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How To Grow An Email List Starting From Scratch

John Parkes — Wed, 05 Jan 2022 13:52:00 +0000

The post How To Grow An Email List Starting From Scratch appeared first on ClickFunnels.

You have probably heard about the importance of building an email list. But how can you grow one from scratch?

That’s exactly what we are going to discuss today!

Table of Contents:

Should You Wait Until You Have Something to Sell to Start Building Your Email List?

No!

You should start building your email list ASAP, even if you don’t have a product or service to sell yet. Why?

Because growing an email list doesn’t take that much time in terms of the work that you need to put in every week.

But it will probably take you several years to reach “escape velocity” where your newsletter starts gaining momentum and your subscriber growth begins accelerating.

The sooner you start building your email list, the sooner you’ll get to that point. And once you do have something to sell, you’ll have an audience to sell it to!

When bestselling author Ryan Holiday was in his early 20s, people who were aware of the fact that he was a bookworm kept asking him for book recommendations.

Eventually, he decided to start a monthly newsletter. Every month, he sends one email with a list of 5 to 10 books and a short, few-sentence review for each book. Since 2009, Holiday has recommended over 3,000 books that he has personally read.

It’s probably safe to say that having an email list played a significant role in his success as an author. When he released his first book “Trust Me, I’m Lying” back in 2012, he already had an audience that he could promote his book to.

Presumably, each subsequent book launch was easier than the previous one because his email list kept growing. Today it has over 250,000 subscribers.

It’s also worth noting that Holiday was reading around 250 books per year anyway. So picking out the ones he liked the most every month, writing up a few-sentence review for each book and sending it out as a newsletter didn’t require a big time investment. But it did offer outsized returns!

Ask yourself: is there something that you are already doing anyway that you could leverage to build your email list?

Ryan Holiday with a stack of books.

Newsletters: The Easiest Way to Grow an Email List from Scratch

It’s important to strike the right balance between emailing your subscribers often enough to build trust and stay top of mind with them, but not so often that they get tired of your emails and stop opening them.

Newsletters are a perfect solution because by definition a newsletter requires you to email your subscribers at regular intervals, typically, either daily, weekly, or monthly.

Moreover, if someone subscribed to your newsletter, it means that this concept appeals to them, so they will likely continue opening your emails as long as the content quality remains high.

Regardless of what you are selling at the moment or intend to sell in the future, you can probably come up with a concept for a newsletter that will allow you to build an email list of potential customers.

It’s probably safe to say that link roundups can work well for most industries:

Do you write detective novels? Start a newsletter where you share links to the latest releases and a short review of each book.
Do you have an e-commerce store that sells women’s clothes and accessories? Start a newsletter where you share links to interesting fashion, style, and beauty content from around the web.
Do you run a SaaS company that sells productivity software? Start a newsletter where you share links to interesting productivity content from around the web and review productivity books.

…etc.

Building an Audience of Potential Customers vs. Building an Audience of Your Peers

Something to consider here is that your newsletter should appeal to your potential customers as opposed to your peers who are doing the same thing as you.

For example, while authors who write detective novels tend to also read detective novels, the vast majority of people who read books in this genre aren’t writers.

So if your aim is to build an audience that you could then promote your detective novels to, it makes sense to focus on content that will be interesting to the readers of this genre as opposed to its writers.

Of course, if your aim is to build an info product business where you teach aspiring novelists how to write detective novels, then it makes sense to share links related to writing, publishing and book marketing in your newsletter. But that’s a completely different business.

We are emphasizing this because sometimes people start building an audience of their peers instead of an audience of potential customers and then struggle to monetize it because they didn’t think things through!

What are the Best Practices When it Comes to Email Newsletters?

Brian Dean has a proven track record of building email lists:

With his previous business Backlinko he grew the company newsletter to over 250,000 subscribers.
With his current business Exploding topics he grew the company newsletter to over 90,000 subscribers.

Here are some of the best practices that he recommends if you want to grow your email newsletter:

A branded newsletter is a newsletter that has its own unique brand that is separate from the personal or the company brand.

The example that Brian provides is Tim Ferriss’ newsletter “5-Bullet Friday” which has its own separate brand and over 1.5 million subscribers.

The reason he recommends having a branded newsletter is that they are easier to share.

If you tell a friend:

“You should sign up for Tim Ferriss’ newsletter!”

It’s easy to forget, especially if your friend doesn’t know who Tim Ferriss is and therefore might struggle to remember his full name.

Meanwhile, if you tell that same friend:

“You should sign up for the ‘5-Bullet Friday’ newsletter!”

They will probably be more likely to remember its name and subscribe to it.

It’s also helpful if your newsletter’s name explains what the subscribers can expect from it, as is the case with “5-Bullet Friday”.

If you look at the most popular newsletters in the world, they tend to be focused on providing bite-sized value.

“5-Bullet Friday” is the most obvious example here: Tim Ferriss sends out a new issue every Friday where he shares five things that he found interesting.

Typically, it’s a combination of content recommendations, product recommendations, and a quote that he’s been pondering that week. Occasionally he also throws in some news about what he’s up to.

This template means that you can open a new issue of Tim’s newsletter, quickly scan it to see what this week’s bullets are about and then read it more closely if something catches your eye.

Moreover, it also means that when you see a new “5-Bullet Friday” issue in your inbox, you know what you going to get, you just don’t know the details.

Brian argues that this combination of the familiar and the unknown is a powerful motivator and a great way to get your subscribers to open your emails.

He uses the same approach with his own “Exploding Topics Tuesday” newsletter – every new issue covers four trends.

These trends are all over the place, from bamboo pajamas to security posture management, but the newsletter template remains the same!

You want to create a dedicated newsletter page and add it to your website’s navigation bar.

Here’s the homepage of Brian’s software company Exploding Topics:

If you click on the “Newsletter” tab in the navigation bar, you will be taken to the “Exploding Topics Tuesdays” landing page where you can sign up for the newsletter:

According to Brian, most people who sign up for the “Exploding Topics Tuesdays” newsletter do so through this page!

#4: Sending a “Confirmation and Deliverability” Welcome Message

You should send the “confirmation and deliverability” (CD) welcome message to each new subscriber the moment they sign up for your newsletter.

As its name suggests, the purpose of this message is twofold:

Confirmation

You want to confirm that they have successfully subscribed to your newsletter and reassure them that they made the right choice by telling them what they can expect from you going forward.

Deliverability

You want to get them to take an action that would signal to email service providers like Gmail that they want to get emails from you.

Initially, Brian would ask new subscribers to move the CD message from the “Promotions” tab to their primary inbox in Gmail.

He would also ask them to reply to the CD message and let him know what was the #1 thing that made them decide to check out this newsletter.

Now he has moved to encouraging new subscribers to click the link within the CD message and read the previous issue of the newsletter.

All three approaches can help you improve your deliverability. After all, new subscribers interacting with your welcome message in some way lets email service providers know that people are interested in hearing from you.

That can reduce the likelihood of your emails landing in the “Promotions” tab or being flagged as spam.

(Though the latter shouldn’t be happening anyway if you are using good email marketing software and aren’t doing anything shady.)

At the time of writing Brian is using this CD message for his “Exploding Topics Tuesday” newsletter:

#5: Maintaining a Consistent Publishing Schedule

It’s also important to commit to a consistent publishing schedule and then maintain it no matter what. Why?

Because you want your subscribers to develop a habit of reading your newsletter so that it would become a part of their routine.

In fact, you can’t miss a single issue, otherwise, you risk breaking this habit that you worked so hard to build.

Brian himself has sent out over 150 “Exploding Topics Tuesday” issues and hasn’t missed a single one.

This means that “Exploding Topics Tuesday” subscribers know that every Tuesday at 9 AM Eastern they are going to get an email with four trends. Reading it is a part of their weekly routine!

In order to grow your newsletter, you need to drive traffic to its landing page. But how can you do that?

Twitter Marketing

Don’t have much of a marketing budget to speak of?

In that situation, we would advise building a Twitter following first: post high-quality content, retweet other people in your niche and leave thoughtful comments under their tweets every single day.

Then, once you reach the 10,000 follower mark, launch your newsletter, add a link to its landing page to your bio and promote every new issue the day before its release with a teaser snippet.

If you do have a decent marketing budget, you can speed things up by using social media ads to drive traffic to your newsletter’s landing page.

For example, Milk Road, a newsletter that grew to 250,000+ subscribers in under a year, had several paid acquisition channels including Facebook, Instagram and TikTok.

Its co-founders tested a bunch of Facebook ads and found that two types of ads performed well:

Meme ads
Social proof ads

These ads helped Milk Road gain around 50,000 subscribers in its first year, accounting for around 20% of all subscribers the company gained during that time period.

Something to keep in mind here is that running social media ads is a skill so you need to be prepared for a steep learning curve if you haven’t done it before.

If you want to experiment with Facebook ads, consider buying a reputable Facebook ads course on Udemy. If you wait until one of Udemy’s regular sales, you should be able to snag a course like that for less than $20.

Also, make sure to set aside a “learning budget” of at least $1,000 that you are prepared to burn in order to learn how to run ads.

If you can’t afford that then you probably can’t afford to advertise on social media either. In that case, focus on organically growing your following on Twitter.

Finally, if you have the money for it, you might want to consider advertising on other newsletters in your niche.

After all, if someone is already subscribed to a newsletter in your niche, that’s a reliable indication that they:

Like the newsletter format
Are interested in this niche

This means that they might be open to checking out your newsletter if you can manage to create a compelling ad that conveys its value!

You Need a Sales Funnel in Order to Monetize Your Email List!

If all you want is to have an audience that you can share your thoughts with, then you can simply focus on growing your newsletter.

However, if you want to make money from your email list, you need to figure out how to monetize that audience.

In other words: if you want to have a business – not just an email newsletter – you need to build a sales funnel!

Want to Learn How to Build Sales Funnels That CONVERT?

Our co-founder Russell Brunson used sales funnels to take ClickFunnels from zero to $100M+ in annual revenue in less than a decade.

He is now widely considered to be one of the top sales funnel experts in the world. Want to learn from him?

His best-selling book “DotCom Secrets” is the best place to start because it covers everything you need to know in order to build sales funnels that convert.

This book is available on Amazon where it has over 2,500 global ratings and a 4.7-star overall rating.

But you can also get it directly from us for free…

All we ask is that you pay for shipping!

So what are you waiting for? 🧐

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Thanks for reading How To Grow An Email List Starting From Scratch which appeared first on ClickFunnels.

[Advanced] Complete Guide To Renting An Email List

John Parkes — Thu, 25 Feb 2016 03:18:03 +0000

The post [Advanced] Complete Guide To Renting An Email List appeared first on ClickFunnels.

Do you want to promote your first webinar but haven’t got an email list?

Do you want to reach out to a new audience? Have your ever considered renting an email list?

If this is the first you’ve heard of renting email lists then you’ve come to the right place.

I’m going to explain everything there is to know about renting email lists so that you get solid results from it and not end up with a junk list.

As marketers have become savvier, email list brokers have had to up their game.

In this advanced series guide, I’m going to explain what email list renting is, how to choose the best email lists to rent, how to identify junk email lists and some useful tips.

What Is Email List Renting

In short, renting an email list means to pay a third party an agreed amount to use their contact list for one email blast.

Of course email list rentals can vary with some agreeing to send more than one email.

When renting an email list, the owner will send an email to their contact list on your behalf.

They will use whichever design you send them along with your subject line copy.

You will never see the names or email addresses on the owners list.

They will provide you with data cards so you can determine whether the list will perform well.

Here is the usual process of renting an email list:

You will agree with the owner of the email list how many recipients you wish to send your email to.
You will agree with the owner the date and time in which you would like your email to be sent.
You create the design of your email and send this to the owner of the email list once complete.
Test the email list before sending by running it against your suppression Do-Not-Email list which I’ll explain further on.
The owner of the email list sends the email on the agreed date and time from their server address.

Choosing Email List Rentals That Work

Image Source: Silverpop on SlideShare

While email list brokers will provide you with data cards, it is always best to delve a little deeper.

I always believe that being transparent is the best way to earn trust.

If one email list broker isn’t willing to give you information that others are willing to give, they aren’t being transparent which is a worrying sign.

Before you rent an email list, make sure you ask the email list broker what brands have used their email list before and what results did they get.

While email list brokers can’t give you details on the names and addresses on their email lists, they should be able to provide you with brands they have worked with.

How to Identify Good Lists Against Junk Lists

Another thing to check before renting an email list is whether it is a junk email list, which of course you want to stay away from at all costs.

Using a junk email list could have a negative effect on your brand, damaging it.

Lucky for you, there are ways in which you can determine the credibility of the email list broker and their email list.

There are four steps you should take before deciding whether an email list is safe to rent.

These four steps are:

Check For Sender IP Blacklists

The first thing to check is whether there are any blacklists against the email broker’s sender IP address.

You will usually find when shopping around for email list brokers that they don’t provide this information on their data cards. It is something you will most likely have to ask for.

Again, if they are confident and transparent, they will have no problem in providing you with this information.

You can ask them to send you a sample email and use a blacklist tool such as SpamCop to see if their IP address lists as being blacklisted.

Check Abuse Email Groups

There are email groups on Google Groups that are talk about email abuse.

While you may not always find information on the email list broker you want to find more about, it is certainly worthwhile checking.

If you find there is a lot of talk about spam or abuse from the IP address of the email list broker then there is definitely cause for concern.

At this point, you can either talk to the email list broker and give him a chance to explain if the comments are quite dated or avoid them like the plague.

Does The Owner Of The List Switch IP Addresses

No one is ever perfect so it is perfectly normal for an email list broker to have a handful of complaints.

You can’t please everyone all of the time so there will always be a handful that will mark emails as spam or unsubscribe.

If the email list broker shows these signals on their data card and from the same IP address, it is actually a good sign that they are reputable.

If however, they claim to not have any complaints and continue to switch IP addresses, it is a red flag and I recommend staying away.

Can They Verify How The List Was Collected

Email list brokers should have no problem in telling how they build their email list.

It might not be information initially provided on their data card but they should be transparent about it if you specifically ask for this information.

You can specifically ask whether they have a clear opt-in option on their capture forms and even ask to see a sample lading page of theirs.

Some email list brokers may not show you their landing page though so instead ask for a screenshot of their capture form.

Asking About Deliverability And CAN-SPAM Considerations

Image Source: SlideShare

If you do decide to use an email list rental, you must ask your chose email list broker to run a suppression file.

This suppression file will remove any inaccurate data from an email list.

You can then ask the email list broker to run their list against your Do Not Email and Unsubscribe files.

Usually home email lists only have one unsubscribe option on their email creatives.

With rented email lists though, I recommend having two opt-out buttons; one for contacts to Unsubscribe and one for contacts to request you Do Not Email again.

Design New Emails For Your Rented Email List

While I’m already talking about adding different forms of opt-out buttons to your rented email list than your home built email list, let me explain why you should design your email differently for email list rentals.

When designing your emails, keep in mind that this is a brand new audience that may not have heard of you yet.

For this, you will need to create a compelling introductory offer if you want to establish quick relationships.

Introduce Yourself Properly To Contacts

It is important that you introduce yourself properly when sending an email to new email lists for rent.

You can do this by adding credibility signals such as testimonials, social proof and brand logos.

You can also give them an idea of who you are and what you do by adding an ‘about me’ section and listing key benefits of how your offer can help them.

What To Measure When Using Your Rented Email List

If you decide on an email list broker, have gone through the process of agreeing on recipients, send date and design, and have now sent your email, it is time to measure the results.

This is to determine whether it is a worthwhile channel for you to use for future promotions.

However I do highly recommend that you work on building your own email list.

Here is a list of some metrics you should measure after your email has been sent:

Hard Bounces – an email will hard bounce when it has been delivered to an email address that is incorrect or no longer exists.
Soft Bounces – an email will soft bounce if it cannot reach the contacts inbox for whatever reason.
Open Rate – this will determine whether the email list broker’s sender name is trusted and whether your subject line is enticing enough.
Click Through Rate – this will determine whether the content of your email was enticing enough for recipients to click through to your landing page.
Opt-Outs – this could be because the content of your email was irrelevant or because they no longer want to receive emails from the email list broker.

How Much Does It Cost To Rent An Email List?

The cost of renting an email list for your sales funnel can vary. It really depends on a number of factors, such as the quality of the list, size of the list, and reputation of the broker. It also depends on what types of contacts you’re renting.

The average cost of an email list from 2,500 to 5,000 names goes from $200 to $400 if it’s a consumer list and $300 to $600 if it’s a business list.

Is Buying An Email List Legal?

With worries over privacy growing, you may have legal concerns over renting an email list. It’s legal to collect and sell emails, but only when the users have given consent to do so.

That’s why the reputation and transparency of the list broker is so important. If a broker isn’t transparent, that should be a red flag.

Also, always make sure you run the rented list against your Do Not Email and Unsubscribe files as described above. This will make sure only people who want your emails will get them.

Conclusion

Email can be a powerful part of the sales funnel you built with ClickFunnels.

When choosing an email list broker, always choose one that is relevant to your niche so your content is something their contacts will be interested in. Sending content to irrelevant contacts will never give you a return and could increase the number of opt-outs.

Something else that might be worthwhile asking is how recent their email list is.

You want to choose email list brokers who have an email list that has had recent and regular activity.

At the end of the day, you want to be confident on the quality of the list and trustworthiness of the broker. If you’re confident in these two things, then your transaction and experience is likely to go far smoother.

What are your main concerns with renting email lists? Have you tried renting one before?

Let me know by leaving your comments below.

Continued Reading

Thanks for reading [Advanced] Complete Guide To Renting An Email List which appeared first on ClickFunnels.

Smart Marketer’s Guide To Listbuilding Using Social Media

John Parkes — Fri, 11 Dec 2015 22:35:34 +0000

The post Smart Marketer’s Guide To Listbuilding Using Social Media appeared first on ClickFunnels.

If you’re looking for more ways to keep growing your email list, then social media is a great pond to start fishing in.

Your social media fans and followers already have an interest so let them know there is more if they were to signup.

Email is one of the most powerful forms of marketing with 91% of consumers checking their email every single day.

Email marketing is one of the highest converting channels which is why many online businesses and marketers look for ways to continually grow their email lists.

While you may already be using social media to try and build your email list, are you doing it right?

Are you getting a constant stream of new contacts?

Most businesses or marketers just whack their links to sign up forms here, there and everywhere sitting on their hands hoping for leads.

If not, I am here to help with my trusted list of tips and tricks to help you get to the point where you have got a steady stream of new contacts.

You may have already tried some of the things on this list but if they aren’t planned out correctly or haven’t got such things as CTA’s or value, then they won’t work.

I will explain how to get each one working with little hassle.

Facebook Signup Form

Image Source: MailChimp

One of the easiest and first things you can do to start generating email signups from Facebook is to create a signup form.

This will make it easy for those loyal fans that regularly engage with your brand and would already like to signup but didn’t know they had the option.

To make this work, you will need to design an image that will attract the eye and a CTA (call-to-action) that will draw them to click.

If you’re using an email provider such as MailChimp or ClickFunnels’ Actionetics, then they will already have an app for you to create this signup tab.

Check with your email provider to see if they have an app that will do this for you.

Unfortunately, other social media sites don’t have this same feature but you can include a link to your signup page and use the bio text to direct people to click on the link.

For example, it could say, “We are experts in getting you more sales online.

However one issue many people have when just using text links is not being able to track their clicks.

So I’d advise using a link tracker software like Bit.ly or Google Shortner.

Downloadable eBooks

Screenshot from Marketo website

Sharing valuable and premium content on social media can attract many of your fans and followers to submit their contact information.

I have seen businesses try this before, however, and it didn’t work either because the same content was published on your blog for the world to see or because the content isn’t as valuable as you think.

The aim of the game is to create content that reaches out to your target audience’s pain points and offer a solution by way of tips, statistics and case studies.

Once you have created your eBook, create a landing page for it that has a contact form, so users have to fill it to download the content.

Once you have your eBook and landing page, it is time to share it on all your social media channels.

When sharing, be sure to state clearly how this eBook can help them and include a clear CTA to encourage your fans and followers to click.

Running Webinars

Webinars are another form of premium content that when shared on social media can help build your email list.

Social media was made for people all over the world to connect and so for that reason it is good to come out of hiding behind your brand logo and create content to share that is personable.

Make sure to have someone present the webinar that your fans and followers can relate with.

Do the same with the eBook and create a landing page where users can either buy tickets to the webinar or register if it is free.

You can then share the link to this landing page on all your social media accounts to start building your email list.

Doing this regularly will lead to an increased reputation that will give rise to an increased following that will lead to a constant stream of new contacts.

Incentives

Image Source: The Real Time Report

People don’t give up their contact information for nothing so having proper incentives can also work to drive a steady stream of new contacts.

Such incentives could be giveaway contests that you need to be careful with as you want to generate relevant contacts not a bunch of “compers”.

To create a successful contest that will generate relevant contacts, make sure that the prize you are offering is relevant to your product/service or how users enter the competition is relevant.

For example:

An online store selling digital papers does a social media content in which they are giving away a 3-month digital paper subscription.
An online jewellery store is running a social media contest in which student jewellery designers have to design their necklace with the winner getting their necklace made.

You will likely generate “compers” if you give away an iPad to anyone who shares or retweets your post.

If you want to take this a step further, you can purchase a bunch of goods from a specific company or likeable character in your industry and use those for a competition.

Russell talks about doing something similar on this Marketing Quickies Show (definitely take a listen).

That way you’re using supplementary products to pique interest.

Email Sneak Peeks

An excellent way to get more contacts from social media is to tease your fans and followers with the content or offers you send to your email subscribers.

For this to work, you will need to send content and offers to your email list that is exclusive to them as you aren’t giving much of an incentive for people to sign up when they can get the same content and offers on your blog or Facebook.

You can create social media a post notifying fans and followers about what is going to arrive in their mailboxes tomorrow and state that only those who have signed up to your newsletter will get this exclusive.

Make sure the exclusive content or offer is of value and to add a CTA to encourage fans and followers to click to sign up, so they don’t miss out.

Social Meta Data

I’m sure you know that you need to create compelling metadata to increase organic search click-through-rate, however, did you know that you also need to create compelling metadata for when people share your links on social media?

Well, you do now.

Just like as you would with organic search, you need to create a title, description and CTA that will encourage social media users to click through and signup.

The difference with social media metadata is that you can add an image too.

Facebook also goes as far as having a meta tag that will help them whether it is a website or blog post that is being shared and a meta tag to tell them who owns the content if that company has a Facebook Fan page.

Social meta-data is the perfect opportunity for you to add CTA’s when loyal customers are sharing your link to encourage their friends and family to also signup.

Videos

You can use your YouTube videos on your other social media channels to generate email signups by adding associate website annotations to your video that will allow viewers to click and be directed to the landing page you have set up to collect email addresses.

As well as using associate website annotations, you can also suggest viewer’s signup to your email list at the end of every video without duplicating the script.

An incredible tool to use for your videos is Wistia, which lets you embed contact forms onto your video, so you don’t even have to direct anyone anywhere; they can sign up right there and then.

Wistia will let you decide whether you want the form to be placed at the start of the video, 15 seconds into the video or further on.

It will also give you the option as to whether you want to stop viewers watching the video if they don’t signup.

Who’s Doing it Well

Someone who is successfully using social media to build their email list is Amy Porterfield who is a social media strategist… go figure.

Out of all the social media channels, she mainly focuses on Facebook to build her email list.

In 2010, Amy had around 600 contacts in her email list, fast forward two years where grew that to 50,000 contacts who were all engaged!

How has she done that?

She used social media to drive traffic to her premium content and giveaways that users would need to fill in their contact information to see.

Not only that but she insists that using social media to build relationships and make connections was equally as important to the growth of her engaged email list.

Are you struggling to grow your email list? What are the major struggles you are facing?

Please share all your stories, thoughts and ideas by leaving your comments below.

Thanks for reading Smart Marketer’s Guide To Listbuilding Using Social Media which appeared first on ClickFunnels.