You want to grow your email list and generate leads but don’t know how?
This post will show you exactly what it takes to grow an engaged email list fast from scratch.
I’m going to share with you the best ways to grow your email list and generate leads, as well as some of my favorite tools for doing so.
You’ll learn what an opt-in is, why it’s important, and how you can use them in your business. We’ll also go over the different types of opt-ins so that you can choose which one is best for you! And finally, we’ll cover some of my favorite email service providers that will help make this process easier for you!
Offer Something of Value That Solves a Problem in Exchange for Their Email Address
Offering something of value that solves a problem in exchange for their email address is an effective strategy to grow your list. A giveaway, contest, email course, template, eBook, the list goes on. There are tons of good choices.
The key to a successful free offer is that it has to solve a problem for your targeted audience. It has to be more valuable than $20. And it should relate to your paid offers, making them an obvious next step in the customer journey.
Think about it this way; if someone walked up to you on the street and asked for your phone number or email, you wouldn’t just give it to them. But if they gave you something free in exchange, you would.
From what I have seen from clients and my own freebies, people are most likely to give you their email if they perceive the value of the freebie to be more than $20.
One of the biggest arguments I get into with clients is when they don’t have a decent or high converting Freebie, but they create a booklet, guide, recipe book that they then want to charge for.
9/10 if you are in that situation, the booklet should be your free offer. It sets the tone that you give amazing value and makes you their go-to for solving the problem.
For Example, Russel Brunson and his Free plus shipping books, amazing value for free, he’s not making a profit on the original offer unless you buy an upsell. But his trilogy drives purchases of his funnel builder.
Using a Content Upgrade to Grow Your Email List
A content upgrade is an incentive that you attach to your blog post to provide a lead magnet, such as a PDF checklist or ebook. By providing this additional material for free, people are more likely to opt-in with their email address and be contacted by the blog post’s author when they publish new posts.
Here’s how it works: After reading your article, visitors will see something like “Download my FREE guide on ____” followed by a call-to-action button (e.g., “Get My Lead Generation Cheatsheet”) and then give them instructions on how to get access using their contact information. This type of offer is perfect for “How-to” blogs because the guide, template, or cheatsheet should be directly related to the content they read or watched.
It’s different from a traditional lead magnet that may be used generically across your business.
Using an Effective Lead Magnet to Generate New Leads
Create an effective lead magnet to use throughout your business to gather email signups.
A lead magnet is a gated piece of content that you offer to your prospects in exchange for their email address. This can be anything from an ebook, video, or webinar access – the key is that it’s valuable and gated. When your prospect takes action on this gated offer, they become an email subscriber who will receive future communications about related topics.
The most successful way to grow your email list is by offering something of value to potential customers with one very clear ask at the end. You’ll want to make sure it’s relatively simple to sign up (no crazy forms) and easy for them to unsubscribe if necessary (always include an unsubscribe link).
An effective lead magnet solves a single problem for your ideal audience. The solution should then open a new problem that your paid offers can solve. Having proper sequencing can make or break your business.
Magnet ideas include:
- Free ebook
- Free video series
- Free webinar
- Discounts on your products or services (especially if you’re in the B2C space)
To make gated content work, remove as many barriers between people and what they want. This includes making sure that gated offers are easily accessible after they have given you their email address.
Integrating the Power of a Quiz into Your Lead Generation Strategy
A fun and popular alternative to a freebie is a quiz. Quizzes are interactive, shareable, and, when done right, can give you a lot of insight for segmenting your list.
You can gate the results with an option box before revealing the results. We’ve all taken silly quizzes online and in magazines. Something about finding out how you scored in a no-pressure environment is seductive to most people.
Quizzes can easily become a viral lead generator when it has fun and entertaining results. Quizzes provide the reader with their score and feedback to show how well they did or what result they got.
If you want to take a look at an example of a quiz, check out my Uncorked Personality quiz linked below. The results give you insights into improving your business based on your personality type with a fun wine twist.
Create an Opt-in Form
Now that you have a free thing to exchange for their email list, you need an opt-in form. Creating an opt-in form is a key process in growing an email list. Opt-in forms can be placed on your website, landing pages, blog posts, exit-intent popups, or social media pages and should include the following:
- A juicy headline that encourages people to stay on the page and keep reading
- A few benefits of why they want to enter their email. For example, if they are getting a gift, how that gift will solve their problem.
- A place for them to enter their email. You can also have their name, I like having their name, but it’s not necessary.
Other things you should have are your standard disclaimers, privacy notices, your footer, etc.
If I had to name any, one part as the most crucial to getting leads it’s that juicy headline, and if you are having trouble creating a headline that converts, I have a free eBook made just for you. It’s filled with all my tips and tricks that help me have an average headline conversion of over 70%.
Create Content That Will Answer Questions for Your Target Audience
Start with a few pieces of content that you know your target audience needs and will find helpful. You can base this off of market research, questions you see in Facebook Groups, popular youtube videos in your niche, the list goes on.
There are always basic questions for people just starting in your niche. You may find them too simple or easy to need a video or blog post, but you’re the expert for a reason. I can’t tell you how many people don’t know how to make an email address a live link or change a font size. You want them coming back time and again, so create more detailed articles if there is demand.
Another popular content creation strategy is to leverage other experts’ audiences through guest posts, podcast interviews, or summits.
If you’re having trouble creating blog post titles or even ideas about what type of content might be useful, schedule a power hour with me, and we will create a full marketing strategy for you, complete with content marketing.
Recommended Email Service Providers
There are many email service providers, and they all have their own strengths.
I recommend ConvertKit for its ease of use, integrations, amazing support, and the variety of templates it offers. It is essential that when you sign up to use a template from another provider on your blog or website, make sure that the code is compatible with your site by cross-checking what languages/scripts are enabled in both platforms. I always recommend that your website and blog are on wordpress.org, and most platforms integrate with a plugin.
Another email service provider option I recommend is when you need an all-in-one solution; I like Highlevel. You can build landing pages, funnels, courses, forms, surveys, calendars, email sequences, text sequences, and more.
Other email service providers out there include Aweber, Mailchimp, Mailerlite, Ontraport, and ActiveCampaign. Personally, I believe they often have a steep learning curve with less than stellar customer support. But everyone’s experience is different.
One of the only things I will beg you to have in your email service provider is the ability to tag or segment your lists. If you can’t do that, you ultimately will not be able to grow with the platform and will have to learn a whole new system later on.
Final Thoughts on How to Grow Your Email List
I hope this video has given you a good idea of how to grow your email list. The best way is by starting from scratch and finding the right marketing channel for your niche. If you really want to start fast, then Facebook ads will help get some leads on your contact lists, but it’s not going to last long term if you don’t know how to target or monetize them after they are on your list.
I traditionally teach clients to use ads as gasoline on proven concepts.
As always, I hope you all can use this information to build your business, and I hope to see you on the next one.
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