Never fails. Every month I get a question from someone and they ask Derek, should I
be building my email list or my social media profiles? And you know what? Here's the
answer if you're not building your email list you are an idiot. How do I know this I'm
Derek Halpern, the founder of Social Triggers, and I still want to hit my head against the
wall for not building my email list sooner on every single one of my websites. So let's
get into it. I got two numbers for you three hundred and forty two hundred. OK a few months
ago when I updated my Twitter account and I sent the link to my Twitter followers I
sent about three hundred clicks to my website, but when I shared that same link to a similar
amount of email subscribers I sent forty two hundred clicks to my website. Now I know you
can't spend clicks but those clicks are people the more people you get to your website the
more money you can make. More people more clicks more money. Why does email outperform
twitter by such a large margin, even though you are sending links to the same amount of
people? Look at it like this. How many e-mails the people get per day? A hundred? How many
Twitter updates do they get per day? Thousands? What's more likely to be seen? One in a hundred
or one in a thousand? Obviously one in a hundred. That said I know I'm talking about Twitter
right but I've seen the same exact thing with Facebook and Google plus. If I send an update
to my Facebook or Google+ following I find that it drastically under performs email as
well. Now since email performs so much better than social media you would think building
an email list is harder but in my experience that's not the case. As a matter of fact I
think building a social media following is harder than building an email list. I'll explain
When I sent about a thousand clicks to an opt-in page about fifty percent of those people
then went ahead and opted in to my email. So a thousand people fifty percent five hundred
people became email subscribers. On a whole other twist of fate when I sent a thousand
clicks to my Twitter page I didn't even gain five hundred new followers. The Twitter page
actually underperformed an email opt in page people were seemingly less likely to follow
me on Twitter than they were to subscribe to my email. Now this is strange because e-mail
crushes social media. The question is how can you begin growing your email list? It
turns out that people can start growing their lists today with these two simple strategies.
Number one add opt-in forms to the right places on your website. Alright that's it seriously
just add opt-in forms to the right places. one of my readers Laura of momables.com followed
my advice and where to place opt-in forms and here's what happened she went from getting
between five and eight email subscribers per day new email subscribers between five and
eight email subscribers to twenty five to thirty eight email subscribers per day. That's
a huge increase. All by adding the email forms to the right places on her website. So where
are the right places to add the email sign up forms? I'd add one to the top of your sidebar,
one to the top of your pages and one in your about page and I'd even consider using a pop
up. Number two I'd eliminate clutter from your web design because I believe clutter
is the Number one conversion killer on web designs. alright and I talked about this study
before but to really drive this point home Sheena Iyengar did this famous jams study
where she discovered that people when confronted with too many different decisions to make
too many options they tend to walk away from that decision process and choose no options.
So when you have a cluttered website and there's too many things for people to click on, people
often decide to click on nothing and leave your site never to return. And check it the
same goes for email sign up forms, if there's too much clutter on your website people are
not going to sign up for your mailing list because they're going to be overwhelmed with
too many options. So are you building your email list as your main priority? If yes congratulations
go ahead and leave a comment below this video letting me know how it's working for you.
If no I want to hear about that too but I have a fair warning I might make fun of you.
That said do you know anyone who is not building their email list as their main priority? Go
a head and send them a link to this video to help change their mind. They'll probably
thank you and me later. And here's my blatant self promotion telling you to go to SocialTriggers.com
to get on my email list because building my email is priority number one. not only are
you going to get more SocialTriggers TV episodes just like this you'll gain access to premium
training material that I only make available for email list subscribers and now want to
make it rain subscribe boxes.