How To START An Email List From SCRATCH [For FREE]

Email lists, they seem like this mystical thing, right? Well, in this video, I'm going to show you exactly how to start an email list and all the tips, secrets and strategies I have for growing an email list for absolutely free. Recently I posted on my community tab here on YouTube.

Yeah, if you aren't subscribed to my.

Channel yet, make sure you go over there and check that community tab out, because I'm asking you what you really want to see from me on this channel. And like I said that poll, I asked if you wanted to see a video on how to start an email list. The results were totally clear, with 83% of you saying, heck yes. So that's why this video is coming at you today. So if you're ready, hit that like button and let's dig in. So you probably know that having an email list is pretty critical to growing your income and making more money in your business or on your YouTube channel. Because when you just set up shop here on YouTube or on Instagram or on Facebook, you don't actually own your followers. So when you have an email list, you have a tangible, like in your hand, technically list of people you can reach out to at any time. So if Instagram were to go down or disappear, it won't. But if it were, or Facebook were to disappear, you could still reach your followers, you could still reach your fans by having this email list. In addition to having that list, you will also have a place to reach out to them, to connect with them deeper on a more personal level. Because we really think of our email as kind of a personal thing and we don't just give it out to anybody.

Right.

So it's an extra step for you to start building that community that's always going to show up, watch your videos when you post them, or want to buy any kind of product service that you're going to offer. But how are you going to convince them to get on your list? So first, first we're going to talk about how to convince them to get on your list. Then I'm going to show you ConvertKit, which is the email service provider that I recommend. And I'm going to show you a little tutorial behind the scenes on how to get started. Because with ConvertKit, not only can you start collecting email addresses, but you don't even need a website to start doing this. So this is the absolutely free way to start an email list. Right now, the first thing you need to understand about building an email list, getting started with an email list, is people aren't just going to hand over their email to you. They don't want to sign up for another newsletter or another email list. You need to give them something valuable so that they in return give you their email. This is what is called an opt in, a freebie, a lead magnet. And that is how you are going to actually get people on your list. Without these things, it's going to be really hard to get anybody to hand over their email address. So what are some examples of these lead magnets that you can create? Me, for example, I have the video strategy starter kit is just a simple worksheet that I created inside of Canva, which I'm going to show you here in a minute. A tutorial on how you can do that too. Ashlyn writes has a free workbook on how to find your brand voice. So she knows her audience is struggling with that and she puts all the questions that she would ask you to help you figure out your brand voice and a free workbook. Megan Minns also does a free workbook where she helps you set goals. So if you're struggling with getting goals set, she walks you through her entire process in a free workbook. And finally, Vanessa Kinds has a free Pinterest startup guide. So if you're trying to figure out how to start on Pinterest, this guide is going to walk you through all the things you need to know to get started and Vanessa hands it over to you for free if you just give her your email address. What these opt ins also do is it primes people to get ready to want to buy or hire these people too. Megan talks a lot about goal setting and has a coaching program on goal setting. So if people go through her workbook and really like that free thing, they're gonna be super excited to hire her for coaching. Vanessa also has a Pinterest course, so if you try her free stuff and you really love how it's set up and you see results just from free stuff, it's going to be much more easier for you to convert that person into an actually paying course. I would actually love to hear from you. If you have a freebie or a lead magnet or an opt in list, let me know what yours is down below. I don't think YouTube lets you put the link, so let me just know what the title of your freebie is. And if you don't even have one created yet, you're probably wondering, how do I even make this? Don't worry, we're going to jump over to my computer here and I'm going To show you exactly how to create one of these inside of a program called Canva, which you can get started with for free.

So you're going to go to canva.com and set up a free account because you can do this for free. Then what's super easy to do is you can come up here to search design templates and more. So let's say you want a worksheet and you let Canva template it. You can go here and see all the different worksheets that they already have created for you that you can change out, you can switch, you can add your brand colors. Maybe you want a checklist. So type in checklist, you can see what templates they have here. Again, they're already done for you. These templates are already done. All you do is you come in here, you click on it, then you can start changing all of this to say be, do whatever it is you want it to do. You can change the color. So you click on this, you come up here, pick whatever colors that you want, highlight the font, change the font to whatever font that you want. It's so super easy. Canva makes it, you know, just simple to create these PDFs in literally 15 minutes.

Now maybe you're wondering how many of these should I actually create? Should I create more than one freebie? I'm going to tell you right now, just get started with one. One is going to help you grow your email list. You don't need to create a new one for every single video that you publish or every single blog post that you publish. One will work for, right? Once you have this, then how do you start getting these emails? You're going to need an email service provider and I don't mean like Google or Hotmail, if people actually use that. Still you want something like ConvertKit. There are other options out there like Mailchimp and AWeber, but I'm going to show you how to get started on ConvertKit. Now I waited a long time to talk about ConvertKit because they were always a paid for provider. But recently they're offering a free option for your first 500 email subscribers. And it may take you a little bit of time to get to that first 500 email subscribers. So ConvertKit is absolutely going to work for you, especially if you're just getting started. And it's so amazing that it's free now. I've been using ConvertKit for over 5 years now in my business. And what I love about this is you don't even need a website to get started so this is literally absolutely free. You can get started with an email list. You can create an actual landing page that looks like a website through ConvertKit. I'm going to show you all this here in a second in a tutorial. But what you do is you go into ConvertKit, you set up a landing page. That's where you will send people to to enter their email address. And then once they' enter their email address, ConvertKit is going to automatically send out that opt in and it's going to collect your emails inside of that system, which you can always download and keep your own records of. So let me show you what that looks like and how you can quickly, quickly get started in ConvertKit.

So once you sign up for ConvertKit, first thing you're going to do is you're going to come to landing page and forms. Okay? Then you're going to come down here and create new and again, just as simple as Canva was. ConvertKit makes things super simple. They already have landing pages, landing pages and forms done for you. So you'll come here to the landing page again. You can pick anything that you want. Do you have a video that you want to promote? Do you have an ebook that you want to promote? Do you have a newsletter that you want to promote? So all you do is you grab one. Let's say we are going to pick this, then what you do is you go ahead and change this all up to your name, your freebie, all of that stuff. What's really important here, once you get this set up, you need to add the attachment so that it automatically sends out. So the way to do that is you're going to come to this little email button right here.

You are going to go to this.

Download button and you are going to choose the file that will be sent to them after that. Then you need to edit your email content too. So you're going to come up here, you're going to edit your email content and you're going to say something like important. Download your free ebook or your free checklist and then you're going to thank them. I think it's really important for you to have down here like a quick little snippet about you like, hi, I am Trina. I help business owners xyz. I really want to help you be.

Able to use video a lot easier in your business.

If you have any questions about this, don't hesitate to reach out, you know, something more personal. Make it feel like a personal email. You can also, since they'll click this to download you can just click on that and say, download your ebook here. They'll click on it and there it is. So it's as super simple as that, getting that set up. And then when you save it, you're gonna come up to the share button, you're gonna copy this link and then all you need to do is share it. So we pop it here and it will show up. Obviously we didn't go through all of this, but it shows up. If you don't have a website yet, you could do a Bitly link. So if you go to bitly.com you can come in here and create a quick little Bitly link. So you can come to Bitly and take a long link like that, post it in here and it will create a short link for you. You can also customize it if you want, but that just makes it look a little bit cleaner if you want to. Okay, let's say you have a blog and you want to start getting people to sign up on your email list directly from your blog. So what you're going to do is you're, you're going to come back to.

ConvertKit, you want to go to this.

Embed button right up here and you want to grab the HTML coding. Now I'm using Squarespace. I don't have a lot of experience with WordPress, so this is how I do it on Squarespace. I'm going to grab that HTML, I'm going to copy it. When I come over to my blog post. Let's say we want to pop it in right here. I am going to go ahead and insert code and pop that in. We are going to delete this and we're going to paste that code in. We're going to hit apply and you will see that will pop in right there. So they can put their email address and their name right in here and click Send me the guide without even.

Needing to leave your website.

One last little secret hack that I want to show you is let's say you have that lead magnet on ConvertKit. You know, it's this really long link. So we're going to take this link and the way you're going to redirect your website to that link is you're going to go to pages, you're going to do a not linked page and let's just make this blank. You're going to say freebie or name it, whatever you want. We're going to just put freebie too for right now so I know what that is on my website. Then you're going to come to the settings and you'll want to disable this page. Okay. Remember this URL slug. Okay. Freebie too. So once the page is disabled then we are going to come back here. We are going to go to settings, we are going to go to advanced, we are going to then go to URL mappings and you'll see how I have things all redirected right here. So all you'll do to redirect it is go to forward slash freebie 2 All right, then a dash and a greater than sign and you're going to pop in that link. Then most importantly you need to do a forward slash 301 then we hit save right? And if we go in here to trinalittle.com freebie to take me directly to that page and that's how you can make your links look pretty from your website as well.

Now if you really want to go the extra step, you can have multiple opt ins and then you can start using ConvertKit segments and tags to really start to put people down specific path. Let's say you're a business coach and you teach people on email list, Pinterest and YouTube.

If you have three different opt ins.

On all three of these different topics, you're obviously going to talk to each segment a little bit differently. You're going to talk to the Pinterest people who are interested in Pinterest more about Pinterest stuff. You're not going to want to throw YouTube stuff into that segment, right? So this is really going to help you give the right information to the right people to help you convert more sales or get more clients that way. But like I said earlier, you can absolutely just get started with one opt in and then you can start figuring out those other opt ins and segmenting later. This is what I did and it totally is. Okay. Now you have this email list and you're probably wondering what do I even do with these people that I'm collecting their emails, Trina? Do I have to email them every single week? Don't worry, I'm going to tell you exactly how we use our email list. Just start sending them weekly emails that promote your YouTube video or promote your blog post or maybe you have an Instagram TV series. So every Wednesday at 11am Eastern Standard Time, my video goes live here on YouTube and about five minutes later I send my email list a quick little check in a brief little description of what they're going to learn on that video and why they need to go watch it. And then I send them to my YouTube video. You could send them to your blog post, you could send them a link to your Instagram TV episode. But this is just going to help you start building that relationship with people. They start to see you're sending them weekly content to help them. And so when the time comes that you want to sell your new course or you're open for services, these people know you've given them a boatload of free informational content that has helped them. So that when you drop a request to buy something, it's going to be a lot more easier for you to convert them into that product. Okay, cool. Trina, I know how I'm going to make my opt in. I know how I'm going to set up my email list. I know potentially what I'm going to send them every single week. But how do I let people know about this freebie to get more people into my email list? Well, my friend, it's time to promote that sucker. So one way is here on YouTube and if you watch my YouTube videos, you know that I suggest promoting a freebie or an opt in, something that takes people off of the YouTube platform about 50% or 20% of the time. Meaning if you're posting one video a week for four weeks, in a month, you want to do an opt in promotion once that month or maybe every other week. Because we need to keep YouTube happy and keep people watching content. But as a business owner, we also need to grow our email list.

So that's how we're going to start.

To balance how we're going to promote our opt in here on YouTube and how you're going to promote it here on your YouTube channel is you're always going to have it done in your description box. So you can upload your defaults, your upload defaults, and leave that link down there. And then in those videos where you're promoting it, you're going to have a verbal call to action in your video to get your free script template or your free checklist and you're going to tell them exactly how to get to it. You're going to say, go down in the link in the description box, click on that link, just pop your email address in and I'll send that free checklist to your email. And remember, you're going to do that about once or twice a month here on YouTube. You can also put this on your blog post. So ConvertKit allows you to just embed pretty little buttons right on your website so people can just type their email address in right on your website and you can send them that often and now you have their email address. You can also add it in your about section here on YouTube so that it pops up on your channel homepage right in the corner of your links.

If you want to promote your free here on your YouTube homepage like this Roadmap to launch a channel, what you're going to do is go to your about section and scroll on down here to links. Okay, you'll need to make sure that this blue button is clicked. Customize channel. That gives you the editing option. Then, then you can come down here to these links and this little pencil will show up. Click on the pencil and if you want it to show up along like this, it's got to be the first link. So you're gonna pop in your link and you're gonna type in what you want wanted to say. So roadmap to launch a channel. Roadmap to launch a channel. And right there it is. Once you hit done, it will be Clickable from your YouTube homepage.

You also can talk about it on Instagram and add the link to your opt in in your Instagram profile. You can also create pins on Pinterest to send people directly to that free opt in. So there are a lot of ways you can start promoting this, but the key is you have to do the promotion. You have to let people know that you have this freebie available to actually get people on your list. If you want to try convert Key kit free, I have a link for you down below. It is an affiliate link, but it's going to get you started right now for free for up to the first 500 email subscribers. And again, this is all for free. Once you have your email list set up, watch this video on your screen right now where I'm going to give you five ideas for products that you can start selling to your email list. So click that video and I'll see you over there.