How to Build an Email List
By: Kasia Manolas
Tags: Digital Marketing, Email Marketing Lists, Email Marketing, Email, Email Marketing Tips

“Lack of direction, not lack of time, is the problem. We all have twenty-four hour days.” — Zig Ziglar via Visualize Value

Provide value. How do you know if you’re providing value? You should be able to easily gather social proof that others are loving your newsletter. Trust me, you’ll know. Gather social proof and save it. This includes social shares, email replies with testimonials, referrals, etc.

If no one is applauding your newsletter, reflect and pivot.

If you’re able to gather social proof, keep going.

Assuming you’ve started and people like it, then start adding fuel to your fire by marketing it:

Ask your existing subscribers to hit forward. Build a newsletter landing page. Link to your newsletter landing page in your social bios. Share valuable content on social media and tell people how to subscribe #linkinbio. If you’re selling a product, include a checkbox asking customers to subscribe to your newsletter to stay in touch. You know what’s cheaper than getting a new customer? Getting an existing customer to buy again. Include a subscribe link in your email signature. Write a blog about an existing entrepreneur’s product or career. Share it on social media and tag them. If they share it, prepare for an influx of subscribers. You can see an example of how I did this here. Use your social media profiles as a funnel. Grow your audience and you’ll notice your top social followers will subscribe. The majority of my website traffic comes from social media. Further increase traffic to your website by writing guest blogs and optimizing your SEO. Join groups that consist of your target audience. For example, I’ve joined a few communities of creative entrepreneurs in the last year. I tell people in that community about my newsletter because I genuinely believe they’ll get value out of it. Creating real connections goes a long way. Create a free tool, download, or asset and put it behind an email wall. Here’s an example of a quick asset I created this year which brought in an influx of subscribers when I marketed it on Twitter and IG. Create a giveaway where participants are required to subscribe. Syndicate your content to Medium.com for additional eyeballs and traffic. Ask your entrepreneur friends to share your newsletter with their audience.

Growth should be systematic. Create a funnel. How do people discover you? From there, how do they subscribe? Continuously add more people to the funnel and voila!

You can view my funnel here.

How (Not) To Build an Email List

I tried these techniques and they didn’t generate adequate traffic for me:

Creating pins on Pinterest for your content Running social media ads Interacting on other people’s blogs, Reddit, Quora, etc and dropping your subscribe link

How to Make Money From a Newsletter

A lot of people think you have to create a business and then your business has a newsletter. That’s not always true. Your entire business can be a newsletter. Similarly, your entire business could be a podcast.

Entrepreneurship is fun because there are no rules.

Here’s how to generate cash from your email list:

Link to your own products through the newsletter Include affiliate links to other people’s products. You make a percentage of the sale. Find a sponsor for your newsletter. They pay you just to mention them.

The Anatomy of a Successful Newsletter: Rules to Live By

I recently read some of these tips on Twitter from Julian Shapiro and completely agree with him:

Send bi-weekly to avoid fatigue Open with a digestible dopamine hit Have a web version for easy sharing and virality Send your best sample issue upon signup Cut off last 20%. Make the rest viewable on your site.

Also make sure you include an unsubscribe link. You don’t want people to mark your newsletter as spam.

There’s No Such Thing as Perpetual Growth

Be careful when you set growth goals. Growth isn’t always linear or perfect, and it’s hardly perpetual. You also don’t need 1,000 subscribers to make income from your newsletter. I make profit and my list is not at 1,000 yet. Bigger isn’t always better. You want to build a list of true fans. I value a high open rate, high clickthrough rate, and high conversion rate. If 10% of my subscribers purchase from me, I’m happy. If .001% purchase from me, I’m not super happy.

Why Should I Build an Email List?

It’s eyeballs on your work anytime you want them. It’s potentially making a sale anytime.

Email marketing has one of the highest ROIs of any marketing.

What gets more of your attention: an email in your inbox, a social media caption, or an ad? We pay the most attention to our inboxes.

Are You Building an Email List?

I’d love to hear what’s been working for you. Join the Alpha newsletter for more growth tips.