How to Grow Your Marketing List 100x Faster than Your Competition

Some instructional pieces to this. So I'm recording this so that I can share it with people who didn't show up and also put it on YouTube. So I'm going to share my screen. Today, we're going to talk about how to grow your list. And just for a marketing statement, I said a thousand times faster than your competitors. But this is just really about how to grow your list. And it's funny when I and people on my team, when we talk to people about email marketing, we get a lot of size, we get a lot of eye rolls because everybody says I freaking hate spam. So people are naturally averse to wanting to do it. But the thing about it is when you are email marketing properly, it is not spam. And email marketing works. So if you are not doing it and you are not focused on growing your list, then you have a big gap in your marketing strategy. So the first thing that I want to talk about is why building and leveraging your email list is really important for your business. So first of all, email marketing works. So there's a very high return on investment. And according to DMA Direct Marketing association, the average ROI is about $42 for every $1 spent. So I would actually call that invested. There's an ROI of $42 for every $1 invested. Customer retention is also a key aspect of this because when you're staying in touch with your customers on a consistent basis and or prospects, but customers, you can increase the profits in your business by 33% because customers stay longer, because they feel seen, they feel heard, they feel like you're offering more consistent value. Personalization, engagement. You can personalize email marketing better than just about any type of marketing. Other marketing that you do even on social media, direct mail, commercials, videos, billboards, all this stuff. With email marketing, you can get very personal and personalized. Emails are shown to deliver six times higher transaction rates or conversions. Email has the biggest reach and accessibility of everything so far. So 99% of consumers check their email every day. So if they are on your list and they have opted into your list, then they are agreeing to receive your communications. And the statistics show that customers prefer to get brand updates by email as opposed to text, which is not a very widely known stat. Customer preferences. So, so 72% of customers prefer promotional content via email over social media. So if you think about that, if you're on social media all the time and you see ads, you're really going on social media, not to be advertised to, you're going on social media for updates for your friends, things that are funny, you're going on to be entertained, not marketed to. Now, of course, we do market on social media because that's where people are. But consumers prefer to be marketed to by email over social media. The conversion rates on email marketing is actually pretty high. Higher than social media, higher than direct mail. So I consider social media to be relationship building and top of mind marketing. I'm talking organic social media. Whereas email marketing, the conversion rates tend to be higher when it's done right. And we're going to talk about how you do it the right way and then cost effectiveness. So the cost per acquisition is around $10. So if you have a price point on a product that's more than $10, then the ROI is definitely there and it's far lower than a lot of other channels. These are the stats. But when I'm talking about why we do email marketing, this is really the bottom line for me. You own that audience. And I was on a call, a strategy call the other day with mint consignments, and I just put that Strategy call on YouTube, so you might go check that out. It was really fascinating. So she's actually doing an amazing job with her social media. She's this little consignment store in a town here in Missouri called Greenview. Super tiny. She's got 3,000 followers on social media on her Facebook account and she does a great job. She has great interaction. I told her not to change a thing on that, except I pointed out that those 3000 followers she doesn't own. She doesn't own that audience. So what you want to try to do with your social media and any other marketing piece that you do, you want to try to drive people to your list because that is an audience that you own. Nothing can happen to it. So like we've seen over the years, many clients, not many, but several clients who just out of the blue got their Facebook accounts shut down. So they lose access to that audience, have to start over again. Another one not shut down. But there was a realtor in town at Lake of the Ozarks named Amber who had built a great social media following around her business with thousands and thousands. And Karen, do you remember off the top of your head roughly how many followers she had on her page before she lost it? No, I don't. It was thousands, though. Like we're not talking. It was thousands and it was a highly engaged audience. She had invested so, so much time in the marketing she had done and her Facebook account got hacked and the hacker was actually really good, knew what she was doing and essentially completely locked her out of her Facebook account. She had to start from scratch. So the problem with that is she could start from scratch and she's rebuilding the audience. But all of those people that she worked so hard to grow that following from, had she not moved them over to an email list, she lost them all. So now she's got to go refind them. Whereas had she spent some time moving them over to an email list that she owned, she could have easily sent an email out to all of those people and got them engaged on her new page. So you want to own your audience and email is the way to do that. Definitely continue to grow on social media. Definitely do all the stuff you're doing, but always try to get them to convert as an opt in on your list. I wish Steve Denny was on this call. If he jumps on later, sometimes he comes in 20, 30 minutes late, but he would vouch for this statement. An owned audience is also a valuable asset in your business. And I was actually just watching a YouTube video, instructional YouTube video by Alex Rosi who is big in the business influencer space and he does acquisitions of companies that are in over a million in profit annually. And so he's talking about one of these businesses that he recently acquired and the value of their list. They had almost 3 million people on their list. There is value and you're going to see why in having a list and a large list. So it actually becomes an asset in your business. If in fact you opt to try to sell your business down the road. They consider your list and it has to be a good list, a list that's been cared for, an active list. And we'll talk about that. They consider that one of the assets in your business. So these are the reasons why building the list is critically important. So I'm just going to show you a couple things from one of the MSW lists. What is an email worth when you have a healthy and active list? So a healthy and active list is a list that is opt in that makes it healthy because people have opted in so they're not going to flag you as spam, that sort of thing. And then active, meaning you engage with them and you engage with them consistently and they engage back with you. So this is just a screenshot from just the last what is today the 14th. So from May 30th to today. So I, I screen grabbed this this morning when I sent out the reminder for today this morning. So you can see this one was in the process of sending, but so I sent 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 66 emails to my list over 14 days so far. That's an active list. And you can tell it's healthy because the open rate is really good. And this is just the general list of MSW clients. So this isn't even the larger marketing list. It's, it's essentially just our clients. So that's what I mean by active and healthy. Now I'm going to give you an idea of what this means. So I just did it for my space. So I gathered the data, the averages. So the average email marketing return on investment I already shared is $42, approximately for every $1 invested average in the industry. For marketing agencies, the open rates are 20 to 25%. You can see that ours is over 30%. The average click through rate for marketing agencies is 3 to 5%. Ours varies from 2% to 65%. And I'll talk to you about why that is. And then the conversion rate, meaning the people take action is 1 to 2%. Mine to a full list is 2% and over 60% with the segmented list and we'll talk about what segmented lists are. So if you take that with the industry averages and do the math on that. So let's say this client list is 3,000 people, which is pretty close. If you multiply that times a 30% open rate which we have, you saw on the last screen, that's 900. So 900 times and then we're going to say 4% which is the average click through rate. So that comes to 36. And then the conversion rate is 36 times 2%. And then take that revenue percent from $0.72% revenue percent 72 times 5,000, which is my average customer annual value, that's $3,600. So in essence, every email I send to my list is worth approximately $3,600 in closed business. How does that closed business happen when I'm sending emails and I'm not really selling things? Well, think about a couple of things. When we do these webinars, when we, when I do educational pieces about ADA compliance, when I do pieces about SSLs, all these things come back to me in the form of closed business. And so that is the average $3,600 that my company makes for every email that we send to this particular list. So the money is in your list. Now I wanted to share that with you because I wanted to give you a solid reason for why you want to grow your list. So now the question is how, how do we grow our list? So the first thing is to make sure that you deeply understand your audience. So that means knowing who your ideal customer is so that you can tailor the experience, the messages, the lead magnets, all the things that get people to opt in. You can tailor it to that person. I'm gonna, I've got a link here, I'll put it in the chat. This is our ideal customer Persona template. So I just need to give you an example. So the Persona for my marketing agency is Careful Katie or Careful Catherine. Katie. I actually, it was Careful Katie, but I changed it to Careful Catherine because I didn't want you to think it was you. But you actually are an ideal client. But so this is just through going through the customer Persona. So Careful Catherine is a 45 year old self described business owner. Successful business owner. I say self described because she thinks she's doing great. Whether or not she actually is irrelevant. Right. So I'm trying to get to the personality and emotional state and all the stuff about this person. She's got approximately 1 million in annual revenue. She's very busy. She's 45. So she has kids in college. If she has kids, why does that matter? That matters because these kids are in college and they think they know everything and they're advising Careful Catherine that she doesn't need a marketing agency because she's really smart and driven and she can do it herself. I need to know this psychographic about my ideal client. She's active in the community, she's driven to achieve. She believes she can do it herself, mostly because she's self driven, but also because her kids are telling her she can, but she can't make time to get it done. She's budget conscious. She needs to feel valued because when you're a business owner and you just sometimes don't feel very valued. So if somebody makes her feel valued, she's going to feel like you really care. And she's research oriented, she likes to research things deeply before she takes action. But once she does, she's all in. So this describes a lot of our clients. This is our ideal client and they are good clients, but it takes them sometimes a year, if you can believe it, to convert. Convert on a purchase to actually work with us. Like they'll reach out and we'll spend a year nurturing them. They'll be coming to our stuff, all this. Katie, you didn't take a year, but how long did you take? You were months, right? Pretty much months. You talked about it and we met and thought about it and then you moved on it. But that's not abnormal in our business. So knowing that helps me and helps my team develop things that would be meaningful and nurture our audience into a purchase. So this ideal client Persona template, here's the link to it. Let's see if I can get to the chat from here. I'm just going to throw it in there, Jay, so you can grab it if you want to.

While ago I couldn't get it.

I'm looking for the chat. Sometimes I can't. Oh, there it is. There's the link.

Got it.

Be able to see it.

Yep.

Okay. So when you, once you understand who your audience is, then you can craft things that may be meaningful to them. So these are lead magnets that are on the MSW site right now. So we already talked about her, this ideal client, being a researcher, thinking she could do it herself or maybe her kids can do it. So these are top nine website mistakes. Almost every business owner makes things that could be costing you on social media. Mistakes you're making on social media. These are all targeted at DIYers and people who are having like their kids and internal employees do their stuff for them. The 67 point SEO checklist. Why 67? Why not 10? Well, there's 67 because there actually is a whole lot that goes into SEO. So it's not like I'm trying to make it sound hard. It is hard, but I broke it out and I listed everything. Like they give the secret sauce away so that people download it and they're like, oh my God, what is it going to cost to have you do it? Because I don't have time for this. That's one that converts pretty well. And then stop wasting marketing dollars. Create your ideal customer Persona. That one actually converts quite good and people like templates. So these resources, I'm going to throw these in the chat too really quick, Jay, so that you can download them and Katie, you can download them. Second here. So the first one is the ideal customer Persona template. And this one is the SEO checklist, which when we do your website, you don't have to worry about, but you can download it and see the stuff that we do. Now these, if you go to our website, these are behind pop ups and forms that require you to input an email address and your name. So we exchange the value, the P's for that so we can get you on our list. So that's what that is. That's how we're growing the list by creating content that speaks to and nurtures our ideal client. What happens if you create content before you identify your ideal client?

Any thoughts?

Say that again.

What happens if you create content before you've identified who your ideal client is?

Probably have the wrong stuff based on your client.

Yeah, nothing doesn't convert. Now, sometimes you go through the process of identifying your ideal client and we have some people like this. So we've identified their ideal client, we've created a lead magnet, and the lead magnet doesn't convert. That doesn't mean that lead magnets don't work right. So what it means is what we thought was going to be valuable isn't valuable to them. It's not solving a problem that they have or that they care enough about to exchange an email address for it. So when you create a lead magnet and it's not converting, you just need to create new lead magnets. So lead magnets work and they do grow your list. But I always say it's an arrogant marketer who thinks that they get it right the first time every time. And sometimes you don't even get it right the second or the third time because you don't get to decide what's important to the customer or the prospect. The customer or the prospect decides what's important to them and they tell you by converting or not converting, when they're not converting, you come up with a different lead magnet. You don't quit on the process, you just modify the process. So the next one is step three, optimize your website for maximum conversions. So you've identified the ideal client, you created the lead magnet, and then what you do is you put opt in forms all over your website. So every page should have some kind of call to action or opt in form that drives them to do something, contact you download this, try this, quiz, assessment, whatever. So you want to give them multiple opportunities to opt in to your list. So that enables you to start remarketing to them across multiple platforms. And then we're going to talk about retargeting, which is a form of remarketing. But you want to get them on your list using opt in forms. And it's not just enough to put a contact form. A contact form is a very high commitment. Contact form means they've already gone through the whole buying process in their head and now they're going to reach out and contact. Those are great, you want those. But less than 2% of most people who come to your website for the first time are going to convert through that contact form. So there are other things that you can give them that solve problems that they have. It's very low commitment because they don't want to set up a call, they don't want a strategy call, they don't want a clarity call, they don't want you to contact them back and sell to them. They're just trying to solve a problem and they're kind of in research mode. So you want to entice them to give the email address and or the cell phone number so that then you can nurture them into that conversion. And that's done through opt in forms and calls to action. Now a lot of people will say, well, I'm just going to put one lead magnet on my site and that is enough. And that is not enough. I showed you this screen. These are not all the lead magnets we have, but there's four right there just on our small website. Because different lead magnets appeal to different people. You want to make sure that you have several of them and you want to make sure that they're strategically placed. And then just a quick stat. HubSpot, which is actually a content management system and a CRM customer relationship management platform, has done a study and it shows that lead magnets will increase conversions to the website by 30% pop ups and slide ins. So a lot of times we'll be talking to people about lead magnets and they're like, I hate pop ups, I don't need pop ups on my website. Yes, they can be annoying, but they work. I try to tell people you don't want to overdo it and you don't have to have a pop up but you want some pop ups. So you can have pop ups or slide ins on your website and then allow people to dismiss them and then don't bring them back after that for that person. But then when you have the forms also embedded in the page, that's not a nuisance or anything that's annoying at all, do both. So don't just discount pop ups because you hate them, they work. If you want to try to grow your list, you need the pop ups and slide ins on your website and then the next one is retargeting and what you want to do with the retargeting is. So retargeting. Just to clarify, retargeting is the ads that follow you around the Internet. Once you've been to a website, the first time, however you've gotten the traffic to your website, whether it be a TV ad, a trade show, social media post, radio ad, billboard, all however you're driving people there. Once they land there, there's a cookie written to their computer. And then when they go to other sites around the web, like news, weather, entertainment sites, your ads then show up in front of them in, in the context of stuff, other stuff that they're interested in. So it's like a top of mind reminder that says hey, you were over here and you are interested in this, we're still here, come back kind of thing. So I think that this, and IMHO in my humble opinion is absolutely the most underutilized strategy that has the highest leverage and highest return on investment of all paid advertising out there. Because you are leveraging something that you've already invested in. So it's really like you're propping that investment up and giving it even more reach than it would have had on its own. So I'm going to show you some numbers quick. So this is our retargeting. I just did a screen capture from January back to January. So January through today, so six months, half a year. So we had 127,000 impressions on our ads. So just really quick since I'm recording this, I just want to show you. So these are the ads that we have for MSW that are retargeting ads. Someone comes to our website and leaves, doesn't convert. These ads are going to follow them around the Internet. So they're branded so the whole visual connection is still there and they cover a wide variety of things. So these are what the ads look like. What you want to do then is look at the impressions. So impressions are how many times since January in this case, people have seen those ads all over the Internet. This is how much it cost me, so about fifteen hundred dollars to get that number of views on my ads. We've had 236 click throughs which based on the impressions doesn't sound all that great. But think about it, it's fantastic. These are 236 people that had been to our website once they came back as a result of those ads. Now think about that for a second because I told you the annual average revenue for a client is $5,000. If if these 236 people left didn't convert and 236 came back and we converted just a small percentage of them because they came back, then that is definitely worth the investment. So it shows here we had eight conversions. So our cost per acquisition was $189. Acquisition is the conversion the eight. So if you think about the numbers, I spent $1,500 or invested $1,500. And we converted eight of those people who previously visited the site and didn't convert the first time. If the average annual value of the client is $5,000, which is a low estimate, our cheapest website is around 4000. The value of this campaign to my business, and it's only June, is already $40,000. Right. We're only halfway through the year. So is that a good investment in marketing? Yeah, that's a no brainer. So that's why I say retargeting is the most underutilized but the highest roi. Go ahead, Jay. You had a question?

I'm trying to figure out how you keep track of all this stuff when you. So how do you build a list that people are opting into and how do you track it? How do you know who those people are? I just don't know what software you're using to keep track of all this stuff.

Yeah, so the platform we use for the retargeting is called Ad Roll. This is the screen that you're seeing here. And when we set up the campaign, we can determine what a conversion looks like for us. And so we do that for clients. So when we set up a campaign, it says input your ads. What's a conversion? What's the value of a conversion? And so it tracks all of that. So this is a dashboard in AdRoll. So I'm not tracking it manually myself. This data is available through the dashboard.

Do you have a list on in your Outlook or whatever email system you're using that is your list? Yeah, so we through Outlook or do you use it through Microsoft Mail or.

Yeah, so we use two things for ours. Mailchimp is the one that I send like when you get emails from me that are reminders about the sessions and those all come from mailchimp. Okay. So all the people who have opted in are in my mailchimp list and then I have them and we're going to talk about this in, in a few minutes. I have them segmented too. So when they opt into the list, I know if they downloaded my 67 point checklist for SEO. I know if they went to my registered for my AI webinar. So what happens is when they come into the list, depending on where, what avenue they came in from, they're tagged with like AI or SEO or website. And once they're tagged then I see segment the list. So I only send my AI reminders and AI information to people who are tagged with AI. That's why the open Rates on my segmented emails are over 60% because it's going to a subset of my poll list and there are people who I know are interested in AI. So it makes sense that your open rate would be a whole lot higher. Does that make sense?

Yeah, it makes sense. I'm so far behind in all of this. How do you even start a list for people to opt into?

That's what we're talking about today. So what we do is we create a mailchimp account for you or you create one on your own. But we create the account and then we set up the lead magnet on your website and people start opting in and then from there you send them emails to communicate and offer value and do some of the things that we're talking about.

I guess that that's one of the things I'm looking forward to and that's why I need to get the website finished with you guys.

Yeah.

Because I don't have any idea how many people are even going to the website to find me. I like clues to what's happening with my website as assist today. That speaks very well for the people that put it together before. But I don't have any idea if anybody's even going to our website.

Yeah.

So that I. Okay, if people are going to the website, then we can start building a list and then do you have a question somewhere where they. Do you want to opt into our email list or.

Yes, let me show you here really quick. I'm going to go to. So I've already closed my. Let me do it this way. I'm going to go in a different browser so it'll pop up so you can see MSW interactive design. So you come to our website and let's say you're thinking about getting a website. So I'm just kind of scrolling. Oh, and then this pops up. So down here it says stop wasting marketing dollars. So here is the lead magnet for the ideal customer Persona. And then let's just say I'm thinking about getting a website. So I click on website. So I'm reading through this. Yeah. Okay, that looks interesting. I'm looking at the packages and I think I might have dismissed this one. There's another one that pops up if you haven't already dismissed it, that says the back here, this one. Top 9 mistakes almost every business owner makes on their website. So I. Oh, there it is. So that pops up and oh, I know you're looking at a website. And now. Oh, I do my own website. So I'm going to download this. So I just put in my name, email address, download the guide. So that name and email address goes right to the mailchimp account and then the tag gets added. It's called website. So I know you are interested in websites when it hits my mailchimp account and you instantly got the resource that you wanted.

Okay.

So that's how that works.

Okay.

And that's why I said you want to have several of these integrated throughout your website. That's how you really grow the list. Because you might not have been interested in this, but you might have been interested in the 67 point SEO checklist depending on what problem you had that led you to our website in the first place. Does that make sense?

Yeah, it does. I'm just, I'm sitting here trying to figure out how to make it work with what I do.

We can help you with that. What we do with clients on that is we set up a strategy call and we talk about who's your ideal client and then we brainstorm what are some problems that we could solve for them. The lead magnet. And then what we do is we write the lead magnets and integrate them on the website and see if they convert. If they do great, we're super happy. If they don't, then we start over, we write a new one. And it doesn't mean you throw the other one away.

Right?

I keep it on the website, but we want to find one that's higher converting too and make that the feature lead. Okay. So anyway, I just wanted to share the retargeting because I feel like this is a point I really want to drive home with people. This actually leverages everything else that you're doing in a super powerful way and is so important and most people don't do it. So Next on step 4 on growing your list. And I call these fundamentals because they're obvious. But you know, common sense isn't always common practice. Right? So you want to make sure that you are promoting your lead magnets on your social media channels and you want to do that often. We will say, I just posted that two days ago, only organically. If you're lucky, 2 to 5% of your organic audience sees any of your posts. So chances are the person who saw it the other day isn't going to be the same person who sees it today. So you want to share your lead magnets often and take people right to the page where they can go and get it. That's how you add people to your list through social media and then you can also leverage social media ads if you have a really high value lead magnet like my nine mistakes people make on a website that probably wouldn't convert well on a social media ad because there's just not enough value on that. But the 67 point SEO checklist on the other hand, that would convert really well with an ad. So if you're going to invest money in ads to drive people to download your lead magnets and add to your list, then you want to make sure it's a super high value lead magnet for that investment. And then the next one is produce content. And a lot of content. Valuable content is like blog posts, videos, webinars that solve problems like this, a webinar on how to grow your marketing list. So this is a webinar, this is highly valuable content. Not a ton of people on the call. The people on the call though are the people that I want on the call. But then what happens is we take this content and then we leverage it and do a lot of other things with it. So you want to produce a lot of valuable content. You want to be consistent about it. So companies that create new content regularly generate 67% more leads. And that was a study done by HubSpot. You can do guest blogging and collaborations. Katie, I put this on there specifically for you. And Jay, this actually could apply to you too. So there's a lot of websites out there for veterans. You could guest blog or do a collaboration with one of these other veteran oriented groups where write a super valuable blog, share it with them. They put it in their. You guest post in their blog and you have a link to your lead magnet. Jay, you could work with who? There was a guy, his name's escaped to me. He was on one of these marketing calls and YouTube connected. There's people in your industry where you're not competitive, you're synergistic, you service the same clients, you guys could collaborate and leverage each other's lists. So that's what I mean by guest blogging or collaborations. And then leveraging your content refers to what I just described. So right now I'm recording this webinar, we're doing some instruction, we're doing Q and A. It's a valuable topic for business owners. And now we can take this content and easily create 75 social media posts with the content in this based on just the stats that are in it, the tips that are in it, the examples that are in it. We can upload and promote this on YouTube, which we will, which will link back to all the lead magnets that I showed you, only not to the direct one that I gave you, but to the landing page where they have to give us their email address. We can transcribe this and turn it into a blog post and then we can link all that stuff to the resource I'm going to give you at the end of this, which is the ultimate list building Checklist, which has 65 different ideas on how to grow your list. So that's how creating content and then repurposing it for a lot of other things, leveraging the time. So I'm going to put an hour into this webinar. I'm leveraging that hour and turning it into potentially a super valuable piece of content that will help us grow our list even more. And then I got a couple of advanced ideas on how to grow your list. So this is a tool that we have called Smart Visitor id. And this is good for business to business companies, less so for business to consumer, but for business to business, this is a piece of code that we install on the back of the website. So we have it on our own website. And so we can actually see the companies that are coming to our website. We can get all kinds of information from them. Now what we can't do is add them to our list because of the I or the can spam law laws. But what we can do with the information is do one to one outreach and get them onto our list. So I'm just going to show you, I'm going to bring up my email really quick to show you what that looks like in email. Okay. So you can see I've got a new need. That's not what I want to see though. I have a folder called Good News. So these are companies that you can see the timestamp. This is just this morning. These are all companies that were on our website. So let's see, I'll use FaithWire. So FaithFire was on our website as a result of Facebook.

And I can.

See what they looked at. But let me show you a better one. Golf lodge at the quarry. So they were on our website. This was again as a result of Facebook tells me the company description gives me their domain name. So this is designed by Hurston and Fry. They design exceptional golf course experiences and I can see what they looked at. I still want to get one that has the contact info. One second. It depends on what's being shared. So look at this one. So I actually have all the contacts from this company. So this company is in Somerset, Kentucky Century 21 Advantage Realty. So somebody from this company was on my website and I can see what they looked at and where they came from. So with this information I can do one to one outreach. It freaks them out a little bit, but I could send them an email and say, hey, saw you were on the left site. You know, da da da da. But let me show you what we actually do with it because we do leverage this information. We use a program called Instantly to set up automated outreach to these people. So what we do with all of these emails come back to here, we can log into the platform, export the contacts and then what we do is we pull them into instantly and instantly has we created automations. And instantly then that does cold outreach. One on one. They're not in a list, just one on one. And then come over here, I have it open, I'm going to show you campaigns.

So if they're cold emailed and not in a list, when do they pull over to a list?

So you, what you do is you entice them to opt in. It's one on one emails, right? So I'm not breaking any rules. I know that they've been to my website so I've imported them into here and I've got an automation now that sends them one on one emails. So here's the first one. We noticed you dropped by our website recently and we couldn't be happier. Thought you might like this free checklist. So I give them, I just immediately hit them up with value. I'm like here's the 67 point SEO checklist. Oh by the way, I've got these free trainings. So that's the first email and then I sent them another one. Here's another free. Hope you found that one useful. Here's another one, another free thing. How to get your business in the three pack. Okay, this is news. Google did a massive core update and then the next one is boost your website's ranking. Boost your website's ranking content strategies to help your site rank better. So it's just constant value. So they're getting these emails and then I'll show you on the screen here.

Is this an add on to your services you provide your clients?

Yeah. Yep. So now you can see we've sent, and this is since March we've sent 26,000 emails. We have almost a 30% open rate and these are, for lack of a better term, told us emails. And then we've got a almost 3% click rate. Why is the click rate important? Because the click rate Takes them to our website where they have opportunities to opt in. That means they've clicked through the email, takes them to a lead magnet. They opt into the lead magnet and our ads start following them around the Internet after that. You see how that works? Does that make sense, Katie? Okay, which, what part's missing? Where's the gap?

So you can cold email them one on one and you don't break any opt out rules, right?

Correct.

So then you use this instantly thing and follow up with them one on one, shoot them to and try and get them to opt in through a lead magnet.

Yes.

And then you follow them around or do you follow them around before they lead magnet?

They're two different things. So they go to the website and as soon as they go to the website, I'm following them around.

So you're retargeting people that visit your website.

Retargeting people that visit the website. Okay, the list is the ultimate goal, Right. Now we know they've been to the website. The retargeting drives them back to the website. And the list is the ultimate goal because the list is your ultimate goal. Okay, yeah, that's the ultimate goal because I own the audience and I can nurture them into a longer term relationship. Make sense?

Yeah, it's huge. Yeah.

Okay, so as you build your list, right, so we've got some strategies, some basics, and a few advanced things on how to grow the list. So what you want to make sure you do as you're growing your list is that you segment your audience. So that's where I described Jay as an example. You have been involved in our AI webinars and you're also on the client list. So when I send an email just to overall clear clients, that list, that's about a 30% open rate. When I send the emails about AI to my segmented list of people who I know are interested in AI, that's like a 65% open rate. When you segment your lists, you are talking to the people about things you know that they're interested in. So segmenting your list makes it super powerful. And then the other thing is you want to make sure that you're using your list. So I have, I've talked to a lot of clients over the years and they'll say, yeah, I've got a list, but I don't send stuff to them very often. Maybe once a quarter, if that. So the list sits idle, which is bad in so many ways. Number one, you're losing out on revenue because the money's in your list, but you're also letting the list essentially age. People lose interest, they forget. So when you just out of the blue send them an email now, all of a sudden it's just a piece of spam. It's not part of their business function. And they're like daily interest. So you want to make sure you're sending emails at least once a week, but three times even some people say five. I'm good at three, but at least once a week. So you want to make sure you're using your list and you want to make sure that you're nurturing the list with value. So they've opted in and they're not. They didn't opt in to be sold to. They opted in to learn. They opted in because they wanted updates on whatever it is about your product. If it's a retail thing, which I don't really have any retail people on this call, but if it's a retail thing, I've opted in because I like that brand and I like their products. It's like I opted into Nike, I opt into Eddie Bauer Title 9. Those are products that I really like. And I like to be informed when there's new products and when there's sales. So I chose to get those. I don't see those as spam. People who opt into our email list from our website are interested in growing their business and so they want stuff about how to market their business better, so they've opted in. It is not spam, it's education. Always send emails more than you're comfortable doing. Most people are very uncomfortable sending a lot of emails because they don't like to get spam. But this is not spam. This is all opt in. And the rule of thumb is on these emails is that you provide 10 times the value toward a single ask. So 10 times emails value learning, then you've given enough value, then you're in a good place to make the ask. The right kind of value will also naturally lead to sales without having to ask. Katie and Jay, perfect example. I am not selling to you right now. I'm educating you. But you both said, is this part of the service that you offer? So do. Is there a potential that this webinar could convert into sales for msw? Absolutely. On this call now, but then this is going to be in a replay on the web and people are going to watch it and they're going to have the same thoughts and the same questions. So absolutely this will lead to sales down the road, whether or not it's you, it'll be someone else. So you can see where, when you're educating and offering the value that just naturally lends itself to if you do the stuff that you're teaching. And then also don't worry about the unsubscribes this early on I'm in The business now 25 years, but early on it was, God, somebody would unsubscribe and I'm like, do you know how much time I put into that darn email? Why are you unsubscribing? It used to really tick me off. But they're actually doing you a favor because your email deliverability is calculated by your open rates, spam reports, all that stuff. So if, if someone's up to unsubscribing from your list, they're doing you a favor because they're not reporting it as spam. You're not their people. So if somebody's unsubscribing because they don't want your emails, your open rates are going to go higher percentage wise, which helps your deliverability. And the chances of you being reported as spam by someone who's irritated by your emails goes down drastically. So when someone unsubscribes, just say yeah, that's, they're not my people and that's good, thank you and just move on. Okay, so I'm just going to wrap up really quick so some key points. So beyond serving your clients and your team, your number one activity should be working on growing your list because it's an owned audience, it's a buying audience, an interested audience, an opt in audience, and the money's in your list. You want to drive all your marketing activities to things that grow and nurture your list. That's through website optimization, social media, content marketing, retargeting email and and I'm going to give you a list of other methods and think of your list like an investment account. So you just keep adding to adding to, adding to and it grows value in your business. Then use your list more often than you are comfortable doing. So next steps, I will send you a copy of this presentation, but think about committing to at least one action that we talked about today, that's that would get you closer toward working to grow your list. And then I'm going to put this in the chat. This is my ultimate list building checklist, which is a lead magnet. But I already have your emails so I'm just going to give it to you directly chat and I'm going to bring it up and show you it so you can see what is in here. So this is a list of all kinds of things to do to grow your list. And I gave it an ease rating of 1 through 5. So 1 is the easiest. So check check marks over here as you do them. Here's a space for notes. So if you print this out. And I broke it into website, social media content, email, offline methods, advanced strategies, and cold outreach. So you can print out this list and, you know, just work through it step by step on things to help you grow your list. So I'm going to stop sharing my screen. That is all I've got. If you want to set up a strategy call to talk about some of these things in depth for your business specifically, you can do that or you can call the office and Cheryl can get you set up on my calendar. Whatever is easier. And I'm going to stop sharing and we'll move into Q and A answering questions. You guys have.

Who do I call?

Cheryl. Raise your hand. Cheryl.

Okay.

Yeah. So if you call the business line, Jay, she can set you up on my calendar and I can get on the call and we can walk through. For the launch of your website, you actually get a magnet with the website design. So we will talk about a strategy for that and some ideas around topics.

I had a couple questions. One was I threw a graphic into the chat and that's. That's my lead magnet for one of my pages. But I saw your. When you showed all your lead magnets, you had five of them and they were real. Lots of extra graphics and pictures and feelings. Can mine be. It seems pretty basic. Is that a. Yeah.

So the fact that you have one is really good. So exclusive offers and updates is good. Are you sending exclusive offers and updates?

Not yet.

Okay, so that's a problem. You want to make sure that if someone opts in, they do get an.

Automatic email right away. As soon as they do that through mailchimp.

Does it have. Is it just a thank you for subscribing or is it a here's an exclusive offer?

Yeah. Thank you for subscribing. We're not going to bombard you with emails, but when there's something new and exciting, we'll be sure to. You're the first to know. Okay, so I don't have 14 people opted in. That's it for all these 14 people.

14 people.

Yeah, I know. So we're starting. We gotta start.

Yeah.

But I'm confused with mailchimp to begin with because you've got audiences before you've Got segments and then you got tags. So I'm confused on if I want separate audiences or if I want one audience with separate segments.

For you. Because you've got people who get the magazine for the offers and discounts, Right? That's one audience. And then you have people who advertise in your publication, business owners, that's your second audience. So you have two audiences.

Okay, that's how I have it set up. Two audiences.

Two audiences, yeah. And then use tags to segment them.

Consumers and advertisers.

Okay, yeah, you can do that. Consumers and advertisers. But then on the consumer side you can even break that audience down more with tags because a person have multiple tags. Okay. So if you happen to know age as an example, a 28 year old veteran is going to have a whole different interest level in various things than a 65 year old veteran as an example. So if you have a mechanism when you're having people subscribe to get their age, you can break it down like that. So you can target different promotions and things that you have based on age.

I can add a few more dropdowns in my lead magnet.

You can? Yeah.

Okay, now did you just say I have two apps, two audiences, but no, I don't have to worry about segments so much.

Yeah, so you have two audiences and then your segments are going to be broken in using tags.

Yeah.

Okay, so you've got the whole consumer audience. And then some consumers will have the 1835 tag and some consumers will have the 36 to 80 tag.

And in my advertiser's audience, I'm going to have potential clients. I'm going to have current clients.

Yep.

Okay.

Yeah. And then when you send an email, you can send to the audience based on the tags that they have.

Okay, so can you, can you tag things when they come in? When. Okay, so that's an okay.

Yeah, yeah.

So the difference in what you have and what's on our website is. And at the time when you guys first started going, we took the lead magnet off of your contract because you guys wanted to stay a little bit lower. So we just used the mailchimp embed.

Okay, so this is just a mailchimp plugin.

Yeah, it's just the embed inside mailchimp. But you can go in there and you can create and add different drop downs in your mailchimp that we would just have to change up the code on the website to the news.

Okay, so.

So that's the difference that what you have right now won't let them Download something and automatically go in. It just lets them subscribe.

Okay.

But if you guys want to add that back on at any time as you guys grow, we can always add that on and Sandy can write something up for you.

Okay.

I'll just show you a quick example of one that I'm working on right now. I'm finishing it up. So this is a client, Mary Lou Stone. Katie, right?

Yep.

Yeah. So we did a couple lead magnets for her, and they are just not converting. And I. I said the audience decides what is good for them and what isn't. So what it. What we're doing now is we're writing a new one. So this is the new one. So I actually wrote it in Word and sent it to them. And now what I'm doing, it's approved. We've made some changes to it, and now it is where tabs open. Oh, here. Here it is. So now I'm taking that Word document and building a visual lead magnet about explosive growth at Lake of the Ozark. So you can see.

That's a lead magnet.

Yeah, that's a lead magnet. It's five pages. It's longer than that.

Yeah. Longer than that.

Yeah. It's longer than that. Yeah. It's 20 pages.

Are you doing each one of those separately or is that one big lead magnet?

This is one big lead magnet. I'm just showing you that as an example of. You have to have this kind of value to. You can see I'm not done with it, so I'm done. I've gotten through sections.

Okay.

Build it.

Value to your lead magnet.

Yeah, it has to have value or people aren't going to download it. They don't. Nobody wants to give you their email address unless they're going to get something that they perceive as value and you want to make it visual. And then we'll use these visuals.

Oh, I get it. Okay. Give us your email address and we'll give you a free booklet on blah, blah, blah. You can download.

I got it. Projects going on at the lake. Okay.

Okay. Okay.

Okay.

So that's just another type of lead magnet. It's not just put your email in to. Okay. For this or that or the other. Okay.

Like my AI webinar and these webinars on our website. You can sign up. Anybody can sign up, but it's a lead magnet. Like, you have to register to come. So clients register, but also other people who aren't clients register. So I have two people who aren't clients. The ones that I was expecting registered of course they didn't show, but that's okay. I have their email address and now I can say, hey, John, missed you on the thing today. Here's a link to the replay of the webinar. You'll probably find it really valuable and.

You can do it on your own time.

Okay, makes sense.

Since this is a marketing Q and A, I have two other questions that are not related to growing your lists necessarily.

That's fine.

Is that okay for now or should I come back?

Okay.

The first one is regarding our Facebook posts that Jeff is handling our social media every day. What he does in this is also to optimize our SEO and to bring more people to our website is every day we advertise for one of our advertisers in the post.

What?

We tag the business, but then we also put in a link to their page on our online directory. That link will not work on our initial post when we go to post. So he does the whole post without the link and then he has to wait a few minutes and then he has to go back in and edit the post and add that link to our veteran discount guide. Slash this and it's their page on Facebook. Most of the time it swallows, sometimes it doesn't, and it's just been odd. Is there any tips for that? That's our first. First question.

Deanna, jump in here. That the link should work. You shouldn't have to go back and do it. But have you ever experienced that, Deanna, when on your real time posts, does it pay?

Did you say it's like within the text in the post you write the link and it doesn't link?

Right. We post a photo and we write a post that tags the business. And then at the end of that text that we tied, we add the link to find them on our website. Find the business on our website, because we have a directory of them with all their contact information and then they can go through our website to the client's website.

Do you copy and paste the direct link when you're on that page? Yeah, I haven't had that happen.

No.

Like, usually I've had trouble with tagging other pages, having to go and edit later to make the tag stick. But the URLs so far popped up for me.

Yeah.

Okay.

Is it just not turning blue or.

Have you guys actually hit spins and spins sometimes? Like today? Some. A few times a week.

Right, babe? Yeah, every day.

Oh, every day. He has to do it without the link. First go in and edit the post, add the link and then one time out of two times out of 10, it just never takes it or it takes forever. It's just odd. Is it because our URL is so long? Because that really doesn't make sense to me.

It shouldn't matter.

Okay.

Because when you load in a leak, it tries to pull in a preview of that link. Are you putting the picture in.

For that reason? Yeah.

Yeah, I've never had that happen.

One thing, though, is so Facebook, I.

Might try it on mine and just tag you guys and see if it works.

It happens.

Yeah. But we can play with it possibly.

In your settings in the Meta business suite. I don't.

I.

Maybe there's a setting that accidentally got clicked. They add new stuff so often.

Okay.

What you might try, Katie, though, too, is posts that have links in them don't get as much organic visibility. Okay. So what you might do instead.

Let's not do that. Put that in a comment.

Put the link in a comment, and even just say link in comments, and then put the link in the comments.

Link in comments. I like it. Yeah, great idea. Second question. We're thinking about doing an Instagram page for the business. So we're just getting started with that because we don't really do Instagram.

One of the reasons we are is because they give you a checklist for Facebook of all the things you're supposed to do, your hours, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. And the last thing of the 10, I think there's 10 steps, the last one is start doing Instagram. And I'm curious, can I do the same post for Instagram or Facebook as Instagram, or do I have to do a separate content for the two platforms?

You can do the same. Yeah, you can do the same. Can anyone talk to them about the image sizes? Is it significant in your mind doing different image sizes or.

No, I think it's personal preference on what you'd like. But Instagram's. If you're bigger than a square, it'll show up in your feed the size it is. But when you go to your page, all those little thumbnails, it only shows that center square. So sometimes important stuff gets cut off. And if people don't click on it, they're not going to see the side stuff. Also, just know that in Instagram, you cannot put a link in the text.

Okay.

They only let you put a link in your description. There's a site called Later, I believe, or later.com that lets you make your Instagram link a later link. And on that page, you can link individual posts, but that's something different. You have to keep up with it. Makes it simpler if you're willing to keep up with it, I guess.

Since we're talking about this. Is Instagram business friendly or is it more of a personal thing? Facebook has been something I've been using since the beginning. But is Instagram something that we need to bring more clients in, get more clicks? Do you see it as important or is it just something that I want to show my new hairstyle, stuff like that, my vacation pictures.

Demographically.

Sorry?

Yeah, I say demographically. Instagram is getting older, so. Yeah. Yeah.

Okay. So it's something we need to do.

Yeah.

Okay.

And if. And we can set that up in Meta to post directly over, we can link the. Okay. Yeah, okay. Okay, thank you.

I would set up a LinkedIn for you. I would set up a LinkedIn too, and then hook up with some veteran people on there.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Okay.

And again, you can post the exact same post. You don't have to.

Yeah, all three social media outlets. I can use the same post. So once I come up with a post, I can just basically just share it over to the other two platforms.

Yep.

Yeah.

Okay.

Yeah, all different audiences.

Fantastic.

Thank you.

Yeah, you're welcome. Jay, do you have any other questions before we wrap up? Okay, guys, thanks for coming on. I really appreciate your time. And we'll see you first Wednesday in July. I don't. That might actually be 4th of July, so I'll follow up with a date change on that one. I don't think we want to do that on the 4th of July. All right, guys, thank you so much.

Thank you.

Reach out to Cheryl on our business line. She can get you. Call with me. Okay.

All right, thanks.

Bye.