Building an email list is
absolutely non-negotiable
if you're an online business owner. The best time to start
building your email list is yesterday. But the second best time
is today. Right now. If you're not excited
about starting a list, either because you think it's going
to take way too much time or effort or you're not really sure what to actually
write in those emails, get excited, because your email list is going to be
the most profitable tool that you have in your marketing tool belt. Let's talk about how you can quickly set
up your email list for free and how you can begin adding value to your audience
so that you can build up a base of ideal customers who actually want to receive
your emails and will happily pay for your offers. Hey there, I'm Rachel Harrison-Sund and I help online
entrepreneurs make more money so they can live more life. If that is you, please subscribe and don't
forget to hit the bell. That way you're going to be notified
every time I put out one of these videos, every Monday. In this video I'm
going to touch on four key points: why you should start an email
list, how to start your email list, how to attract your ideal
customers to your list, and then how to use that list effectively. Let's talk about why you should start
an email list in the first place. The purpose of an email list is to
help you build a base of your ideal customers. You can have the greatest offer in the
world but if no one knows about it, obviously you're not going
to make any sales. Sure, you can make sales through ads, but people are more likely to buy from
someone that they know like and trust rather than just some random unfamiliar
person or brand that they've seen an ad while they're surfing the net. People
on your list are there for a reason. They actually want to
hear from you. Conversely, most people are not interested in the ads
that are shoved down their throats all day long. If you build
your email list correctly, almost everyone on that list is
going to be a qualified lead; an ideal customer who is acutely
interested in what you have to offer. An email list is also going to help
you form a relationship with your ideal customer. As I mentioned a moment ago, your ideal customers are more likely
to buy from someone they know, like, and trust. Having their email address allows you
to bolster all three of those factors by regularly providing value and having
direct conversations with them. If you have a large social media following
you might not think you need a list, but having that list is far more
valuable than having a large social media following, even if you've
got a bazillion followers. You don't own your social media followers. You could have an audience of like 12
gajillion people on Instagram or Facebook on any other platform, but if that platform was to shut down
tomorrow or undergo some major change, you would have no way to
reconnect with that audience. Now let's look at how
to start an email list. You're going to need three basic things: something of value to offer for free
to your ideal customers in exchange for their email address (AKA a
freebie, a lead magnet, an opt-in); you're going to need a landing
page to host your freebie; and an email marketing service. When
creating a freebie, make sure it is juicy. It should solve a problem or
satisfy a desire; otherwise, it's not really going to be any incentive
to hand over their email address. We all receive thousands of emails a day. Most of us aren't really keen
to receive even one more, especially from internet strangers, so if your offer's not juicy enough
you're probably not going to get very many bites. Some types of freebies you
could create include a PDF guide, a cheat sheet, a resource list, an audio
or video file, or even a mini-course. Basically you just want to think about
what your ideal customer wants and needs right now, and then create something
that's going to have them thinking, "Wow, I can't believe I just got this for free!" You don't need any fancy design
software to create your freebie. You can type up the text in a
Word document or a Google Doc. You can just use the available formatting
options within those programs and insert some relevant imagery, and then
you just download the file as a PDF. You can create the cover in Word as well, or you can create that in a Google Doc
or you can create it in Canva for free as well. Not only will this
freebie build your list, it's also going to build trust with
your ideal customers and help position yourself as an authority in your space, which is going to be crucial when
it comes time to present your offer. Once your freebie is finished, you're going to need a landing page to
host it so that you can collect email addresses on autopilot rather than
instructing people to email you directly. You don't want to be spending half of
your day emailing freebies to people. You can create a really simple landing
page on your own website or you can choose a landing page builder
like Leadpages or ConvertKit. You can also do this on MailChimp, which
is also an email marketing service, which is what you're going to need next
to actually start storing all of those email addresses that
you're about to collect. It's a great all-in-one option to get
your email list up and running for free. Other email marketing services
include Constant Contact, AWeber, GetResponse, Flodesk, ConvertKit. There are a ton of others
out there, but again, MailChimp--probably your best bet for
a free-to-start option that gives you, I think, up to about 2000 sends per day, which is more than ample for
anyone that's just starting out. Once your freebie is ready to go and
you've connected your landing page to your email marketing provider, you're ready to start driving
traffic to your landing page. You're going to need to take a little
bit of action to do this because people aren't just going to find your
landing page on their own. If you already have a website, one way to get people to your landing
page is by linking to it from your website--either on your
sidebar, you can have a popup, you can put it somewhere in
the middle of your homepage. The absolute best way that I've found
to attract people to my email list is by creating valuable content that
then links to my landing page. This is called content marketing, and essentially you're going to want to
create consistent weekly free content on the platform of your choice and then
link to your freebie from that content. My preferred platform is YouTube. I post new videos every single week and
I always invite viewers to download my free guide. I've generated like
30,000 email addresses doing this, resulting in a current list size
about 17,000 active email subscribers. Of course, just because I prefer YouTube doesn't
mean you have to choose YouTube. You can post your content on
a blog. You can do a podcast. You can even post content on social media, just as long as you are driving traffic
to that landing page to download that freebie in exchange for their address. The main thing is to just make sure that
your freebie is actually relevant to the content that you're
linking from. For example, if your freebie is "How to Learn Classical
Guitar in 10 Minutes a Day," don't offer it at the end of a blog
post about health supplements. Another thing--you can actually create
multiple freebies if it makes sense for the type of content that
you're going to be creating. I actually have two different freebies
and I kind of alternate through them depending on the content
that I am posting that day. If I'm talking about
low-content publishing, I'm linking to my "3 Steps to Publishing
Your First Low-Content Book in Less Than a Day" guide. If I'm talking
more about online business in general, then I'm going to link to my "4-Step 'No
Time to Waste' Online Business Startup Blueprint." My guides are
always such a mouthful to say. Cool thing about that is that I can
then, in my email service provider, segment my audience according to
which guide they actually downloaded, and then I can send out communications
to specific groups based on their interest. That's very handy as well.
For all you self-publishers out there, your valuable content can be
a book that you've published, whether that's fiction,
non-fiction, or low-content books. You can just simply share that link
to your freebie on the inside page of your books. You can also promote your
freebie on social media by creating posts, reels, stories on Instagram.
You can share on TikTok. You can share on your Facebook page. You can even run Facebook ads if you
want to reach even more people with your freebie. Another really great way to get a boost
in subscribers is by leveraging other people's audiences, especially good
if your own audience isn't very big. Find those in a similar niche and make
a pitch to be a podcast guest or to collaborate on YouTube or
write a guest blog post. I did this in the beginning and I
saw a really nice boost in my list. I wrote a guest post for someone's blog. I appeared on Nick Loper's "Side Hustle
Nation" podcast and I had tons of downloads of my freebie after
I promoted it on that podcast. You do not need a huge following for this. I had next to nothing when I
approached either of these two people. It's basically just whether or
not you can provide relevant, valuable content to their
viewers or readers or whatnot. For even more ideas on how
to drive traffic to your
freebie I want to invite you to download a free resource that my
online business mentor, Amy Porterfield, has put together called "7 Places to Share
Your Lead Magnet Opt-in." You can get access to this free guide by clicking on
the link down in the description below. Once you've got subscribers flowing onto
your email list you're going to want to be sure to use that list
effectively. First and foremost, consider it a way to provide value
rather than a way to make sales. You want to build trust
with your audience. You don't build trust by trying to
close a sale every five minutes. Offering value shows people that
you know what you're talking about, and it helps you to build that authority. I suggest creating a 3- to 5-email
nurture sequence for new subscribers. You can sit down, write
all 3 to 5 of those emails, and then you can set them up in your
email marketing service so that they automatically send to
new members of your list. You could have one email go out
per week out of this sequence, or you can have one email go out every
two to three days until that sequence is complete. Again, you shouldn't really
be selling at all during these emails; you're simply just offering value and
introducing your ideal customer to your brand. Once that nurture
sequence is complete, you can start linking to your free
weekly content to continue adding value. You could even provide content exclusive
to your email subscribers just as extra that has nothing to do
with your weekly content. Build relationships with your
subscribers by inviting conversation, ask questions, encourage them to respond, and then send personalized
responses in return. Finally, once you've added value
and started to build a relationship, then it's time to
introduce your paid offer. Trust me when I say that once you've
done all of this legwork upfront, your ideal customers
are going to know, like, and trust you enough to really consider
whatever offer you send their way. Your email list really is the most
valuable tool in your marketing tool belt, guaranteed, so do not wait another
minute to start yours. Again, if you want more ideas on where
you can share your freebie, download Amy Porterfield's "7 Places to
Share Your Lead Magnet Opt-in." You're going to find that link down in
the description below this video. You can also join my free
Facebook group, Rachel's Sandbox, to join other like-minded folks all on
their own online business journeys (also linked to down below). You can watch this video next to learn
how I built a digital course business that generates 25k a month. Once
again, thanks so much for watching. If you like this video, hit the
"Like" button, subscribe, share it, and we'll see you next time. Bye.
