Podcast: 5 Strategies That Increased My Email List Growth by 75%

Email lists! Everyone is taking about them, but why exactly? Well, here are a few reasons why email lists are valuable, along with five strategies for growing an email list of your own!

Benefit #1: Email lists allow you to contact your audience without any restrictions on who sees your messages.

Instagram algorithms and Facebook business page posts are super unpredictable. On Instagram, one minute, you may post something that gets a ton of engagement and the next, you may post something that gets like 11 likes. And on Facebook you basically have to use the “Boost Post” feature to get more eyes on your posts, even if your Facebook page has hundreds of likes.

Email lists allow you to send messages directly to your audience without having to worry about any of that. So it’s a much better means of communication when you have a product or service to sell. And speaking of selling…

Benefit #2: Email marketing has a higher conversion when it comes to purchasing decisions, when compared to social media marketing.

According to this article, it’s been shown that only 20% of consumers made a purchase based on a post from social media, while 66% made a purchase based on an email marketing message. Yes, that means that email marketing has 3 times the conversion of social media marketing, when it comes to selling a product or service!

I actually saw this in real life, when I was promoting my “December Website Audit” special. It was a discounted website audit that was available for purchase for a couple of weeks in December. I promoted it both on social media and on my email list and most of the purchases came from email subscribers, even though I had a small email list.

That’s what made me really want to learn how to better utilize email marketing, so I could see results like that on a larger scale, once I’m ready to release an online course. Since a lot of the info online about email marketing isn’t usually very detailed, I wanted to take a deeper dive on the topic and I read “Email Marketing Demystified: Build a Massive Mailing List, Write Copy That Converts, and Generate More Sales” and it really helped me take action!

Below I share a few things that I did that helped me go from only about 9 new subscribers a month to 40 in a month, increasing my growth by over 75%! I’m still not at my goal, but that’s better than how I started, for sure! Prior to that, I think I’d only gotten that many subscribers over an entire year. LOL.

Strategy #1: I used Interact.

Interact is a quiz building tool. It’s just like those quizzes you see on Facebook that ask “What type of animal are you?” or “What type of career will you have?” I saw this feature used on Jenna Kutcher’s website and I thought it would be a great idea for my website since web design styles usually fall into a few distinct categories.

I created 4 website style categories, along with questions that would help guide someone to their style. And I added tips for each style, so people would have a few design pointers to help them get started. And at the end of the quiz, they’d have to enter in their email address to see the results.

I created a graphic to promote the quiz on social media and I promoted it a few times a week via my Instagram stories, Facebook page, and Twitter page. And I also promoted it in the announcement bar area on my website. It definitely helped gain new subscribers in a unique way! And it was fun to create. I definitely see how this could be applicable for any business! And if you need help creating your quiz questions, Interact has great tutorials.

Strategy #2: I created a new opt-in incentive.

Not all opt-in incentives are equal in value. Some will be more appealing to your audience than others, so naturally, the most appealing ones will get the most subscribers for you! I had an opt in incentive up for a few months, called the “Website Mistakes Guide” to help people fix their most common website mistakes. But that one hardly got any signups, even with promoting it via Facebook ads and having it all over my website.

So I decided to pick a new topic that was related to web design, but that offered some info that people would (hopefully) care a little more about. lol. So I created a guide on “How to Stand Out in a Saturated Market.” And it got wayyy more engagement, both organically and in the Facebook ad I used. At first, I thought I needed to create a “free training” instead of a “free guide/workbook,” but by changing the topic, I noticed it wasn’t the way the information was delivered so using a guide was fine—the issue was the topic.

I created a graphic specifically for the new guide and promoted it on social media on a regular basis, on my website, and using a Facebook ad, which I’ll elaborate on next!

Strategy #3: I used a Facebook ad.

Facebook ads are great for getting exposure to a new audience that would find your expertise/content appealing. But the key is creating a free offer they’ll care about and that’ll give them value, creating a good graphic for your ad, selling the benefits of the ad in the copy, and choosing the right audience. It’s a lot, I know. But you can figure out what will work for your business with a bit of trial and error.

I almost gave up on Facebook ads, but as I mentioned in the previous point, it was what I was offering on the ad and not the ads themselves. Before, when I used Facebook ads, I was promoting the website mistakes guide, which hardly got any signups. However, once I promoted the guide on how to stand out in a saturated market, I got way more signups! I was seeing multiple people signing up daily! I even turned the ad off for a few weeks and just turned it back on this weekend and I’m seeing multiple people sign up a day again, just like clockwork!

To create a better graphic and caption, I did a bit of market research and I checked out the ads that popped up in my Facebook news feed from others in the online marketing space. That led me to creating the eye-catching ad below with a bright, waist-up photo of me and a bold pink background with the promise of the guide in white letters. I also used an audience primarily of black women, since black women have been the largest group to engage with me and to inquire about my services, by choosing Lisa Nichols as the main Facebook page to target as an audience. And I selected major cities, like Atlanta, D.C., New York, and Chicago, to narrow the audience down a bit to around 15,000-20,000. From what I’ve researched, that’s the recommendation for the audience size.

Doing the research and experimenting definitely paid off! So please, don’t discredit Facebook ads before you experiment with them a bit, like I had to. Once you find an ad that works, you can keep using it to generate more and more leads/subscribers who will eventually turn into buyers!

Strategy #4: I used LeadPages.

I had LeadPages a couple of years ago, but I cancelled it because it was $37 a month. I took the cheap route! However, I kept seeing entrepreneurs with huge email lists who were using it! So I knew there had to be something to it. LeadPages promises that their pages are designed specifically for the highest conversion possible. I tried to see if there were other cheap ways that I could create the same page layout that they offer, using a Squarespace cover page on my website, but that didn’t work. And I tried to see if I could create one with ConvertKit, my email provider, but it didn’t look as good as what you get with LeadPages.

So I finally broke down and signed up for LeadPages again. And I actually saw many more signups! Their page templates are great because there are no other links on the pages to distract people from signing up. And they’re super user-friendly so people are more likely to complete the signup forms. I see why it’s so popular for real now. And they even have a free trial for you to give it a shot to see if you like it first.

I linked to my LeadPages page for my Saturated Market guide to the Facebook ad and I also used it anytime I promoted that opt-in incentive on my social media profiles and even using the signup buttons for the Saturated Market guide on my actual website. The key is to put this in many different places to see results!

Strategy #5: I used Opt-In Monster to install a pop up on my website.

I was hesitant about using a website popup, like Opt-In Monster, before reading the book on email marketing but the info in the book convinced me to try it! I used to think they were just annoying and no one was ever going to sign up with them anyway, but now I get that sometimes people don’t see an email signup box only on one or two pages on your website. So the popup basically just does a better job of informing them of what you have to offer.

Even though I was promoting the same opt-in incentive about standing out in a saturated market, the pop up got several signups for it! Opt-in Monster isn’t the cheapest tool, but you pay for it for the whole year and they design the forms for maximum conversion, similar to LeadPages.

That’s it! Email marketing is still something I’m constantly learning more about but I just wanted to share a few strategies that helped me recently!

Disclaimer: This post contains affiliate links that would allow me to earn a commission if any of the mentioned items are purchased.