It's time to create your business Email List
It’s time you become a HUGE fan of an email list- and let me tell you why! First, email is such an intimate place to really connect with your audience. It’s one of the best places to nurture warm leads and make lasting relationships with clients who really want to work with you. Plus, it’s a powerhouse place to write content you can use over and over again- in captions, blog posts, reels ideas, and make your content all super streamlined + super connected. It’s also an amazing way to connect directly with your audience. No algorithms or hopes that they see it- just you and their inbox. A quality email list is SO powerful as you’re running your business. They give you an inner circle when you’re launching something new or running a sale or even for market research.
Okay, I hear you, “But I don’t wanna flood people’s inboxes Jordan!
Don’t they hear enough from me?” And lemme just say- no. No they don’t. People want to hear about your services, your journey, your business. You want a mailing list of people who WANT what you’re putting out- and can’t get enough of it.
An email list is the perfect place to dive into exactly the things you’re most passionate about- whether it’s tips against burnout, new vegan recipes, or your latest wedding. These passions become valuable content to your audience and it can make your business so much deeper and far-reaching.
So how do you get started with an email list?
For the nuts and bolts, I know there’s so many good email services out there. A lot of clients use MailChimp, but there’s also FloDesk and the services that might come built-in to your website provider. Squarespace and Wix both have something like for an extra fee.
I recommend just starting with one email a month. Make it super simple. Slowly work your way up to however many feel right for you and your market. Some of my clients like to do it twice a week or weekly, and some even do it two or three times a week. It totally depends on your content, your audience and what you feel comfortable with (but, again, let’s NOT make this decision while thinking people just “don’t want to hear from you.”)
And the biggest step is starting and/or growing your email list- a quality freebie.
A freebie is one of the major ways you get somebody to click “subcsribe.” Obviously they don’t have to stay subscribed, but a freebie is a great way to catch their interest and get that relationship going. And the best freebies are the ones where they don’t even think twice before typing in their email.
What makes a great freebie?
- It is results-driven and easily clickable. What do I mean by that? I mean that your freebie should give someone a super easy win. Teach them something really valuable, share a short recommendation, or use something that always seems to give your clients an “Aha!” moment. You can even pull from a digital product you already sell- but just make a bite-sized version!
- Keep it short and sweet. Freebies don’t need to be super long or detailed- they really are just a high-quality nugget of information.
- Put yourself in there! Add a photo of you, talk a bit about your services, and make sure that they associate the freebie with YOU. Have a page of your freebie connecting yourself to the content.
- Share about it! You can make the best freebie ever- but if you never talk about it, what good is it? Talk about it in your stories, make ads for it, and make it something you can share about over and over again. I set a goal of sharing about my freebie once a week on my Instagram stories.
Freebies can easily be evergreen content that you can pull from again and again, or something more seasonal or topical- whatever works for you! But I love having an evergreen freebie that people will always find valuable and never really becomes outdated.
If all this is sounding too much, you can easily outsource your email marketing or your freebie- especially if you know you’re going to have a big audience.
Now, I love my freebie, but when I first started my e-mail list- I kicked it off by just promising people my insights as a long-time social media manager. I teased that I was going to share how I grew social media accounts and insider info they won’t hear anywhere else- and that’s exactly what they got! And it totally worked. I outsourced some of the work, and together I got over 4,000 impressions when I started up my list.
So, you can also market your email list as somewhere to get info you won’t share anywhere else, or at least in that much detail. Your list can become your inner circle that hears your most valuable tips or detailed insights, while your social media just gets a sample of what you know.
Whether or not you have an e-mail list already (or maybe started it but then it fizzled out) - I highly recommend getting back into it. It’s such a powerful and intimate way to really engage with your audience, and get them to engage with you. I promise you, it’s a great investment in you and your business.
Listen to the podcast version of this blog here.
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