A few months ago I sat down & put together a strategy for growing your email list from zero subscribers to as many as you please...
I did it because I get asked every single day how to grow an email list... especially using FREE methods.
So today I'm going to re-share that strategy with you because people LOVED it the last time I sent it out.
Let's do this!
If your list is...
0-100:
Right now you just need to practice writing AND have people to write to. Your friends, family, Facebook groups, other lists, and anyone else you know will do. Ask them to join your list. I know it may seem like you're being annoying, but you're not. If they don't want to join, they won't. If they do want to join, they will. There's nothing to lose.
I remember when I had 34 people on my list. A lot of them were big marketers that I respected that I reached out to, thinking that I was annoying them. Turns out, they're still on my list to this day. And a lot of them have bought high ticket services. Don't be shy, just ask.
Also make sure you have some benefit or theme. This is what keeps people around.
You should be able to finish this sentence about your own list: "By being on my list, you will learn _____."
100-500:
You've made it past the hardest part. Now is when you should start asking your audience questions with the goal of getting replies about what they struggle with/what their goals are. Then start developing a product or service based on their answers.
Yes, that means that you should probably create your first Shopify store or funnel or other means of collecting money in exchange for your products or services. As long as you are able to trade & transact, you are heading in the right direction. You can even just send emails and ask people to reply if they want to chat about getting their problems solved. Then close the sale over the phone. This will fund your future.
Getting on Podcasts with a service like Podcast Hawk is also a GREAT way to grow for FREE at this stage.
500-1,000:
You should now have a main offer built out that you can consistently send to your list OR advertise online in order to acquire new subscribers (preferably buyers). You can also reach out to people who own similar lists and pay them to send an email about your offer (a list drop).
Your offer should have enough data now so you can tell that it's going to do well when you start spending more money on ads or list drops. If the offer doesn't have enough traction, you need to tweak it.
In other words, ask yourself, "Is this something people actually want? How can I make it more appealing or solve a bigger problem?"
1,000-10,000:
Continue to tweak your main offer to create maximum scale. Keep asking your audience relevant questions and tell relatable stories. You'll quickly realize that it's not that hard to come up with even more offers for warm traffic. These are easy to get up...
i.e. You can send emails about certain topics or offers & have people reply if they are interested. Then jump on the phone & close a deal with them.
This is how you close high-ticket deals and make money rather quickly.
10,000-100,000:
You absolutely need to be running paid advertising at this point AND have a handful of offers to sell to your list. If you're not doing this, you're leaving a lot of money on the table. Or worse, wasting time.
You need to grow. You've got a system down, you just need to keep perfecting it.
That's all I can really say here because the training wheels should be off by now. It's more about growing the business at this point, which clearly has some sort of traction by now unless you're doing some shady method of buying subscribers from sketchy sites (don't do this).
100,000+:
Keep scaling. Start segmenting. Find people to partner with. Find more offers to send. They can be your own or affiliate partnerships.
Sell, sell, sell. But also don't forget about the basics like storytelling, curiosity, relatability, clear benefits, value, entertainment, etc.
Just like when you first started, there still needs to be an obvious benefit of being on the list.
Other common questions & answers
How do you fix low open rates?
This is usually a symptom of a few things:
1. What you are saying isn't relevant to your subscribers. Think about why they opted-in in the first place. Then look at what you've been sending lately. Does it look like something they would care about based on why they initially joined your list? The hardest part is being honest with yourself.
2. Your subject lines don't make sense. You need curiosity & benefit. Random phrases and sentence-looking subject lines are bad. They're not relevant. Would you open your own subject lines?
3. You're going to spam or the Gmail Promo Tab. If this is the case, you should hire help. This subject is too broad for me to write about in this post. If you're having deliverability problems, watch this.
How do you get back disengaged subscribers?
Make sure you read the answers to the question above first so you can stop the bleeding and not lose subscribers so quickly. Prevention is always the best medicine.
However, if you're losing people, the best thing you can do is send an email to them with ONLY your first name as the From Name. Make the subject line "remember me?". Then in the body of the email, remind them how they found you and give them some type of deal or content to chew on. The open rate won't be crazy high but it will save some people.
But if your emails are going to spam or the promo tab, they still won't see your emails, so you need to fix the problem or you'll lose people even faster. Like I said earlier, if you're having issues, watch this.
People only buy when I have discounts. How do I fix this?
Odds are, you've trained them to be this way by offering too many discounts. You need to start off by RELATING to them BEFORE selling to them.
People trust you 10x more when they know you've been in their shoes & experienced their problems. Relatable stories are the way to do this. And it doesn't look salesy at all. It hooks them in and THEN you transition to how you solved their problem with your product/service. Then pitch it to them.
Also, photos and proof that your product or service works is a MUST.
If you need help writing emails that actually convert, WITHOUT huge discounts, check this out.
P.S. This post originally came from an email I sent to my private list. If you want to see more stuff like this from me & get my Email FAQ Answer Doc for FREE (it pretty much answers every single question you have about email), you can join my list using this link