HOW TO BUILD AN EMAIL LIST FROM SCRATCH (0 TO 15,000+ EMAIL SUBS!)

Key Takeaways

what is up everyone welcome back to my channel in today's video I'm going to teach you step by step how you can build your email list from scratch now before I begin this video comes at the perfect time because on March 13th 2019 aka last Wednesday Facebook Instagram and whatsapp all shut down across the world thankfully those platforms were only shut down for a day but I believe that that day alone serves as a huge reminder to a lot of business owners and content creators the importance of having an email list and the reason why having an email list is so important and I mentioned it in this video right here is that one day social media could easily shut down and when that happens and you don't have an email list that means that you will lose all contact with all of your followers your customers your clients your audience so on and so forth basically if you don't have an email list and if you don't have a back-up plan for when social media comes crumbling down one day if that happens then you basically risk losing it all even in my business while I'm creating content and while I'm helping my clients I'm still building my email list to date in my business I have over 15,000 people in my list and that's why in today's video I really want to teach you step by step how you can build an email list from scratch so that you can protect yourself and your business in case social media doesn't last forever so if you're interested in learning how then keep on watching alright so the number one way that you can build an email list is actually creating an opt-in a lead magnet or a freebie I think that those three words are interchangeable but the idea is is that you're giving away something for free in exchange for someone else to give them your email very much like real life if a stranger went up to you and asked you for your email or even your phone number you probably wouldn't give it to them however if that stranger went up to you and said hey if you give me your email I'll give you a free gift you'd probably say yes so keep that in mind when you are collecting emails you want to make sure that your offer or your lead magnet or your freebie is juicy enough for them to want to exchange emails with you to help you out a bit and give you some inspiration your opt-in or your lead magnet can be in the form of a PDF guide it could be in the form of a free video training or it can also be a free audio file regardless of what type of format you want your lead magnet to be in you need to make sure that what you're creating is actually what your audience wants it needs to be a no-brainer freebie that your audio we'll absolutely want to download and we'll want to get in exchange for giving you their email now once you've created your freebie or your lead magnet or your opt-in or whatever you want to call it the next thing that you want to do is you want to distribute your freebie now I'm going to use my channel as an example on my end I have four lead magnets in my business so far I've got my Instagram guide I've got my YouTube guide I've got my startup guide and I've also got my coffee chat guide and each four of these freebies live in my channel through my content let me explain now in my business I used YouTube as my main distribution platform in order to grow my email list but for many people it might be different but first of all let me just explain how I do it and then I'll also give you some alternative options especially if you aren't on YouTube now for me what you'll notice is that in many of my videos i'll actually be plugging some of my freebies if it's relevant for instance if you look at my most popular video on my channel it's all about how to grow your Instagram account organically and what you'll notice in that video is I also say if you liked this video make sure you download my Instagram guide which has even more tips and tricks on how you can grow on Instagram this is the same thing with my youtube guide with my youtube checklist for some of my videos where I'm talking about YouTube I'm plugging my lead magnet I'm saying things like if you really like this video make sure you download my YouTube optimization checklist in order to make sure that your bases are covered before you even post your video the same thing with the startup guide and the same thing with a coffee chat guide each freebie is linked to a certain video or certain videos that tackle the same subject and that's going to ensure that the people who are watching that video are going to be the most interested in that freebie and this kind of goes back to my previous advice about making sure that your freebies are absolutely relevant to your audience for example it doesn't make sense if I'm doing a video about Instagram and suddenly I'm plugging a freebie about how to do a bronze smokey eye it just doesn't make sense and that freebie will probably not perform that's why the way that I've been able to successfully grow my email list massively to over 15,000 people is because I'm very intentional with where I put my lead magnets and I make sure that the people who are watching that video would truly appreciate having that freebie now if you aren't a content creator on YouTube do not worry there are definitely other ways that you can grow your email for example you can run Facebook ads you can put your freebie in a Facebook group you can even put your freebie just in your Facebook page doesn't even have to be ads or groups another way is also putting it on your website making it really prominent in the header section of your website or even the footer section of your website and last but not least you can also put it in the link in your bio section on Instagram now the next question that you probably have is okay great Vanessa I've created my freebie and I have an idea of where I want to distribute it but how do I actually collect the email now the first thing that you'll absolutely need other than the freebie itself is actually having a landing page now to create your landing page you can do it on WordPress Squarespace or Wix or you can actually use landing page software such as leadpages and advanced to do that if you want to take it a step further you can also use clickfunnels car truck or kajabi in order to create this now I'm going to leave it up to you to do the research but just know that you're gonna need to have a landing page in order to collect the actual emails because at the end of the day you're not giving away your freebie for absolutely free you do need that person to fill out a form put their name and their email in order for that to enter into your email marketing software so that you've officially collected that email which brings me to my next step and that is you need to have email marketing software now the most common email marketing software that a lot of people use especially beginners who are on a budget is MailChimp but just know that there are other great email marketing software platforms out there like convertkit drip Aweber get response active campaign click funnels kajabi there's so many different pieces of software out there so again I really trust you to do your due diligence to make sure that you're purchasing the one that is best for you and that will fit your business goals the best however if you are thinking of building your business in the long run you're probably going to need an email software that allows you to do tagging and segmentation now this is going to be a bonus step for people who are watching this that are a little bit more advanced but basically what you need to know what great email marketing is to make sure that your lists are absolutely segmented and that people are tagged appropriately now what this means is that after you've got your freebie you've got your landing page and you've got your email marketing software and you've googled how to actually put it all together because you're gonna need to Google that and watch some tutorials you can just simply call it a day but if you want to take it a step further what you want to do is within the form that you put on your landing page you want to actually tag people whenever they download your freebie so for example whenever someone downloads my Instagram guide they're going to be tagged under Instagram when someone downloads my freebie about startup costs they're going to be tagged as startup cost when someone downloads my freebie about YouTube optimization they're going to be tagged as YouTube optimization meaning that within my list of 15,000 people I know exactly who downloaded what which is going to help me with my email marketing efforts because if you are simply collecting emails without tagging people you're going to lose a lot of visibility in terms of the interests of your audience so for example within my own list of 15,000 people I know exactly who is interested in YouTube versus who is interested in Instagram based on their download patterns and based on what freebies they've downloaded this is going to help my email marketing efforts whenever I send out an email for example to the people who have downloaded my YouTube checklist in my copy I'm going to say hey Paul how's your YouTube channel going I hope it's going well versus the person who's downloaded the Instagram guide I'm going to say hey Jessica how's your Instagram game going I hope it's going well this is going to increase my open rates whenever I broadcast an email because that person when they receive the email it seems as if it was absolutely tailored to them how many of you have actually ignored emails that seem very generic probably all of you right but when a company or when a service provider or when someone sends you an email and it truly feels like it was meant for you you are more likely to open it and click on it that's why you definitely want to research this step and make sure that you're tagging people accordingly so that you have more visibility on your email list and so that you can personalize your approach whenever you broadcast emails so that you can increase your open rate and when you get to the point when you sell products or services it's also going to help you with your conversion rates as well now obviously this video isn't meant to overwhelm you so that's why I've created my own freebie and my own lead magnet on how you can build an email list step by step this video really skims the surface in terms of how to get started but I really want you to be on the right path so I've created this checklist so that you can all the things that we've talked about and also get a little bit more detail to help you out on your journey to collect emails for your list that being said guys make sure you also check out these two beautiful videos right here if you want to learn how to level up your social media business and your life and as always I hope you guys have a great day hope you guys have a great week and I hope you guys have a great life and I'll see you in the next one bye guys