Did you build a mailing list to offer awesome content to people who follow you? Do you manage it the best you could?
Do you propose something amazing in exchange for people’s email or are you just asking them to subscribe to your newsletter?
Do you have a list of people who are ready to buy the product that you are proposing ?
I see so many mistakes when it comes to this essential point of a successful business. If there is something you have to do well, it’s the management of your mailing list and how to build it!
So let’s see how to build and grow your list of contacts and completely transform your business because this point can be the difference between a business that works or doesn’t!
Why should you build a mailing list?
Like I said, the way you use email can be the difference between success or failure… This is the best way to talk to people who are interested in your content. A lot of business owners don’t even use it or only 5 % of the possibility than it can offer.
Email or social media?
A lot of people are putting all their efforts on social media and just ignore this key point. Yes, social media is important but it’s so little in comparison to the power of an email…
Do you think everybody has Facebook? Or instagram, or Twitter, etc.?
No.
And email?
Much much much more people have an email! In our western society, it has become very difficult to not have an email, so most people have one. You have to give one for your bank, for official papers, etc. It’s also the way that important contacts are made.
Email has also a more serious image than social media in people’s minds. It’s also a working tool for a lot of people. When you want to send something important, you do it by email. This way, when people receive an email in their box, they perceive more authority from you than if you had reached them with social media. When I say authority, I mean the way they perceive your expertise in a domain.
So, email is a more « serious » way to contact your clients.
More engagement!
Email is also the way to contact people to have the best return!
When I send an email, it’s around 25 to 35 % of people who open it (depending on the subject) and that’s just an average, you can do much better but it’s already a lot!
Usually, 3 to 15 % of people click on a link in the email!
Again, it’s a lot with social media. You are really happy if 10 % of the people who follow you see your post and if 1% to 3% of people interact with it, that’s amazing.
More personal
Giving your email address is a sign of trust. If someone takes the time to register to your email list and give you their email address, it’s a sign that they trust you a little bit already. You don’t give your email everywhere. You don’t want to have 10’000 emails per day arriving in your inbox, so you are selective. It means that generally, the people who are in your newsletter are more engaged than anyone else, they probably follow you more than others.
How to attract people to your email list?
Are you asking people to subscribe to your newsletter and hope some will subscribe?
You can, but are you sure a lot of people will really be interested?
No, a better way is to offer something in exchange for their email! They give you something of value and address them directly. So, give them also something that is valuable in exchange!
The best way to attract people to subscribe is to offer a « bonus ». It means that you give something of great value to them!
Let’s take an example, if you offer a Qigong class, it would be awesome to make an initiation online class for free in exchange for an email 🙂, give a guided meditation or how to use Qigong to say bye bye to stress. Just let your imagination flow!
If I am interested in Qigong classes and I find your website. Of course I will be interested by this kind of bonus! Also, it will help me to know you a little bit more. To have a first contact with you and to build a trusting relationship. I will definitely be more confident to buy a product from you later. Like a Qigong subscription to your class or a retreat with you or anything that you can sell on this specific subject that interests me!
Much much more efficient than just asking for subscribing to your newsletter…
How to offer a bonus on your website ?
The best way to offer your bonus is to put a signup form on your website. Like this, when people visit your website, they can subscribe to your newsletter. You will have nothing to do and they will receive the bonus automatically!
So how to do it? Well, there is different type of plugin that you can install on your website. Here, I will only talk about wordpress, because I only use this for building websites.
Free
Sumo is a good option where you can make a free pop-up on your website! It’s not the best but there is no perfect solution for free, so it’s a good option and a very good start when you have a small budget or you are just testing a business idea and don’t want to put too much money in it for now.
With payment
The best one that I know and the one that I use, is Thrive leads. It’s not too expensive and it’s really good! You can have pop-ups and signup forms in the content, at the end of your page or article etc. There are a lot of options and there is the possibility to customize your form completely. You have some pre-built options also to give you some inspiration. I love it!
Which email manager tool to choose?
Free
A good free email manager is Mailchimp. You can have a list of 1000 people on your newsletter for free, after that you will have to pay. But 1000 is a really good start and it will help you to build a first email list.
You can do a lot of stuff on this app. If the point is to be able to build your mailing list and send some newsletters to your followers, it will be a perfect tool. But if you want to do more specifique stuff like automatization campaigns, don’t count too much on it and try the paid one, ActiveCampaign.
With payment
The email manager that I use is ActiveCampaign and I have used it for several years. It’s a really good one, a very powerful tool to invest in. The payment is a progressive link depending on how many people you have on your list. You can do everything you want on it and especially if you want to be able to have some automatic emails to send to people. For example, when people subscribe to your newsletter, they receive a first email and after 2 days another one and then one week after a new email and you don’t have to send it manually.
Creating automatization is perfect to create more personalization and engagement with the people who follow you. Like this, you can guide them through your content and to what they need progressively.
It’s also a very good option for creating an online course and to be able to send an email every time a new class is available, for example.
How much mail too send to your list of contacts
This is a question that comes back often. You are maybe afraid that if you send too many emails, people will feel spamed and will stop following you or if you don’t send enough, they will maybe forget you.
And you are kind of right, it’s hard to find a good balance in how much mail to send per week, month, year…
There is no perfect answer to this… You have to feel it and to experiment. But in my experience, one mail per week is a good rhythm and people seem to like this. But again, you can always send more and see if people like it or not.
There are a lot of analytical tools in ActiveCampaign, for example, you can follow people’s engagement (mail openings, clicks, etc.), you can have an idea about people’s reactions to your mails.
Don’t send only commercial email!
Your mailing list is precious and the people in it are probably the ones who love your content the most. So don’t spam them everyday with stuff that you are selling. Do you like to receive selling mail every day? No, of course not… So don’t do it yourself to others! Again, it’s all about balance.
In your email, you can :
- Talk about some more private stuff that is happening to you and that will give them value also, give some special tips that they will only receive here.
- Promote some of your recent free content that you posted on your blog or Youtube to keep them updated.
And of course, sometimes, promote your paid content, your coaching, products, courses, events, etc.
Make automatization to save you time and to be more personal
Like I said, with a good email manager, you can create some automatization.
What is an “automatization” ?
It’s a series of emails that will be automatically sent to some people of your choice.
Like this, when people do certain actions or after a period of time, you can choose to send a specific email that you wrote in advance.
You can see this like a big tree of action.
Gain time :
The first advantage to doing this is for you to gain time. If a part of your business is automated, people can subscribe to your newsletter or to one of your classes and they will enter an automatization where they will receive everything they need, when they need it. And for this, you just need to create it one time and after that, you don’t have to do anything else.
It means that you don’t have to be present to be able to guide the people in an effective and personal way! And it’s also good for the people who follow you because they don’t need to wait on you to be able to access everything they need 🙂
Send your bonus automatically
Remember, we talked about your bonus before. With this kind of system, you will be able to send your special bonus as soon as people put their email address in to join your newsletter.
You don’t have to do anything, even if it’s in the middle of the night, they will simply receive their content directly!
Sell your product with your mailing list
Emails are the most efficient way to send something to people online. The number of people who will see your offer and who will buy it, works best through email. Way better than Facebook, Instagram, Youtube, etc.
To offer your product in your email is really good !
Why is it so efficient with email lists ?
You can just send an email to present your product. It will arrive directly to the person who is already interested in what you’re doing because they are already using one of your free products (your bonus). So, they will probably be interested in another product that you are offering, no?
Build a mailing list now !
If you don’t have an email list or you don’t care about it, it’s time to change! This is a way to reach your community with more personal and more interesting content. You want to create good energy with people who follow you and to have a good exchange with them! So what are you waiting for?
Thank you for reading this article to the end, tell me in the comment section how do you use your mailing list?
