Episode #040: 7 Strategies To Grow Your Email List
Want to know how to grow your email list, generate more leads, and create more sales opportunities in your business?
Tune into this weeks episode to learn...
A simple Facebook Post that generate over 100 leads for us in 24 hours
How to leverage your Instagram more effectively for list growth
My FAVORITE strategy for consistent and daily list growth!
These 7 strategies will change the game - so tune in!
Links Mentioned on the Show From Zach:
Not Your Average Membership Use code: Podcast
Full Transcript:
This is Not Your Average Online Marketing Podcast, episode number 40. And in this episode, we're talking about how to grow your email list, strategies, tips, and ideas on how to get more people signing up for your freebies opt ins and offers. So let's get into it.
Hey, hey, hey, not so average marketer, welcome to another episode of the podcast. Now I'm really excited for this week's episode, because we're going to talk about ways that you can grow your email list. Now, I always like to start, when I talk about email list growth, by setting the stage and helping you understand that it's not just about growing your list, right? When I first started online, I used to hear all the time, "The money's in your list, the money's in your list, grow your email list, grow your email list." And I always like to start by saying, the potential money is in your email list, because you have to do something with the names and emails that you collect.
So it's really important that, before we dive into this, that I mentioned, you need to have a plan of what you're going to do with the new leads. Now I recommend a couple things. First, I recommend that you have a really simple email sequence, even just five emails that kind of warm people up, get them in your ecosystem, share some of your best content, maybe present a low ticket offer to everybody that gets on your email list. The other thing that I recommend is that you also have a plan for when you're going to promote or when you're going to launch, right? So if you want to grow your email list, you have to be thinking 30, 60, 90 days ahead to, if I put time and energy into growing this list, where does the money come back to me? So you also really want to have an offer or an idea for an offer that you're going to promote to this email list that you're growing.
I always tell people, "Look, you can do whatever you want, but if you don't have something on the back end of your opt in, then you're kind of just growing this potential money without actually growing your revenue." So I always like to start there because I think it's super important to understand that you've got to have content on the back end of your freebie, okay?
So I want to share with you eight different ways that you can grow your email list and all of these are different strategies that you can employ, some free, some paid, but the point is that by the time you're done here you should have a couple ideas that you can go implement into your business.
So let's jump into the first one, and this is a free strategy that I absolutely love to use called the, I've created or I'm thinking about creating, post. So I do these on my Facebook all the time, especially when I create a new freebie. And I'm going to read you verbatim what I wrote. So I wrote, "I'm putting together a swipe file of my best performing Facebook ads based on what's currently working, would you like a copy?"
Now that seems innocuous and simple and really easy, but I'll tell you we had 45 people say, "Yes, I want a copy." And what we did was we went through every person in the comment and we dropped them a little note and a link. When all was said and done, we had 45 people that we gathered from this simple post opting into our freebie. And I will also mention that for this freebie, we had an offer on the back end and we had a trip wire. So a trip wire basically means as soon as people opt in, we gave them a low ticket offer, a $25 offer to learn more about Facebook ads. We also have a series of emails on the back end that promotes our $25 Facebook ads boot camp that continues to sell that product to all of our new opt ins.
So basically we found our warmest audience, because they're already connected with me on Facebook. We got them to opt into our list and then we made an offer right away. And of course it's a quality offer. We really believe in what we're promoting, but it was a super simple way to just add people to our list by talking about something we created. The other one that I've done is, we did this again for a promotion that I'm a part of, where I said, "I recorded a 23 minute presentation on getting your services and VIP sales calls booked with Facebook and Instagram ads, want it for free?" And we ended up getting about 30 people comment on that asking for an opt in link. So sometimes just kind of asking people if they want something you've created can be really, really powerful. So that's my first strategy for growing your list. I always like to kick off with something that's low cost or free.
Now the second thing that you can do, and we've done a little bit of this, but I've seen some of my friends do this really successfully, is using Instagram Reels to grow your email list. Now this is a dual purpose strategy or a dual tactic strategy. The first thing is, Instagram Reels are popping right now. They just are. They're working really well. We're regularly reaching five, six, 7,000 views on our Instagram Reels just by creating consistent content. When somebody sees one of my Reels, they tend to visit my profile. We've noticed that when I do Reels, my profile visits and my profile link clicks are up. So first things first, you want to make sure that you have a freebie linked up in your profile when people visit you on Instagram.
The second piece of this strategy that I've seen work really, really well is to have people drop a comment from your Reel in the comment section if they want a freebie. So I have a friend who did this really well, and she basically said, "Hey, I've got a marketing plan that's going to support you. If you want it, drop the word marketing in the chat and I'll DM you." And then all you do is reach out via DMs, give them a link to opt in. But you also, this is kind of this really cool thing, you get to start a one-on-one conversation with a potential customer. So not only are you sending out a freebie, you're starting a conversation with somebody who may want to become a client, may want to become a student, may want to become a member of your membership. You're really connecting with your audience in a deeper way.
So in that same vein, the other thing that you can do are Instagram Stories. And rather than just say, "Oh, do an Instagram Story and promote your freebie." I wanted to give you a little strategy that has worked super well for us. So we love the link sticker on Instagram. It's worked really well for us. We've gotten good results with the link sticker. However, what we've found is that if you start your Instagram Stories, the first story that you post for the day, with a link sticker, where someone can click a link on your stories, we get really low reach. But if we start our Instagram Stories with an engagement sticker, whether that be a poll, a multiple choice, a question, if we start that way, we get the engagement and then Instagram pushes out the stories that come after that even if they have a link in them.
So starting your stories with an engaging sticker or an engaging strategy, and then moving into, "Oh, now I want to share this link with you," can really boost up your conversion rates and get you, or not your conversion rates, well that too, but it will also boost up how many people see the story. So don't just do a story that's like, "Click here to get my thing." Do a story that's like, "Let me tell you a little bit about what I'm working on. Is this something that excites you? Vote in this poll," and then drop the link. Because that's going to increase your views and get you more clicks on your link because you've got more views.
Now this next one that I want to talk about is something that you should be using really sparingly, really, really sparingly, but it works. We tested this out and it worked really stinking well. So if you have a Facebook group, if you don't, I apologize, this one won't apply to you as much, but if you have a Facebook group, there is a new Facebook group feature that we've been testing and it's been working incredibly well. And what it is, is it's called the everyone tag. And you've probably noticed it, you've been tagged in a post in a Facebook group you're a member of that says, @everyone.
Now a couple things, one, I've noticed that the everyone tag only works on my phone and it doesn't work all the time, but I'm always coming to test it and see how it performs, or if it will let me do it. But the @everyone tag is really cool because what it does is it will tag everybody in your Facebook group with a notification. So what we did was we combined that first strategy that I told you about where we said, "Hey, I'm creating this thing," and then we tagged everyone. So what we did was we have a Facebook group for anyone that's a student of ours, if they've spent a dollar or $25 or $50, it doesn't matter, you can join our customer only Facebook group. And what I did was I went into our customer only Facebook group and I said, "I'm putting together a swipe file of my best performing Facebook ads based on what's currently working, would you like a copy?" The exact same post that I put in the other one, right?
From here, I tagged @everyone. We have about 1,100 people in our Facebook group, and we had about 60 people ask for the freebie. Now, real talk. You might be saying, "Zach, that's all good and well, but if they're in your Facebook group and a customer, aren't they already on your email list?" Technically, yes. However, some people have already opted out. This strategy still works if you have a free group where you're not getting everybody on your email list yet. And three, I'm putting them into a new funnel, a new promotion, a new offer. That means I don't just generate the leads that are brand new, but I'm also generating leads that are going to buy my product, right? So it's not just always about, how do I get a brand new lead? How do I get a new lead? How do I get a new lead? Sometimes it's about getting that lead back onto your email list so that you can make them an offer, and that's exactly what we're doing here.
So as we start to shift... Those are my favorite free strategies. You can do them right now, whether you have an audience of a hundred, a thousand, 10,000, these are all really effective strategies, but I want to start talking about some of the more advanced strategies that we use. And the first more advanced strategy that we'll use to grow our email list is creating core content with shareability and strong calls to action.
So for example, this can be done with blogs, this can be done with podcasts, this can be done with YouTube videos, but we always want to have a really strong call to action when we want someone to do something. So for example, this can be used to generate leads to a paid program, a low ticket offer, or just to your opt in. But when I'm creating content like this, like this podcast, I could say, "Hey, if you're listening to this podcast and you want to generate more revenue, make sure you join our membership." And then I would talk a little bit about what our membership is, right? If I wanted to promote my freebie, I could say, "Hey, if you're loving this and you want to learn more about ways to generate leads, come opt into my freebie on lead generation."
Now I don't have those freebies, but if I created them, this would be a really strategic way to do it, and it can work really, really well. So sometimes I will create content that... If you noticed I said two things, it's shareable and it has a strong call to action. So the second thing is I want this content to be really shareable. I want someone to listen to this episode of the podcast, for example, and go, "Oh my gosh, this was so good, I have to share it on social media. This was so good, I have to tell my friend about listening to this episode. This was so good, I'm going to have to post it to my Instagram Stories." You want to create content that's highly shareable because that not only engages your current audience, but it helps you reach new audiences and grow your downloads, your views, your engagement, you want to reach new people. So I'm always trying to create content.
Now, one little piece that I'll add to this is, if you create a piece of content like a blog or a video, and you notice that it's getting lots of views, optimize it within a lead generator. So if it's a YouTube video, that could be adding a strong call to action into the description. If it's a podcast, that could be adding pre-roll content, which is content that plays before the episode starts. If it's a blog, it could be adding call to actions and links to your offers and links to your freebies within the content that people are already clicking to reading and digesting. So again, super simple, but super, super powerful.
The next strategy is again, a little advanced, but really, really helpful, and that is affiliates. So I love having affiliates promote our stuff. And what a lot of people do with affiliates is they say, "Oh, I'm going to do this affiliate promotion. I'm going to get my audience or my friends or people that I know to promote my product. And they're going to send lots of traffic to my sales page and it's going to be great." Here's the thing, with a lot of affiliate promotion you have someone else promoting your stuff, right? We're going to talk about a couple things here, but the first thing is I don't necessarily have people promote my sales page or my offer, I have them promote my freebie where I'm going to pitch the offer on the back end.
The reason I do this is because I know two things. One, if somebody becomes a lead first, I can continue to market to them which is going to help my friends or affiliates make more money because I'm going to keep marketing to that audience. And two, I know that I can then generate the lead who I have on my email list, I'm not just generating it if someone pays. So this is really powerful.
So I'm going to give you an example, we're actually an affiliate right now for my good friend Victoria Boyd in her lucrative leads summit, which is a summit with over 30 experts teaching how to generate leads for her services, VIP days, online course creators, coaches. And it's going to be really, really fun, and I'll get you the info on that in a second. But what she's done, which is really smart, is we are sending traffic to her summit signup page. We're not sending traffic to the all access pass page or the paid product page yet, we're just sending traffic to the sign up for this epic summit page. And on that page, people put their name and email in.
So Victoria's not only collecting the leads. She's remarketing to those leads with different offers, with the offer to upgrade their summit pass. And that means that as Victoria does this, I'm going to generate more revenue for my business because I'm an affiliate. I get a small commission for sharing my audience. So there's a lot of power in leveraging affiliates when it's done right. But I am of the ilk that you should 100% be promoting affiliate... Having people promote your stuff, as long as, as long as, as long as, as long as you're sending them to a freebie first, because I just find that works ridiculously well.
Now the last thing that I'm going to talk about is, of course, you probably guessed it, Facebook ads. I am a sucker for a good Facebook ad, and specifically Facebook lead ads. I am always trying to grow my list with a Facebook lead ad. And a Facebook lead ad is an ad that people opt in and put their name and email in on the Facebook platform. So they're not opting in on a landing page, they're opting in on Facebook. And it works ridiculously well. We see really high conversion rates. We see really low cost per lead. We get more opt [Instructor]. We still sell our products through our funnels and our backend. And the cool thing about Facebook lead ads and Facebook ads in general is that they're running 24/7. They're happening all the time, whether I have the capacity to be there or not.
And that's one of the things that I really, really like about Facebook ads is even at a lower ad spend, even at 10, $20 a day or less, it's still always working for you. It's still always, always, always working for you. And so just to give you a really specific example, we've been running ads for about a week tomorrow for one of our promotions, one of our funnels, and we've generated 286 leads in six days, about seven days, it'll be seven days at the end of today. So we'll actually hit 300 leads. So we're generating 300 leads a week. Yes, we have a budget. Yes, I acknowledge that. But it's not about, "Oh, I'm going to generate 300 leads a week." It's about, you can be generating leads every single day even if you're not doing anything, that go into your funnel, that get promoted to your products, that have the potential to buy your things and we just continue to run these ads and they work really, really well.
So I want you to just think about it, if you're listening to this and you're like, "I would love to do that, but I don't even know where to start." Facebook ads are a great place to just start dabbling even at five, 10, $20 a day. If you're like, "I've got an extra three to 400 a month I could be playing with," Facebook ads are where I would be putting that money. And if you need a training, we'll link it up in the show notes as well. But if you go to bootcamp.heartsoulhustle.com, you can check out, we have a $25 training on exactly how to run these ads. It's a really comprehensive training. It's from a five day challenge that we charged for and did a while back, but it's literally step by step how to set up these ads, write the copy, create the images, all that good stuff. So if you're listening to this and you're like, "I just want something that runs all the time," you want to check out bootcamp.heartsoulhustle.com.
Now, as we wrap up, I want to do a quick recap of all the strategies that we covered. So first we talked a little bit about the I've created or I'm creating posts on Facebook, and those can be really, really powerful. We then talked about Instagram Stories and how you can use those, along with Instagram Reels and how to leverage Instagram Reels to get DMS and start conversations. We also talked about the Facebook everything tag, of course used sparingly and strategically, but it can be really powerful. We talked about optimizing your content with call to actions and making them super, super shareable. We then talked a little bit about affiliates and lead generation ads.
So I just want to wrap this up by sharing with you, I mentioned earlier that I'm doing a summit with my good friend Victoria Boyd. And if you go to heartsoulhustle.com/lucrative, because it's called the Lucrative Lead Summit, that's heartsoulhustle.com/lucrative, L-U-C-R-A-T-I-V-E, you can check out the Lucrative Leads Summit. And this is going to be a really powerful summit where you're going to get to join me and 30 plus lead generation experts. To help you build a consistent stream of leads for your business without needing to send those spammy cold DMS, discounting your rates, and it's going to help you sell more one-on-one services, especially if you're getting started, this is a really great summit to be a part of because services are a great way to generate a lot of revenue.
And services can be coaching, it can be VIP days, it can be agency, but there's going to be some really, really awesome speakers. There's going to be topics like selling your offers without sales calls, how to be on guest podcasts to generate leads. Of course, I'm going to be there talking about Facebook ads to get leads for VIP days. My friend Lizzy Goddard is going to be talking about how she leverages $9 offers to grow her audience and her income. I mean, there's just so much good stuff. So if you want to check it out it's, heartsoulhustle.com/lucrative. We will link that up in the show notes as well.
So I hope you got mad value from this episode. If you need to recap anything, as always, you can go to heartsoulhustle.com/NYAP040. Again, that's heartsoulhustle.com/NYAP040, for Not Your Average Podcast, episode number 40. So we'll have a full show notes, transcripts, everything there for you. I hope you got mad value from this episode. Get out there, generate some leads and until next time, stay not so average.
