Podcast Transcript
Hello and welcome to another episode of the Thriver's Ed podcast. Thank you, guys, for bearing with me while I took a little break. I am back now and I have a whole bunch of content coming over the next couple of weeks that I think you're really going to like. So, without further ado, let's go ahead and dive in.
Today what I wanted to talk about is something that I've seen come up with my clients recently, and that is building their email list. Oftentimes, when my clients come to me, they are concerned about growing their social media presence, but social media is not something that they really enjoy being active on. And, fortunately, their social media presence isn't make or break for their business, because, as I like to remind them, followers do not necessarily equal dollars.
So you can have a ton of followers out there, but unless you're directing people off of the platforms, you're not actually making the sales. So we need to be getting them off the platforms, either by joining our email list or clicking that link in our Instagram story and going to our store and making a purchase.
But just having followers for the sake of having followers is not necessarily going to affect your bottom line and, given the fact that, as entrepreneurs, and especially solopreneurs. We have a really limited amount of time in our day that it makes more sense for us to devote it to the activities that are really going to move the needle, and that is why I like to direct people to building an email list.
Another reason that I de-emphasize having a strong social media presence is that it is a everyday game, right? You've got to be showing up every day. There has to constantly be new content. You have to fight with the algorithms and how it's changing and, again, the goal of these social media platforms is to keep people on the platform.
They aren't structured to help you get people onto your website. That is not their goal. Their goal is to keep eyeballs in those specific apps for as long as possible, so they have no incentive to send their visitors to your website unless you're paying for it. It's a very big pay to play type of thing where you are purchasing ads, then maybe they'll direct... your posts are obviously gonna be more likely to show up the posts that are trying to sell, but for those other posts, so few people are actually seeing it and it is something that you've got to be constantly showing up on that it can be quite exhausting.
So, given their time constraints, I would rather my clients focus on building their email list, and the first thing that most people do when they start building their email list is to develop a lead magnet or freebie. This is often a PDF or a guide or an ebook or white paper, some form of digital document that you are sending to someone after they give you their email address and or other personal information, but at a minimum their email address, and then you're sending them that docket.
Now I think these have been really popular and I do think that they can work, but I like to challenge my clients to consider other opportunities that may be more impactful for them, and there's a couple reasons for this. One is that there are certain people out there that are going to join your email list in order to get that free thing, but have absolutely no intention of ever working with you or ever buying your products. Their specific intention was just to grab that one thing and you may never hear from them again.
Other people, and I know those people are out there because I have done it myself, we get excited about a freebie and we give our email address and maybe we get that email and then we don't even open the email, or we open the email and don't actually download the guide, or we download the guide and we don't actually read it. Like. There's a lot of steps in between what we're hoping to accomplish, which is that people read this guide or ebook or handout or checklist, realize how much value we have to offer and then want to work further with us.
But there's so many opportunities to lose them along the way, right, if they don't open the email or if they don't actually read the guide, they're not going to see the value that we have to offer and that we're hoping to impart with them. And I think this comes about because people treat free items like they're free. Right, if they had invested even the tiniest amount, you know, like a $5 commitment, in order to get this ebook, I think they would treat it differently than they will for something that's free, because they can always go back to it. You know they've already gotten their money's worth because they didn't have to spend a dollar.
So I think there are other opportunities to get an email list that is actually more engaged, that is going to be hotter, because they are more devoted to services or products that you're hoping to offer them.
So, in light of that, today I wanted to discuss 10 different ways that you can create an engaged email list that doesn't involve sending out a freebie that you made on Canva, and these are in no particular order. They're just some things that either I have tried, I have been a participant in or that are on my to-do list to try in the future.
So I hope one or more of these are appealing to you and I would love to hear how well it works out for you. You can actually send me a message in the show notes and communicate with me directly from this podcast and tell me how it's going, like if you tried one of these and it was a complete flop or a total success. I want to know, because that's concrete information that I can share with other listeners and that can impact my own business. So I hope these are helpful. Without further ado, the 10 creative ways to build an engaged email list.
Number one is to host a workshop or a webinar, especially when these are live, meaning that it's not an ever available webinar where it happens every single week. It's a limited event that you're hosting it. That can really increase the sense of urgency and exclusivity to commit to this event and get people off of that viewer line and into taking action.
The cool thing about webinars is that you really get to have that longer engaged conversation and can provide a lot more value and help people understand how it is that you're able to benefit them in a two-sided conversation, in something that you're never going to be able to accomplish in a PDF of a couple pages.
The other thing is that webinars work right. So there are conversion stats out there saying that, on average, maybe 30 to 50% of the people that sign up for your webinar are actually going to show up. And then the conversion rates on your webinar. Of course, this completely depends on what it is that you're selling, right. If you're selling like a $10,000 package or you're selling a $27 product, the conversion rates can really be impacted by what it is that you're selling and, of course, how good you are at selling, how good you are at communicating the value of the product. But generally, studies have shown that conversion rates are around 55%. So of those, of course, that actually show up. And then you're going to potentially get conversions when you follow up with them after with your replay emails and letting them know that what they missed out on. But if we had 100 people sign up for our webinar, then and 30 to 50% of the people show up, so we'll just say 50. And then 55% of those convert. You're looking at around 28 people that have purchased from you and that's right there. The sales is in the actual event.
So with getting someone to sign up to your email list, you're not generally sending them the freebie and then immediately selling them on something else. Your goal is to develop a relationship, but in that workshop or webinar, you're able to expedite that relationship building so much faster. It is on overdrive, right, because they are learning from you. Right there, they're able to communicate with you and address any questions that they have, and then they're moving on to that next step, right then, instead of having to build out a full email sequence to get them ultimately into where you're hoping they're going to go. So that is hosting a live workshop or webinar.
Next up is something that I actually recently created and that is to create a quiz. So I know that Jenna Kutcher is a big fan of using quizzes. I've used quizzes before. I actually have a quiz right now that I created when I was still doing my alcohol free coaching, and it brings people to my email list every single day. Every single day, people are finding it, and they're actually finding it through SEO. So whatever it is they're Googling is driving them to this quiz that I offer, which is what is your signature mocktail, and they love it. So I'm constantly getting new emails added to my email list from this quiz, and so I don't really want to let it go.
But I've had to now structure my welcome sequence to turn that mocktail interest into a business, entrepreneurship interest, and that actually speaks to my own story. I first went alcohol free and that is what encouraged me to actually start my own business. So I think the through line is actually there, and for the people that aren't interested, they'll drop off, they'll unsubscribe, but for the people that are, I was able to take them in in a really interesting way, in a way that was fun for them, because it touches that curiosity loop, right, I want to know what my signature mocktail is, right? I don't know about you guys, but when I was growing up, I loved magazines and they would have those Cosmo style quizzes at the end of. I don't even know what the quiz titles are and nothing's coming to mind right now, but I just loved learning more about my personality and just getting a better understanding of myself.
So I'm a huge fan of quizzes and that's why I've recently created another quiz that is definitely more directly related to business and that is what's really holding your business back. It's a super short quiz it takes you less than two minutes to complete. But the benefit of this quiz is at the end they're able to get a clear understanding of where their business is and they get steps to immediately take to improve it. So it's not just saying, okay, here's where you are, goodbye, it's giving them some concrete steps to help remove that bottleneck that's there in their business bottleneck that's there in their business.
The other benefit of this quiz is that it helps me understand the people that are joining my email list. So I don't really get to have that kind of conversation with people if they're downloading a PDF or a white paper, but in this quiz I get to learn about the specific problems that they have and I can use this to inform both my emails and my services and offerings. If everybody is choosing a particular answer, I can create an offer that's going to address that particular problem and that makes me more relevant and valuable to my audience. So I absolutely love quizzes. I think they're fun. They're super easy to do. You will probably have to invest in a software for your quizzes. There's some plugins if you're using WordPress and a lot of different options that you can go there. But, yeah, I think a quiz is a super fun way to get people onto your email list and to offer them something valuable which is insight into themselves or to their business.
Next up, we have a time limited challenge, so this can be a three day challenge, a five day challenge, a 30 day challenge, whatever it is that you want to do. I think this can help with building community, especially if it's a challenge hosted on a social media platform and they get immediate value, so likely in that challenge there's going to be action steps that they're going to be taken afterwards, they're going to have homework afterwards, so you're providing that value right away and there's a little bit more accountability than, say, sending those exact same steps in a PDF straight to their email inbox.
There's also that curiosity loop that we are opening right. So, by having a challenge and we're doing different things every day, we are encouraging them to show up and to complete the challenge. That said, I think the effectiveness of running a challenge has slipped from where it originally was. I think they used to be a lot more empowering. But what you're probably going to see is that people in the challenge are going to slowly slip off, so you might have a bunch of people on day one, fewer on day two, fewer on day three, and so on.
What you can potentially do to counteract this is to have a giveaway right. So if someone completes their homework for all the days and they send it to you or they screenshot it or whatever the rules are for your particular giveaway, that can help with the accountability and actually finishing the challenge, which, of course, the goal of is to show your value, is to show the value of you or your product or your services so that they will want to purchase from you further.
Next up, we have exclusive access to behind the scenes content, so this can be, you know, teasing, maybe in your social media. If you're showing up on social media every day, you can position some of those tips or project breakdowns or behind the scenes action and save those for your email list so you can tease a prompt, whatever it is that you're going to be telling your email list the next day and let people know that in their social media so that they have a reason to join. You're playing on their FOMO, right? It's that they want to know what's going on with you.
People love seeing the behind the scenes. They love knowing that they're working with a real human being, especially in this day and age where you know so much of AI is everywhere and impacting how we engage with online services. So having that behind the scenes content or even just exclusive tips, exclusive advice and promotions and sneak peeks that sort of thing in your email list and teasing this to your audience on other platforms can help convince people to sign up so that they can get into that insider access which makes them feel a little bit more special.
And according to Sprout Social, 56% of consumers are more likely to stay loyal to a brand that offers those behind the scenes content. And again, I think that potentially plays into that wanting to interact with a human, that wanting to go beyond speaking to a computer and really having that sense of community and engagement with another actual human being.
Up next, number five it's kind of the converse of that, and so typically when we're offering a lead magnet or a freebie. It is gated access. So we might have blog articles on our website that is free to anybody who's browsing the internet. And then we have these special offerings for people when they give us their email. They give us their email and they get this PDF, this guide, this checklist, whatever. That's gated access.
But I'd like to argue that ungated access can also help drive email growth. So the idea here is to write really good, impactful blog articles. So you are putting information on your website that really provides value to the person reading it, and the reason I think this can work is that when people see all of the value that you're offering and they like your style and they like the way you work and what you're saying makes sense to them and benefits them in some way, they want more.
I know that I have subscribed to email lists simply because I just liked what that person was talking about on their website. Right, I loved their style. I love the tips that they were giving. I felt like they really knew what they were talking about and I wanted to know more. So I scrolled right down and I joined their email list simply because I wanted to know more. I wasn't requesting something in the moment, I wasn't trying to download a freebie, but I didn't want to miss what this person was saying because they were having an impact on me and I knew that if I continued to listen to them, I would learn more in the future. So I would like to argue that it's possible that ungated access can also build your email list if you're providing quality content on your website or wherever it is that you're capturing these emails.
Number six is to host an exclusive community or forum. So being part of a group can be really attractive. I know for myself, being a solopreneur, one of the hardest parts for me is not having people I can bounce ideas off of, or at least not having co-workers right here in my room that I can bounce ideas off of. Now I have my own coach, I have friends, I have my husband that I can bounce ideas off of, but it's not the same kind of like immediate question of just you know, running to your neighbor in the cubicle and asking them for their advice or what they would do or what you should do, and that sense of community can really help with the loneliness that can come from being an entrepreneur.
So you could offer a community or a forum that simply requires an email list to join. So this could look like a Facebook group where, in order to sign up, they have to give you their email address and consent to be added to your email list and then they're in the group. I mean, you could charge for it too, but it could be as simple as a free group where you're creating this space that is open for questions and discussions and shared experiences. Maybe you're popping back in there in order to provide value and to answer questions, but it doesn't necessarily mean that you have to constantly be promoting yourself in there, right?
Just offering this community can be a sign of value that you are providing to people. One study showed that community members are 75% more likely to buy from a brand that they're engaged with, and so this can be some low-hanging fruit of a way to engage with people, to have a Facebook group or other space where community members can join in. You can have discussions and then, once they're on your email list, you can have more targeted communications for them in a way that promotes your offers and services.
Number seven is to create a mini-course. So there's lots of different ways you can do this. The simplest is an email mini-course where you are maybe sending five tips over five days, or it's a challenge and they have different activities for a certain number of days, but you are just providing the steps through an email. So it goes along with that other challenge where it's a little bit more interactive.
This is going to be more passive, where you're just sending out emails, but it's a low-pressure way for potential clients to engage with you and to see your value without having to commit to a full course. This could be a free online course, like an email series that you're sending out, or you might want to invest in something that's a little bit more effort, it looks a little bit more professional and they're actually paying for it.
So, again, thinking back to where people engage with things that they're invested in, right, if they even put down a small amount for this mini-course, they're more likely to actually complete it than if it's a free course that's just going to hit their inbox and they're going to delete it. It also gives them a taste of what it's like to work with you, of what your services are like, right? Especially if what you're offering your products or services are high ticket offers, giving people a taste of something that's much more affordable is a great way for to ease them into the waters, versus asking someone that you barely know to spend 500, a thousand you know multiple thousands of dollars to work with you. Right? They get that taste for something that is easily swallowable, right? You know 10, 20, 30, 40, $50, something like that and that can build that trust and respect. So they're looking for more support from you in the future, all right.
Number eight is VIP lists and early access engagement. I'm recording this in November, meaning all the Black Friday emails have already started coming into my inbox. But one thing that I've seen already in some of these emails is encouraging people to sign up for their VIP list, and they're doing this by saying there's an exclusive discount for those VIP members on top of the Black Friday savings. Now, in this case, I'm already on their email list. Right, they've already captured me as someone on their email list, but I could go ahead and click to join their VIP list for these particular products, which shows them that I am a more engaged consumer, I am a hotter lead.
But if I weren't on their VIP list, I could promote my VIP list if I had a special deal coming out. Either that's a new product or a special price coming out, or a limited release for something. This is something that I could easily be promoting on my social media channels to encourage people to sign up for that VIP list for exclusive deals. So you're not actually creating something new.
Ideally, you would not use this strategy if you don't have something that you're not actually creating something new. Ideally, you would not use this strategy if you don't have something that you're already trying to sell. But if you already have something, if you know you're going to do a black friday sale, or if you know you're going to be launching a product in the future, you can already start teasing that vip list. There can be a waitlist page on your website. You can be mentioning it on all of your social media channels and offering people a reason to be on that VIP list.
So it's unlikely that they're going to sign up simply for first access, unless it's like a really amazing service or product that they already believe in and they already know that they want. Perhaps it was something that was sold out, but you could add a tiny bit extra on there, right it an additional discount. It could be a special offer or a bonus that's not available to people that purchase regularly. So teasing the vip list and giving the people a reason to want to be on it could be another way that you could build out your email list.
Number nine is a giveaway, so you can run giveaways to encourage email subscriptions. In order for this to work in your giveaway rules, you would need to encourage people to click a button or sign up for your email list in some ways that you're capturing that email and people run their giveaways in all sorts of different ways. You can have a list of tasks that you want them to complete. They can have to follow you on a certain social media thing. They can have to tag you in their posts whatever rules that you want them to complete. They can have to follow you on a certain social media thing. They can have to tag you in their posts, whatever rules that you want, but if your goal is to get them off of social media and get them onto your email list. Requiring them to input their email in order to be entered into this giveaway is a way that you can capture that email, and people love giveaways.
I think it's a great way to get people excited about what it is that you're offering. There is software out there to help you do this, like Viral Sweep, that can help you set this giveaway up, or you can do it yourself manually, as long as your rules are very clear. If you're just picking a name randomly, you can use a random number generator to pick the person that you're going to have winning this prize. That can get people really excited, and you can give as many prizes away as you want, right, you can give. It doesn't have to be just one winner of this massive prize. You can give away, you know, 10 of these smaller items to get people really excited and, of course, the more possibilities there are for them to win, the more likely they might be to actually participate. Right? If it's something, if I've got a one in a billion chance, I might not be as excited as if I have, you know, 10 possible chances to win something.
Again, this strategy works best when you already have something that you're gonna sell, so that you're not creating a product simply for a giveaway. That can be a lot of work on your end and ideally it's something that is completely passive for you. So if you already have a completely passive product, like a digital course or a download or a swipe file or something that you offer for a price, but it's completely passive for you, that means this is super simple for you to implement. You promote the giveaway all over the place. You potentially use a giveaway software in order to facilitate all the collection of that data, and then they pick the winner, notify them and everything is all wrapped up for you.
So that's a fun way to get people on your email list, and these are people that are excited about what it is that you're offering, right? So then you could follow up with them later and say, hey, I'm sorry you didn't win, but I'd like to offer you this X discount on this product, right? They've already raised their hand and said that they're interested in this product when it was potentially for free, so they may still be interested enough in order to pay for it. They're not going to enter a giveaway for something they have absolutely no interest in. So they've already shown you that they are interested in what it is that you're offering, so there's a potential that they would be willing to pay for it if they didn't end up winning it.
And number 10 is to do a collaborative webinar or to be on an expert panel or summit. So basically, where you are leveraging the audiences of other industry experts. So this works really well when your offers are complimentary and not competitive. So I've seen this where there was an expert in email marketing and an expert in social media. These two people had very distinct focuses that they were working on, but they worked really well together. Right, if we're trying to increase our social media presence and hopefully bring those people after our email list, having a strong social media strategy and a strong email strategy once we get them off social media is really beneficial for our business. So by bringing both of their audiences together, the social media marketer was likely able to attract people that were coming from the email marketer and vice versa.
So if what you're offering in this presentation is of value, you're likely to attract an audience that you may not have seen before. By leveraging the network of the person or persons that you're doing this collaborative event with, you're able to reach a much broader audience. They're doing the hard work of bringing the people in to hear what it is you have to say, and then it's just on you to provide enough value and to have a strong enough offer that you're able to convert right. So this can be a really fun way, and it's just. You know, it's honestly more fun to be in a group like this. You can do webinars by yourself, but it's a lot more fun when there's some give and take with people to support you. Of course, it's easier as well because you're only lifting half of the weight there.
So that's another opportunity for you to build your email list without sending out another freebie. So your thrive in five for today is going to be really simple, and it's going to be to pick one of these tactics and to try it. This doesn't have to be your exclusive strategy. You can still create a pdf or a guide or a checklist and send out that freebie, but having another opportunity can help you compare what's really the most effective for your business. You may find that that lead magnet attracts way more people to your email list, but those people don't click or open your emails. On the other hand, you might try one of these and it could be a total flop, but that can also help inform what your potential audience is really interested in. So I would encourage you to give at least one of these a try again. It doesn't mean that you have to devote all of your attention to this. You're welcome to try one or more of any of these strategies at the same time, but that's how we learn what works, and that's by testing things we can throw speed at the wall.
These are not tactics that I have created myself. These are tactics that have worked on me and that I've seen out there in the industry. So there's evidence to say that these can work. So why not for you as well? So to go back over them real quickly, the ten creative ways to build an engaged email list, aside from handing them a freebie, is:
Number one host an exclusive webinar or workshop.
Number two create a quiz.
Number three offer a time limited challenge.
Number four offer exclusive content only to your email list and make people aware of that.
Number five is to provide ungated access to articles or guides that is so high quality that people want more from you.
Number six is to create an online community or forum.
Number seven is to have a mini course, so either an email series or an actual course that people are taking.
Number eight is VIP lists or early access offers.
Number nine is to host a giveaway.
And 10 is to do a collaborative webinar or expert panel discussion or summit.
So go ahead, pick one of these tactics to implement, ideally within the next month, and observe your results, see if it's working for you. Like I said, you can always go back to the traditional lead magnet, but if one of these other opportunities are going to give you better results, why not go for it? If one of these opportunities are going to lead to an email list that is perhaps not as big but is more engaged, that's really what we're looking for, right? It's not all about the numbers, it's not all about the social media followers that we have, or even the size of our email list, if those people are not engaged with us. So if using these tactics helps you identify the people that really want more from you, then absolutely those are your people and that's going to be the most effective use of your time. Until next time, keep thriving!