7 Ways to Add More Subscribers to Your Email List This Month

“7 Ways to Add More Subscribers to Your Email List This Month”

Whether you have ten email subscribers or ten thousand, you will not step up from any plateau you’ve been stuck at until you grasp the importance of capturing—and retaining—email subscribers. You need to start building your subscriber list now, even if you don’t yet have an offer to present.

The most common mistake people make, when going into business online, is putting off building a list till “later”. In this webinar, I’m going to tell you why that particular mistake is so drastic, and give you a workable plan on how to correct it. Put the plan into operation at a comfortable pace for you, and you will see more subscribers swell your lists within the month.

If you habitually neglect your list, or haven’t even started building it yet, you are most likely making one of these common mistakes: You think that it’s not yet time to build your list because you don’t have a product to push … or you think you’re not important enough to attract a lot of subscribers … or you’re just plain afraid to start.

What you need to know about others with large lists is that they aren’t better than you, or more important than you, or more charismatic than you. They’ve just actively taken the same list-building steps you can start taking today.

I can’t emphasize this enough: The time to start building your list is now—not a week before you want to launch a package or program. Not “after” you’ve become famous or visible. In fact, that won’t happen until you start paying serious attention to building your list of email subscribers.

Without a list, your ability to land Joint Venture partners will be severely limited—and you won’t be able to sell your business (if that is in your future plans) for anywhere near the sum you can command with a healthy email list. (The other step you absolutely need to take, if you are planning on selling your business down the line, is registering your business as a Limited Liability Company.)

An email list isn’t a list full of people you bug; it’s a list full of people who are your fans. It’s a list full of people who believe in you; who look to you for answers and solutions; repeat buyers who are already 50% or more committed to buying products, books or package deals you put out.

It’s a list full of people who support you, like you, and are happy to tell others about you and your wonderful solutions.

They are your single biggest business asset and sales tool.

And, luckily, you can start one step at a time … today.

Step One: Build Your Community

The most common mistake people make when list-building is in thinking it’s all about selling. It is not. Let me stress that again. Successful list-building is not at all about selling. You may present offers, but what you are presenting all the time are solutions. You are providing friendship, support, encouragement, mentoring—and selling is only a small part of that.

It’s all about the connection.

Here’s how it typically works. Your ideal reader searches for a solution to a problem. She comes across a post by you, or a resource you’ve put out (free or paid); or she discovers your website, or sees your ad or boosted post on Facebook.

She signs up to get your solution … and in very rare cases, she might sign up to stay in touch, if you’ve wowed her with your importance to her life.

If you haven’t yet created a list, she might find a post by you that helps her but if you don’t have some way and incentive for her to sign up, she will quickly forget you and she will probably not find you again. Not providing sign-up opportunity with every appearance on the net is the number one—and most easily remedied—mistake people make that prevents them growing their lists. So write this down:

Make sure that every place your ideal visitor encounters you, you provide a reason to join your list and a way she can do so.

That’s just the beginning. It’s not about sending her to your offer, so put it out of your head that you have to create a paid product first. Half the time, she’ll find you because of:

• An image quote you wrote or provided that inspired her
• A tip you’ve shared in a Facebook group or on Twitter
• A post you’ve shared (written by someone else) that helps her with what she’s grappling with at the moment
• A post you wrote that gave her the information she was searching for
• The joke or cartoon you shared that made her laugh—and share it herself
• The story on your website in your about section that really resonated with her; that she could identify with
• Stumbling across you by accident

If that’s all there is, she may share your image quote or bookmark the cool article you wrote on “Confidence Building 101”—but then she will QUICKLY FORGET YOU.

You’ve shared a great introduction, now you need to build that relationship by giving her good reason to continue to turn to you for:

• Answers
• Inspirations
• Links
• Tools and resources
• Tips
• Entertainment
• Comfort and Encouragement
• Instruction
• Help

Here’s the real reason people follow other people: It’s all about trust. Building a successful, active email list is about connecting and helping—not selling.

To be memorable—to be the person your ideal client turns to first, when she needs help, you need to focus on:

• Communicating
• Helping
• Listening
• Responding
• Entertaining

And, above all, delivering. Delivering on promises, delivering on help.

You don’t just need to be the person to know, but also the person who knows who ELSE your ideal subscriber should know. So don’t just think in terms of making connections with those you want to serve: Connect UP as well as down: Follow and keep the conversation going with influencers and people YOU want to know, as well.

Step Two: Take Care of Basic ‘Set and Forget’ Strategies

Mistake number two involves going all out on one or two list-building strategies … before taking care of the absolute, ground zero basics of list-building.

Have you created, set up or installed all of the following? If not—if there’s even one of these basics that you’ve missed—go do them right now!

Ready? Here’s the list of absolute basics to make sure you’ve taken care of:

• A professional autoresponder subscription
• Your landing page and opt-in box
• Your website pop-up opt-in
• Your sign-up incentive
• A basic email series for those who sign up
• Your Facebook Page signup tab
• Your Twitter pinned post
• Your signature
• Your author bio/resource box

Okay, so what does each of these look like? Let’s go through them.

A Professional Autoresponder Subscription:

Sign up with a reliable, fully-featured autoresponder such as MailChimp or GetResponse.

Both of these autoresponder services mentioned are very popular … but MailChimp does allow you to start out with an account that is free until you reach 2,000 subscribers and 12,000 emails per month.

A Basic Email Series for Those Who Sign Up:

You can write these in Notepad or a Google Doc, or your favorite simple text processor. All you need is six or seven short emails. Your autoresponder will take care of:

• A thank you email for signing up, telling your signee how to get her download, how to contact you and how often she can expect to hear from you
• An email set to be sent two or three days later, asking if they’ve had time to download their gift, and reminding them how to contact you if they are having any problems or want to ask a question

• Five emails containing helpful things that might interest them. Some suggestions:
  • A short survey (no more than five questions)
  • Tips
  • Link to your post or another person’s post they might find helpful
  • News they’ll find highly relevant or important
  • A personal story
  • Another free resource
  • Your next offer (paid or free)

While all of these emails should be highly interesting in themselves, make sure they also contain a call to action: A suggestion that they take an action such as “download your tip sheet” or “read the full article”.

Space them about a week apart, give or take a day or two. You neither want to bombard them with emails or let them forget you. Try to make the intervals as natural as possible. (Think of what you would find the most helpful.)

It might seem a little intimidating at first to start writing regularly and create a full series to upload, but do things one step—or email—at a time. And by the time you’ve uploaded your first email series, you’ll automatically start looking for things you can share with your subscribers: Things they’ll find interesting, helpful and cool.

Your Facebook Page signup tab:

There’s totally no excuse not to create this—Facebook will keep prompting you to do so, if you haven’t already. All you need to do is enter the link to your best landing page (the one with your most compelling incentive).

For example, when you click on the link in Amanda Kijek’s Facebook Page, it doesn’t take you to her home page. Instead, it takes you to a dedicated landing page  with a sign-up incentive and box:

Your Facebook Page sign-up tab doesn’t have to say just “Sign Up”, either. You can kick it up a notch by giving a specific message such as “Learn more” or “Get your guide”. Or you can have it link directly to your Facebook group.

Your Facebook Page:

You do have a Facebook Page, don’t you? If not, rectify that right now. You can create more than one Facebook Page. You can have one for your business and one for you (select “Public Figure” for the latter type of page).

Your Twitter Pinned Post:

Another grievously-neglected and incredibly simple list-building essential. All you need to do is click on the three little dots under your favorite post to get a drop-down menu: Then select “Pin to your profile page”.

The next time someone clicks on your Twitter profile, the first thing they see is your pinned tweet sending them to your sign-up incentive.

Creating a pinned post is so easy to do!

Your Digital Signature:

Here’s another often-neglected basic: Adding a sign-up link, call to action or other social connection links in your signature.

This would be the signature you put in your email autoresponder—as well as the signatures you set up for private forums. (If you want to put links in the latter, be sure to check each forum’s individual guidelines first.)

Three email-signature tips:

1. Don’t throw everything-plus-the-kitchen-sink into your email signature. Think about the specific action you want them to take next—and be selective
2. Include an image or graphic: Your headshot or logo will help brand your business as your subscribers get used to seeing it every time.
3. Don’t make your email signature sound like a business corporation. Keep it personal. Speak to your ideal subscriber’s biggest need—even in your signature

Your Author Bio/Resource Box:

The final basic in our list is your author bio/resource box. Even though these are rarely used nowadays, you should have one ready with a link to your ideal landing page, for when you write guest posts or upload an article to an article directory.

When you write your own resource box, try to keep it at about three sentences, speak TO your ideal subscriber, and finish with a call to action.

One final essential: Get used to using images and color to make your content stand out and stick in peoples’ minds.

Should you use images in your email marketing? There’s no one definitive answer, but generally, yes. People always have the option of receiving their messages in Text Only—and a recent impromptu survey revealed that more people think that messages in text only means that the sender “is lazy” or “doesn’t care”, rather than thinking the sender is being considerate about bandwidth.

People typically receive email messages nowadays with images disabled, and they have to make a choice to view the images.

Images are eye-catchers. You can use free sites like Canva to create the occasional image quote to put in your emails. Include images of your books, if you are emailing about your books. Put your book image in your Facebook and Twitter cover photos. (Be sure to use Twitter daily if you have written a book: That’s the best place to promote it.)

Include images that support your messages—in your emails, your blog posts and in your social posts. Free sites like Pixabay.com allow you to search for the perfect, high-quality photo.

Images are also powerful, not just for attracting attention, but for tapping into the emotions. A social post with the right photo attached has a much higher chance of capturing a click-through or share than plain text. 

Images can reinforce your brand—or damage it, if you use poor-quality photographs or choose an image that contains a “message” that contradicts yours.

The same with colors. If you deal with other cultural groups, you need to know their customs, so you won’t unwittingly put their members off your posts, emails or website. For example, in Japan, white is the color of death—but in the Hindu color, white represents divine light and purity.

Red is a particularly “lucky” color for the Chinese—but in our own Western culture, it can either be viewed as the color of passion and excitement … or as a “stop” message, depending on how it is used.

And did you know that until quite recently, pink was the most common color for baby boys in Belgium?

And speaking of images, don’t just use static photographs: Grab peoples’ attention with videos—both live and uploaded to YouTube. Brand your channel. Put a call to action everywhere you can in your YouTube channel and individual video messages.

(Hint: Facebook Live videos are really catching on!)

While webinars are still effective and powerful sign-up tools, you can build your relationship and interact in real-time with Facebook Live videos. People love them because they are normally short, with one specific point—and it’s a chance for them to look you in the eye and see what you are really like; how you smile, your tone of voice, your facial expressions … how you connect. It is a powerful way to keep it real; to stop hiding behind five-year-old profile photos and let them see you are a real person—and you’re talking to them right now.

Remember, it’s not about always pushing a product or offer. It is about that real connection: About building that relationship with your followers and subscribers. So don’t be afraid to use video, audio and images to deepen that connection.

Step Three: Perfect Your Pitch

I promised to talk about the importance of having a powerful landing page, and not just a sidebar opt-in box. So let’s take a look at landing pages, what they do and how to use them.

A powerful landing page with a focused message can almost instantly capture more subscribers than any other type of vehicle or message.

What is a “landing” page or “squeeze” page?

It’s simply a page that is focused on inspiring the visitor to take a single, specific action, such as:

• Sign up for your email list
• Sign up for a free webinar
• Get a free resource such as a report, a cheat sheet or a template
• Subscribe to your newsletter
• Watch your latest tutorial or video on a specific topic

In short, take any action you direct them to take.

A strong landing page doesn’t contain anything except your message and your call to action (plus any supporting images or videos, of course). “Landing” is such a passive word, it is misleading. Landing Pages are actually all about impact and action.

It doesn’t contain more than one link, or tabs, or anchor text taking people to other pages. It does contain your call to action.

The best way to make sure you have a strong landing page:

1. Include a powerful headline that identifies something that’s a big problem for them and promise a solution
2. Identify their problem
3. Promise a solution
4. Tell them what to do to get it (“take the quiz”; “download the book”; get your cheat sheet”)
5. Put your call to action in a highly noticeable form or button

The real secret? Promise your solution RIGHT NOW—instantly. (Take the quiz and get an instant answer as to what business archetype you are.)

Remember that part of landing page creation: INSTANT help. Something they will get RIGHT NOW.

And if you can reference the process that can get them from A to Z, so much the better.

To summarize:

• Be specific
• Promise SIMPLICITY and an INSTANT RESULT—how it will INSTANTLY make their lives better

Another secret to powerful landing pages: Make them easy to find. If people Google your name, your landing page should be one of the first results to come up.

You achieve this by using the right domain name, either using your own name (if you are planning to do what Miki Strong does and use your home page as your landing page) … or use a domain name that contains your landing page’s promise and topic.

Your landing page domain name can also reinforce both memorability and branding.

And finally, do make sure that whatever gift or incentive you are offering, it is top quality, relevant, valuable—and the most irresistible gift you can offer (even if it’s only a tip sheet).

It’s all about creating the right incentive for the right person at the right time!

Designing Your Perfect, Powerful Landing Page:

So how do you create a gorgeous, professionally designed landing page? You can either hire a web designer—and if you do, make sure it is one that understands marketing; not just design—or you can subscribe to ClickFunnels.

ClickFunnels is drag-and-drop simple, providing an intuitive, easy-to-use dashboard and hundreds of beautifully designed, powerful templates you can instantly customize—everything from simple landing pages to video sales pages.

Read our in-depth ClickFunnels Review here –>

Step Four: Daily List-building Activities

Another simple action you can take and commitment you can make—right now: Realizing that growing your list should be your major DAILY priority.

List building is not something you do once (though as we’ve just seen, there are certain tasks you only need to do once, like creating a Pinned Tweet with a call to action in it.) List building is a PROCESS … a daily process.

Get into the habit of asking: “What will I do to grow my list today?”

Make a list of actions you could take:

• Writing a new broadcast email (one not connected to a series)
• Writing a new email series
• Writing an email mini course for your subscribers
• Creating and sharing a landing page for your new mini course
• Posting a Facebook Live video
• Changing your Pinned Tweet
• Updating your profile photo in all your platforms
• Writing an article
• Creating a Survey

Whether it’s a five-minute action or it takes up a full afternoon, do something every day to actively nurture, feed and grow your list—and keep in touch with your fans.

And build time for doing this into your daily schedule! Even if you write three priorities only per day in your To Do list, make one of them involve feeding and nurturing your people.

Remember what we said earlier about sharing UP as well as down? Well, follow influencers and share their posts. Take their surveys and answer their questions. Take time to nurture them too, so they will get to know you and be receptive when you finally decide to ask one to do an interview with you or be your Joint Venture partner.

Get into the habit of looking for news and resources for your people, training your radar to always have an ear on their needs, complaints, problems and wishes.

Share yourself. Put yourself out there in ways that will resonate with them. Remember, if you feel too “safe”, chances are you’re not really connecting: You’re putting on a front, an image. Be real, and be there, wherever they are.

Give your subscribers, customers and clients shout-outs too. Blog about their achievements or congratulate them on social media. Ask questions they find important—ones they want you to provide answers or solutions for.

Get them to share. Provide a contact form on your website asking for their stories—and share those stories when you get them.

And don’t forget to use the insights and analytics on your social sites to see which posts gain the most action: Then boost those posts or monetize them.

Step Five: Revamp Your Affiliate Program

Another mistake coaches in particular often make: Not creating an affiliate program and not celebrating affiliates. Even if you have no interest in running a huge affiliate program, you can still sell your products on networks like ClickBank and E-Junkie that manage affiliates for you.

These affiliates will come to your site—to the link you provide your sales network with—looking for resources they can use. That gives you the perfect chance to wow them and make them really want to work with you and share news about your products and programs.

Don’t ignore affiliates. Create powerful resources. Hold contests. Build a relationship with your affiliates. Run an active affiliate list. Reward affiliates. Give well-deserved shout-outs. Create a private forum or Facebook group for your affiliates.

Step Six: JV Partnerships—Pros and Cons

JV partnerships provide a powerful way to instantly make use of an established partner’s list to grow your own … but here’s the thing no one usually tells you: When it comes to landing influential JV partners, list size DOES matter.

Don’t even think of asking a top influencer for a partnership if your list consists of less than 5,000 subscribers. However, there are workarounds to this, so you can get to that stage.

Start by asking people one step ahead of you with a similar list to partner with you: Or provide your chosen expert with the EXACT gift or product she needs for her subscribers.

One of the most effective ways to do this is through “Giveaways”. Sometimes your favorite influencer will actually ask for people who want to participate in a Giveaway, wanting you to donate a gift. This is your chance to jump in with your best (and most relevant) product. Check the terms of the giveaway—whether or not the hostess wants to charge you a fee to participate, and if she will let you ask people to sign up in order to get your gift.

Find out the deadline for delivery of the gift—and deliver it promptly, on time.

Afterwards, thank your hostess for allowing you to participate in the Giveaway.

If you have a strongly professional presence (a nicely-designed website, LeadPages® landing pages, etc.) consider creating a Giveaway yourself. Note that you will need to be highly organized, and keep good records of who promised what, when it was delivered, contact information, special requests and so forth.

Above all, if you are asking someone to participate in a Giveaway or be interviewed by you, TELL them proactively what you will do to promote the Giveaway or interview: Advertising, webinars, etc.

Down the road, plan to contact your successful Giveaway Contributors and invite them to guest in a Summit, where each one presents a webinar, podcast or video on a specific aspect of the Summit’s main topic.

This gives both you and your participants many opportunities to expand your reach (and sell recordings!)

Step Seven: Finding Your Perfect List-building Mix

Our last step is all about finding your perfect list-building mix of strategies. You need to use more than one strategy—and choose the right strategies at the right time for list growth now.

You need to take care of two areas:

1. The Essentials
   • Daily list building activities
   • Your “Set and Forget” basics such as landing pages
   • Emails
   • A knock-off-socks HIGH VALUE gift that is NEEDED NOW
     
2. Mix and Match Strategies

For example:

• YouTube videos (with links to sign up)
• SlideShare presentations (with links to sign up)
• Swaps
• Guest Interviews (blog, podcast, webinar)
• Webinar
• Gifts for Influencers
• Facebook groups

Whatever mix you choose, remember to actively do at least one thing to grow your list daily while using tactics and strategies that feel the most natural and fun for you. After all, if you don’t enjoy nurturing the relationship with your subscribers and helping them succeed, they’re not going to enjoy hanging out with you. You need to take actions and use strategies that make you feel empowered and fulfilled.

You need to enjoy your subscribers.

You need to nurture and feed your list EVERY DAY.

What you’ve learned in this webinar today can save you months of wasted time and help you tackle list building one step at a time. Yes, it’s probably going to feel more like a chore at first, as you invest in new habits. It will be a while before your mix really catches on—but do take active steps every day to build and nurture your list, and you will be surprised at the growth you do see.

And there is nothing like seeing new subscribers sign up in response to your efforts to encourage and inspire you even more.

So start today. Create a list. Feed it. Plan for it. Nurture it daily.

You can do it—and your people are waiting.