Build Your Email List (Part 2)
Having an email list is like having a secret line to communicate to your biggest fans.
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People sign up to stay informed about everything that’s going on with your website and your latest blog posts. You give them useable content, and if you want to go one step further, exclusive content that helps them with your topic.
Your email list is an important part of the foundation for a solid online business. You can’t depend exclusively on social media, especially since social media is moving to a pay-to-promote model. Email is still the best, free way to reach people.
Last post we talked about auto-responders as a good way to automate promotions and the fact that making money isn’t always sleazy. Today let’s take it one step further.
A free gift to sign up
You’ve seen it on many websites but offering a free gift as a thank you for signing up is a good way to build your list. Check out my how my friend Joe does it, pretty sharp.
The key with the free gift is to make it something valuable and relevant. You want your free stuff to be better than most people’s paid stuff. People come to this website to learn how to create a freedom based online business on the side, one of my free gifts is a 6 part series on creating an online business. I’ve gotten a good response from that PDF and it’s helped many get started.
What can you offer as your giveaway? You can make videos, you can create an information PDF, you can give away songs, whatever would be best for your specific audience. With the email services, it’s not too complicated to add your free thing to an auto-responder after sign up.
Just remember to tell people they’re signing up to get content that’s relevant to them. The freebie is just a thank you and something that can help further their journey.
Here are some articles that explain this well:
Start building your email list now by Jeff Goins
Why you should build your email list and how to get started by Derek Halpern
4 ways to build your email list today by the guys at The Sparkline
How to build a first-class email in 30 days from scratch by Copyblogger
Setting up an Auto-responder
I want to keep this simple for you:
On your dashboard, look for the auto-responder tab, click it.
Click the “create auto-responder” tab.
You will then be taken to a page that has all your email lists, choose the one (if there’s more than one) you want to set up an auto-responder series for.
You will be taken to a screen that shows when and what days you want your series to be sent out.
Next is the set up, what email subject line and where the responses should go.
You would then design how you want the email to look like, I choose the pre designed templates, I’m not a designer
Create a plain-text version for email boxes that do not read certain HTML.
And confirm it, that’s it!
Now, this is how you create the first email in the series, if you want to create multiple emails, on the third step you would choose to send out the second email once the first one is opened. The same would apply to a third and forth one. If you have specific questions, please email me at kconstable29@me.com.
If you want to learn a little more about this, my friend Josh Hinds and I did a webinar where we talk about building your email list. You can see that here.
If you want your online dream to support you this year, start building that list today. Even if you just want to share your content, email is better than social media. If you keep sharing your stuff on social media, people will feel like you’re spamming them. Trust me, I’ve been there
How are you building your email list and how’s it going?
P.S. The winner of the free one hour coaching session is Jenny Hester!
