a client. So But you can't do that without first having that email list. So get the emails into that list first and foremost through some of the methods which I've talked about, whatever that might be, and then make sure that you're nurturing them somehow. One of the other things which you can do is you can set up something called a CRM, customer relationship management tool. My preferred one at the moment is Pipedrive. I use Pipedrive so that whenever somebody comes in through a specific lead magnet or marketing asset, I can see that in Pipedrive in my various deal pipelines which I've got set up, and then I can sort of I don't like this fully automated approach to business. I think that you can, you can create leaky buckets for yourself and miss things. I prefer a semi-automated approach where I can see all the deals sort of lining up in Pipedrive, and from there I can then move them through my nurture, my more manual nurture sequence into potentially booking a call with me. Or I do this thing called I saw this and thought of you, which might mean that I go and check out their LinkedIn profile, see what they've been posting about recently, and then I might send them a link which is relevant to that, or I might comment on their post or repost it or something like that. So I'm trying to leverage people who come into my world in a way that I can engage with them in their world wherever they choose to hang out. So I'm again, this creating this whole ecosystem where email is a small part of it. We've got these various marketing assets, we're nurturing them in Pipedrive, but then I'm kind of going inside out, back out to their social medias and engaging with them where they like to hang out as well. Because again, that builds trust and credibility. And alongside that as well, you don't want to just be doing like Buy my shit, buy my shit, buy my shit, 'cause I see too many people in email lists who are constantly just putting out offer after offer after offer. And unfortunately, I think that can erode trust and people will start to unsubscribe if you do that too much. I think that the perfect balance is about 1 in 3, 1 in 4 posts need to be an offer post, you know, and then you've got 2 out of 3 or 3 out of 4 posts are then just filled with value, whatever that might be. You can also do things called, I mentioned earlier on about partnerships. So there's 2 different ways which I leverage partnerships in order to grow my email list. And this is something which you can do. You're fed up with doing Noah's Ark style, you know, email marketing, like one by one by one, trying to get, you know, one person at a time into your email list, then these 2 things which I'm going to share with you are absolute gold dust. And they work incredibly well in terms of getting hundreds or even thousands of people into your email list very, very quickly. The 2 partnerships which I traditionally tend to use are first and foremost list swaps. So there are other people who are in similar industries to me with similar audiences. And they— we know that all of the people in our list may not be appropriate to come and join the Fearless Crew. So why should I not share my audience with somebody else where if somebody is looking for a coach or mentor that they could go into that other person's program, for example? So I quite often commonly do list swaps. I used to have a bit of a hang-up over this. I thought it was a little bit schmarmy. But actually I discovered what the crux of it comes down to is that it's really down to who you're doing these partnerships with. So if they're a similar sort of vibe to you, similar sorts of people, it's more than likely it's not going to feel schmarmy. It's actually going to be a really good fit when you actually send out your, your emails to each other's lists. The other hang-up I had over this is that I thought that for ages my list was too small and why would somebody want to partner with me. But I had people who were interested in doing list swaps with me when I had, you know, 800 people in my list. So it's not about the size of the list, it's about what value each of you in the partnership can bring to one another. One of my most recent— well, actually, I've done 2 partnerships very recently. So one of them, we got somewhere in the order of about 150 people when the other person partnered with me. They sent an email out promoting Take Your Shot, my book. 150 people requested that. Now, if I was doing that one by one by one, that would probably take me a few months, whereas that was just one email on their part which generated 150 leads and people coming into my email list. That worked incredibly well. I've done another similar partnership, albeit for a slightly different call to action, but that one generated generated somewhere in the order of about 300 people into my list. So list swaps, we're not talking like massive numbers here. I guess the bigger your list gets and the bigger partners you find, yeah, those numbers will start to swell. But you know, 151 and 300, like nearly 500 leads just through 2 partnerships which went out. The other bonus of doing partnerships as well is lots of people choose to monetize in different ways. So one of the partners which I worked with, they were running a webinar, and off the back of the webinar they selling their Instagram course, which was fantastic. So I said— and I thought it was great value. The guy's very knowledgeable around Instagram. It's not something I know a lot about. I thought it'd be valuable to my list, so I sent it out. And lo and behold, several people who— well, about 400 people signed up for the workshop, which was fantastic out of my list. But the benefit, the added bonus for me, was that several people actually signed up, and this particular partner pays a 50% commission on the first sale. So that ended up being pretty lucrative. Lucrative for me. And, you know, it further deepens that partnership. Now, we— again, I can't be doing those sorts of partnership swaps like each and every week because, again, my audience will start to get a little bit annoyed with that. So I've had to learn to be quite strategic about the timing of those and make sure we're not having any partnerships which are overlapping and various things like that. But, you know, 2 or 3 partnerships like that and you could easily end up with 1,000 people in your list who you didn't have in there before. And now you've got them in your list. If they're worth $50 each and you send something out, you've got an opportunity to potentially sell to them, which is fantastic, or help educate them or promote an event or whatever it is that you want to use that list for. It could just be that you want to leverage your email list in order to promote other marketing assets that you've got. So get people into the list, and now we're going to focus on driving them to our YouTube channel to subscribe there. So that's one form of partnership. The second form of partnership is, again, it's building on the marketing asset side of things, but I use podcast guesting as another way to drive people into my list. Now, at the end of each podcast, I still do promote the same marketing assets. So I still promote signed copies of Take Your Shot, and you can request one of those if you want to. Link should be in the description. However, every now and then you get one of those partnerships which massively outperforms all of the others. So this is something I've talked about in another video, how I got this partnership. But I did one podcast interview with Ali Abdaal on Deep Dive, and that ultimately resulted In the first 90 days, it was about 1,500 inquiries dropped into my email list. And then over the subsequent sort of 9 months after that, so in total the first 12 months, we generated about 3,000 leads in the database. Which I think is, it just absolutely blew my mind that that was even possible, to get numbers of that scale and size. And I know there are other people out there doing far bigger numbers than that, but for me, that was more inquiries than I ever thought I would have to deal with at one particular time. And to give some context as well, so to get the first 3,000 inquiries, leads into my email list. It took me somewhere in the order of about 4 and a half years. So to record one podcast and literally double the size of my email list within such a short space of time, it absolutely blew my mind. And I'm now really— my solid focus is on finding other partnerships like that where people have already got huge numbers of my audience already built within their audience, because I'm fed up with having to do this like one by one by one, this slow growth, trying to build my audience Well, if somebody's already managed to build that audience, however they've got it, it doesn't matter. It's irrelevant. If they've got that audience and it overlaps with yours, and you've got those partners in your circle of influence, leverage them. Use them. Make sure you ask if you can do a partnership. And there are ways that you can pay back those partnerships. But I now know that the value of all of those people I've got in my list, if I can nurture them over the next year, 2 years, 3 years, that there is significant value in there, provided I don't overtly promote to them. Like, my thing is all about how can I add value, value, value, and then, you know, at the appropriate time, if I've got something up, something going on or coming up of interest to them, I might drop them an email and invite them along to it. It could be a group coaching experience, for example, or maybe I'm speaking at a particular event or something like that. But again, it's something of value which they're gonna benefit from. I think that's what it comes down to. Hopefully you've enjoyed this video. If you've got any questions around sort of email marketing and things like that, you're welcome to drop them into the list. I wouldn't say necessarily I am the go-to expert when it comes to email marketing. However, monetising on the back end of that is what I am good at. So, it might be that you're great at building an audience. Maybe you have a YouTube subscriber base with, like, 20,000 subscribers, or you've already got an email list with 20,000 people in it, or a Facebook group with 20,000 people in it. I don't know. If you don't know how to monetise that, if you don't have an offer that you can present to those people, or a product or a service or something like that, come and speak to me. The links are in the description below. I've helped people to do launches that they've managed to generate over $100,000 worth of sales just in one single launch, or $30,000 in a launch through their— not just their email list, but all of the marketing assets which they've created. It starts through creating a really valuable offer, product, which you can then present to that audience, and understanding then how to drip-feed some marketing in order to kind of raise people's awareness around that offer. Come and speak to me if you need some help with
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