Hey everyone, Jason here digital marketing consultant.
And in this marketing guide, you're going to learn how to build your email list from
scratch using free software.
This is the exact same process I use to take our list from zero to 5,000 here on YouTube.
So make sure you check out that timestamp table of contents along with some other helpful
videos to doing your sales copy writing as well as a click by click guide, that explains
exactly what this diagram is and how you can implement it using a free tool called “mailer
Lite”, but I’ll get more onto that when we get to one of the later steps.
So first, how on earth do we start by growing your email list?
Well, there are three key elements or three steps we need to take in order to start growing
your email list, but more importantly, taking these steps is going to ensure that you get
the right type of subscribers and subscribers who ultimately want to do business with you.
After all just getting a bunch of random emails really is it gonna help if they're not interested
in your products or services.
So the three-step process we're going to use is something called a “lead generation funnel”.
We're going to have a landing page, that gives someone a lead magnet.
And then we're going to use a simple five email sequence called a “rapport sequence”.
Now, we're going to go through each one of these in detail as well as I’ll link up
some other videos in the description that take an even deeper dive if you want to go
into a deeper dive.
But first, we're going to start with the most important part of building your list.
And that is a lead magnet, because after all, if you walk up to random strangers say “hey,
give me your contact information”, chances are they're gonna say “no, thank you.
You creep”, right?
You need to be able to give people a logical reason to provide their contact information.
And a lead magnet is how you do that.
Now, this lead magnet is going to be the most important part of your list growth process.
Without a good lead magnet, you're going to either not get subscribers or you're going
to get bad subscribers and subscribers who don't trust you.
So we're going to spend the most amount of time here, because your lead magnet is what's
going to power the rest of your list growth.
Now, the good news is it doesn't have to take a long time to put together a lead magnet.
It can be a video, a diagram, a spreadsheet, just a plain old PDF, what's most important
is your lead magnet actually delivers value to your ideal customer or prospects.
Something that a lot of new email marketers forget is that this is priming someone to
actually do business with you in the future.
So if you provide a bad lead magnet up front, well they're probably not going to be very
inclined to actually whip out their credit card and purchase your products or services
or whatever you're promoting in the future, because you started off the relationship on
a bad note.
So here I'm going to go through several different types of lead magnets.
I'm gonna start with pdfs, because these are the easiest to put together.
Now, just because something's quick to put together, doesn't necessarily mean it's low
value.
And just because something takes a really long time to put together, doesn't necessarily
mean it's high value.
This is all about helping your ideal customers and prospects.
So here are four different options we have.
We have an audit and this can simply be a checklist showing them everything that they're
doing wrong or showing them where there are holes in their process of things that need
to be fixed.
Then we have a template this is one of my favorites, where it's simply a framework or
kind of a filling the blank worksheet that someone can go through in order to solve a
problem or achieve something that they're trying to work on.
This next one is a resource guide.
So if you have a list of resources or trusted sources in your particular industry, you can
save your ideal customer a lot of headache by just giving them all of the resources that
you think they should be using, whether that's a gear guide for filming YouTube videos or
if it's just a trusted resources list of places you go for other products or services.
And then finally, in the same vein we have report and this is simply where you do a bunch
of research for someone and compact all of it down and say, “hey here's the answer”,
right?
So a quick example of a report would just be the top five dividend stocks to buy or
the five best stocks to buy right now, right?
So that's something where you've done a bunch of research and you're just saying “hey,
instead of trying to figure out what stocks you should buy, here's just the answer”,
right?
Then and there, right?
So the first example we have here is going to be an audit.
Now, all these examples are here are just to help you figure out and spark an idea of
some different lead magnets to try you should be trying multiple.
That's why we're going to spend so much time here, because it's the most important part
of growing your email list.
Without the lead magnet your list growth is dead in the water.
So this particular example we created an analytics audit checklist.
So someone could go through their analytics and they could see all of the stuff that was
broken or not being configured correctly.
So this next one we have is a template so this is a simple 9 page Google Doc, where
we actually walk someone through the exact same process we go through for creating our
sales funnel.
So it has some scripts and some headline formulas along with some of our email automation rules
to really help someone easily go through the process of putting together their funnel this
has actually been one of our most popular lead magnets to date.
So you never know which one's going to work.
This next one who didn't really do well, but it's the Google tag manager playbook and this
is for people who are trying to do some advanced conversion tracking, using Google tag manager
on their site.
I won't get too much more into that, because then I’ll start to look like more of a nerd
than I actually am.
So then we'll go over here to the video.
So big warning here, what we just went through 9 out of 10 times it's going to be good enough
to start growing your email list.
I really recommend starting with some sort of PDF, template, audit, resource or guide,
and then moving over to video because of obviously video is going to take or a way longer, right?
So I’ll just go through one example here and that's going to be the presentation.
You can do four part series or testimonials although those are really intensive, so I
definitely don't recommend starting with them.
But if you want to go above and beyond after you have a couple of lead magnets in your
repertoire, you can go ahead and try that.
So our example here is we have a 60 minute training on how to grow a YouTube channel
and it sells one of our training courses.
And so instead of it actually used to be set up as a webinar, but webinar requires some
software and you can use get response if you want to run webinars, but we like to use a
free tool called “mailer light”, which I’ll get more onto in a moment here and
we just have a presentation on a page and this is converted surprisingly well, even
though we're not using any fancy software.
So it can just be a video that trains and then goes into a sales pitch.
Now, this final one is one of my personal favorites, but that just because I'm a bit
of an Excel geek and that is a spreadsheet.
Now, you don't have to build the spreadsheet yourself.
They're great spreadsheet builders you can hire on sites like Fiverr and Upwork to build
these for you, so it can be a calculator, a calendar, a tracker or an organizer, so
as an example one of my previous companies when I used to be a registered investment
advisor, we created this excel tool to help our potential clients figure out whether or
not they should be purchasing a stock they were thinking about.
We had a lot of clients come to us and say “hey, what about this stock or that's stock?”,
and we got really tired of answering the same question over and over again, which almost
nine out of ten times was “yeah, no, you probably shouldn't buy that stock”.
But instead, we put together this tool and was a great way to start that sales conversation.
So this next one is going to be a calendar.
This is one that we currently offer on this channel when we talk about content marketing,
this is a simple google sheet that we give to people in exchange for their contact information,
so they can plan out their YouTube content as well.
And finally as an example, we have a UTM organizer.
And this is something that I’ll talk more about when we get into how to actually drive
traffic during your traffic plan.
So with that those are just a couple of examples of what you could do with a lead magnet.
If you want an even deeper dive yes we can go even deeper, I’ll link up in the cards
in the description to a full-blown video that goes through a ton of different lead magnet
ideas.
I cannot stress enough that this is the most important part of your list building process.
Without a good lead magnet, everything else is dead in the water.
And this is so important because when you have a great lead magnet people are actually
going to want to open your emails and be more interested in what you're offering as a paid
offer, because they know you actually delivered on the free offer, right?
So if you give a crummy lead magnet, they're probably just going to assume the same thing
about your products and services.
So once we have that we're ready to put together something called a landing page.
Now, landing page is going to be a simple page on our site, where we ask for their contact
information in exchange for the lead magnet.
The better your lead magnet, the less work you have to do on your landing page.
So we'll go through a couple of examples here.
And I’ll reveal the free tool that I like using I think I gave it already and that is
“mailer light”.
So mailer light will allow you to do everything we're talking about in this video for free.
I'll link up in the cards and the description to a video that goes through excruciating
detail on how to set this all up click by click using mailer light.
If you want to get more advanced with your email marketing you already have a couple
of products or services and you want to do upsell and down sell sequences and you already
know what upsells and down cells are, then probably using something like get response
and thrive cart would be better.
If you don't know what upsells and downs sells are and just ignore the last 15 seconds I’ll
be talking and let's go into the landing page here.
So all a landing page needs to be is a headline a graphical representation of whatever your
lead magnet is and then a couple of bullet points and of course a place for them to enter
their email or their name and email.
In this particular instance we're just asking for their email.
Again, the video and the cards in the description we'll walk you through how to actually build
this page.
Now, what's really cool is this page you're looking at right here is converting over 30%
and you actually don't even have to do this much work.
You can even do less work and use something called a squeeze page, where instead of having
bullet points you just have the graphic the headline and then enter their name and email.
And if you even want to go a step further, you can even just have a graphic and a headline
and enter the name and email and just be done with it, right?
So the point I'm trying to get out here is there's no secret to these landing pages.
There's no copywriting formula that you need to know.
There's no design trick or hack that you need to know.
The reason that these landing pages convert and they convert anywhere from 25% all the
way up to 40% at times, is because of the lead magnet.
Because people actually want the lead magnet because the lead magnet is actually valuable.
So obviously why we spent so much time on the lead magnet?
Because honestly these pages they don't take a whole lot of work to put together.
The reason that they work is because of what's being offered not because of the way they
look or the copywriting formulas that were used..
So now we're ready for the rapport sequence so let's say you've created your awesome lead
magnet someone's entered their email or their name and email on your landing your squeeze
page, now it's time to actually start building some trust, and begin talking about whatever
your paid products or services.
Now, if you don't have a paid offer, that's okay.
You can continue to go through this process and just send some value and rapport building
emails, even if you don't have a paid offer.
We went a year and a half before we had anything to offer that was paid.
So just start growing your email list now.
It's going to be an asset that you will continue to go back to over and over again.
So going back to our diagram here, you see we've already talked about the lead magnet
the landing page that first email that's just the email where you're giving them a link
to whatever the lead magnet was.
Now we'll talk about the rapport sequence.
Now there are a lot of things you can do with this you can go ahead use the time stamp table
of contents to come back here.
I'm not going to go through each one of these emails individually, but all you're doing
with this report sequence that you're looking at is you're delivering the lead magnet and
then you're starting to build a relationship with your new subscribers.
Something that's really important is you don't immediately go into pitching whatever offer
you have.
And if you don't have an offer, then you don't have to worry about falling into that trap,
but essentially here you're going to use stories of yourself or past clients and customers
to build rapport and Trust with your new email subscribers and then you'd actually have two
emails that are a little more to the point where you are making an offer for a product
or service.
But again, all of these are soft sales.
You never send an email that saying “hey, you're gonna be an idiot..”
Or “hey, you gotta buy this thing right now, like it's the best thing in the world”.
That-- this thing that's not gonna work.
Just use story and make sure you always send emails as if you're talking to a real person
not some sort of salesy pitch.
Nobody likes reading sales pitches, right?
And then I’ll link up in the cards in the description to a video that walks through
how to use mailer light to actually set all of this up.
This is just a example of what it would look like inside mailer light, it's very easy to
take everything that we've been talking about and apply it inside of mailer light.
So I’ll link up in the cards in the description to that video that goes through all the technical
aspects of getting these like triggers and segmentations and all that fun stuff.
Now, we're ready for the final step in your process which is of course traffic, where
on earth are your email subscribers going to come from?
So you have two options.
You're going to have free or you're going to have paid right?
Well, free kind of if it's sweat equity in terms of creating content.
So you're going to be creating content or you're going to be creating ads.
Now, the lead generation funnel we've created thus far is going to be the same in both cases.
The only difference is going to be where the traffic is coming from.
So if you're going the free route, this is going to be from YouTube your podcast you
blog paid route any paid traffic source like YouTube, Google, Instagram, Facebook, Pinterest
the list goes on and on, right?
So if you want to learn how to use YouTube ads or Google search ads to get email subscribers,
I’ll link up in the description to a couple of playlists that walk you through how to
use those two platforms to drive targeted traffic to your landing page.
Here I'm going to talk about how to naturally integrate some calls to action for your lead
magnets inside of your content, whether you're doing YouTube videos, podcasts or a blog.
So going back to one of our lead magnet examples here, this is our content calendar so whenever
I'm doing a video on content marketing, somewhere in there,.
I will insert a call to action to check out the link in the description to download the
free content calendar that we personally use and of course this is not something where
I stopped the tutorial and I say “hey, you know what?
This is super great.
This is the most awesome spreadsheet you're ever gonna see.
You're an idiot if you don't download it”, right like you don't you don't need to oversell
it at all.
In fact, what I just said if you want to copy our content calendar check out the link in
the description is all the call to action you need inside of your content.
Now another great thing you can do is actually integrate whatever your offer is into the
tutorial or video or podcasts that you are going through.
So as an example, when we do Google Analytics videos, we'll talk about something called
UTM parameters.
Now, you don't have to worry about what UTM parameters are, it's just some fancy tracking
stuff.
But what we do is during the tutorial we say “hey, you can use our free tool” and then
we show an example of how the free tool makes the process easier.
Now, what's really important when you're especially if you're doing a tool or a checklist or a
guide, the piece of content that you're making needs to stand on its own.
So if I went through the tutorial and said-- at the end said by the way this isn't going
to work if you don't download our excel sheet, well then that would be pretty disingenuous,
right?
And people would not be happy with the content.
So you need to make sure that whatever your lead magnet is when you're talking about it
inside of your content or including it in your blog post or podcast, that it is something
that complements what is being talked about and is not necessary for your ideal viewer
audience member to actually be successful.
And so that's all there is to it to growing your email list if you got some value out
of this video.
Go and hit that like button, subscribe for more deep dive marketing videos just like
this one again in the cards and the description there'll be a full-blown video on how to use
mailer Lite, which is a completely free software to get started to set up this entire process.
If you're doing affiliate marketing, make sure that you check out something like get
response for Convertkit, because mailer light does not like affiliate only offers.
So make sure you hit that like button, subscribe for more deep dive marketing videos just like
this one and until the next, keep building the business you love.