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!

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!

Case Study: Ryan Holiday’s “Reading List Email” Newsletter (250k+ Subscribers)

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?

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

Why the Newsletter Format Works So Well

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. 

How to Come Up with a Newsletter Concept

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:

#1: Creating a Separate Brand for Your 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”.

#2: Having a Unique Newsletter Template That Provides Bite-Sized Value

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!

#3: Having a Dedicated Newsletter Page on Your Website

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!

Marketing Strategies for Growing Your Newsletter

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.

Social Media Ads

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:

1. Meme ads
2. 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.

Newsletter Ads

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:

1. Like the newsletter format
2. 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!

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