Email Marketing is something that I had put off for a while simply because I didn’t know where to start! It all seemed overwhelming and foreign to me, so I just never did anything on it.
For a while I had a whopping 7 people on my email list. If you can even call that an email list haha! I know that email marketing is one of the BEST ways to connect with your audience and has an insane return on investment compared to social media, SEO, and other typical marketing strategies. But I always just thought it was too complicated!
One of the concepts I teach to my students in my Freedom to Flourish Course is how to break down big projects into smaller steps so that they can beat overwhelm and accomplish anything! I realized that I wasn’t applying the very thing I was teaching in my own life.
Well, that changed!! I finally sat down and made a plan on how to grow my email list to my first 250 subscribers. And I want to share with you how I did it so that you can get started too! I want to help you take the guesswork out of email marketing so that you can get started!!
I’m a big believer in setting actionable goals. So often, we quit things because our plans are just too vague. So I’m going to be sharing with you easy, actionable steps to grow your email list! Check back next week for the next post in this series!
3 Starting Steps for Email Marketing
1. Sign Up for an Email Marketing Software
There are LOTS of great options out there for email service providers! The most popular ones you might have heard of are Mailchimp, ConvertKit, MailerLite, ConstantContact & FloDesk. There are a lot more out there, but these are just the most common ones I’ve come across!
Don’t overthink this choice! You can waste a lot of time where you could be serving your audience by overthinking this. I recommend checking out 2-3 of them and then just picking one! Spend a little bit of time on each one seeing how they work. For me, I was so confused by Mailchimp that I just gave up. But when I signed up for ConvertKit everything was a breeze! Choose the one that works for you.
The most common ones I see creative entrepreneurs using are ConvertKit and FloDesk. I decided to go with ConvertKit because they have a free option and because there are so many things you can do with the analytics. FloDesk is also really popular because their emails just look super beautiful!!!
2. Create an Incentive to Get People to Sign Up
I think the best way to grow your email list is to give people an incentive for joining! If your goal is to eventually sell to people using your email list, you first need to build the know, like, & trust factors with your audience. They need to know who you are, they need to like you, and they need to trust you. To do that, you need to serve them!!
You can offer a freebie or a lead magnet. You can offer them educational content. Whatever it is, make sure it’s something your audience would want to know!! See if you can solve a problem that they have. Give them an easy win for signing up for your list!
Once you decide on what you will create, you want to decide on the format. You can offer a checklist, a download, a worksheet, a video, an email course, anything! Try to think of the ways your audience would most like to view content. Better yet, why not poll them on your Insta stories to see what they would prefer!
And then get to work on creating it! Again, don’t overthink this step!! You can design some cool graphics on Canva or build a worksheet right on Google Docs. Use what you have and just get it done!
3. Build Your Landing Page to Collect Subscribers
The landing page is going to tell your audience a little bit about what they will get by signing up to your list. Then it gives them a place to enter their email address so they can subscribe. Then, once they subscribe they will receive whatever it is you promised them for signing up! One thing I love about ConvertKit is that they make building Landing Pages SO stinking easy!!! They have beautiful templates to set up. I made four landing pages for my lead magnets in under an hour!!! Then you can share the link with your audience to start collecting subscribers!
If you want an inside look into ConvertKit, I recommend checking out Amy Porterfield’s List Building Starter Guide to help you get started!! She will walk you through the process of getting this set up. It’s so easy!!! I can’t believe I procrastinated for so long on building my list! Don’t be like me. The best time to start is now!!
P.S. If you want to learn more about email marketing & follow my journey, CLICK HERE!
Sign up for my brand new course HERE.
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