In the online marketing world, your list is everything.
Your list consists of the email addresses of people who’ve chosen to follow you.
You want to be in touch with your list often… at least once a week.
They know you, like you, and trust you, and therefore are qualified to buy your products.
It’s hard to exaggerate the importance of your list.
You can have the world’s most persuasive copy, and a killer offer. But if you don’t have a big list of people who are likely to buy it you’ll struggle to sell much.
Here are 5 ways to grow your email list to sell more info-products…
1. Keep at it
Few things worth having in life come without practice, hard work, and consistency.
Most people give up at audience building way too soon. It won’t happen overnight. You need to keep at it.
Not for days, not for weeks. But for months and years.
I’m a big fan and subscriber of Financial Samurai. This guy wrote 3x per week for years before making any money.
Now he makes a great living from blogging – probably in the ballpark of $1M per year.
2. Make it easy to get onto your list
Your email list is the most valuable and important asset you own.
Building a huge audience on social media is fine… but it’s nowhere near as valuable as a huge email list. With social media, you’re at the mercy of a big tech company that can shut you down or change their algorithms and bury you..
You own and control your email list. That’s a great thing about Substack. They make it easy to back up and export your email list off their platform.
Plus, it’s simply a lot easier to monetize an email list than any other form of audience.
So its key to make it as easy as possible for people to join your email list. This means having:
- A clear, concise, landing page with a Call to Action that gets visitors to sign up (ideally converting between 40-50%)
- A clear journey for people to find this page from your social profiles, your website, and any other places you might be active
Discover the specific leverage points that will unlock growth in your business in less than 3 minutes. Start the diagnostic.
3. Form strategic partnerships
When I was growing RiskHedge, strategic partnerships worked better than any other tactic for me.
Other tactics might have added a few thousand in sales. This added millions.
The beauty of strategic partnerships is they let you acquire paid subscribers without spending money.
Affiliate agreements are the best way to structure these. Go here to see how to build these partnerships and find the right partners.
4. Guest appearances
Leverage other people’s audiences that they’ve already built.
A couple of ways to do this:
- Speaking on other people’s podcasts
- Guest-blogging on other people’s sites
- Taking over people’s social media channels for a day
When approaching partners, don’t make it about yourself and what you want. Make it about what you can do for them and their audience.
Here’s a secret: many content creators love nothing more than high-quality guest content that’s relevant to their audience. It gives them a break from producing… and gives their audience a fresh perspective. Use this to your advantage.
5. Paid ads
I saved this for last because it’s the last thing I’d focus on.
Before you even consider doing paid ads, you need a great understanding of:
- What your customer’s Lifetime Value (LTV) is – i.e. how much revenue you can expect to generate from a new customer.
- How much you’ll need a new customer to buy, on average, to breakeven on your marketing spend and give you an acceptable Return on Investment (ROI)
If you can make all of your money back from an ad in 1 month, that’s amazing.
Within 3 months is more realistic, but also great.
Within 6 months is fine.
Anything longer than that is getting risky… because you’ll be spending too long time a time “in the red.”
Until next time,
– Dan Steinhart, CPA
P.S. Did you know that your email list growth rate is one of a few hidden leverage points that can unlock revenue growth?
Take this simple 3-minute diagnostic to identify the specific leverage points that will unlock growth in your business. Start here.