GM16 – List Building Strategies

In this week’s Grey Matters, let’s talk about how to create email lists: building your mailing list, how to send an email to them, and more.

How to Create Email Lists: List Building Made Easy

[0:00] – Introducing this episode of the Grey Matters podcast: Email list building strategies.

Many people are turned off by the very idea of email marketing, due to the negative “spammy” reputation it has earned over the years. There are certain benefits to it, though, that merit its inclusion in your overall digital strategy.

[1:47] – The email list: The single most valuable asset in online business.

If you aren't concentrating on building your list, you're just making things much more difficult for you in the future — and you might even be putting your entire venture at risk.
While social media platforms are great for discovery, at the end of the day, they are somebody else's platform. And if you're building your house on their platform, you are subject to their rules, and you can lose access to your fanbase in a snap.
A mailing list is consistent, and it’s still the most effective and the most popular way to grow and do real business in the online space.
Numerous reports and statistics over the years highlight the efficiency and the return on investment of email marketing.

[5:27] – A reasonable amount of time to build an email list.

Two years is a reasonable timeframe. Being realistic, it's not going to happen over two months, or even over six months.
Aim for 30 new email addresses — one a day — in your first month, then increase that by 20% per month with a good content strategy.
If you have the right people, you could build a pretty good business with just 1500 names. But with 17,000 qualified names, people who are part of your community and high open rate on your email, you have a very healthy list, one that is just going to get bigger from there.

[7:19] – How to grow your list by 20% month over month: Webinars.

It's not going to happen accidentally; you are going to come up with list-building strategies that are active.

One way to do this is a webinar, as it helps you establish that email communication relationship with people right away. Furthermore, the content that you create within a webinar has tremendous long-term value.

[10:52] – Growing your mailing list with downloadables.

Checklists, or cheat sheets, or different PDF tutorial documents that you can create that provide additional value are also good options, as are blogs.
You can also utilize social media: For example, on YouTube, you can direct people right out of your YouTube video to your landing page with the opt-in rate within the YouTube display interface through YouTube cards.
Creating more effective mechanisms for people to download your offers is really essential.

[14:52] – Accessibility and targeting.

Make sure that your list builder is accessible to the community as you're watching it.
There are also passive list-building options such as urging people to sign up for your mailing list when they just happen to land on your website, through a pop-up.
Make sure that you do mark your list with the proper tagging and silo people into the areas they're interested in.

[18:06] – More on passive list-building.

[20:01] – Two factors to realize in list-building.

One: Have valuable content to share; you can always make new content.
Two: People don't necessarily consume your free content in an organized fashion, so make sure that you put your best foot forward.

[22:22] – Opt-ins.

When you're creating your opt-ins, make sure that they're available and easy to opt in on for the people who you're looking to add to your mail list.

Resources

I know, it sounds so old school, but if you learn one thing from my podcasts, I hope you learn the value of your email list. It is your most important business asset.

Here is a list of the resources I used to help me craft this Podcast, some terrific ideas and advice!

List Building Links

https://sleeknote.com/blog/list-building-strategies

https://backlinko.com/list-building

https://moosend.com/blog/list-building/

https://blog.getresponse.com/email-list-building-ideas

https://blog.hubspot.com/blog/tabid/6307/bid/32028/25-clever-ways-to-grow-your-email-marketing-list.aspx

https://www.helpscout.com/list-building/

https://teachable.com/blog/list-building

https://sumo.com/stories/email-list-building

https://socialtriggers.com/list-building/

Tweet73