List Building Project: Part I

Today I’m embarking upon the first in a series of email list building activities for PodcastMotor.  The email list for PodcastMotor has been growing steadily at a handful of new subscribers per week, rounding us out in the 100 subscriber range as of the time of this writing.

This is nothing to slouch at, for sure.  But as I develop plans to expand the business beyond our core service offering later this year, a more robust email list is essential to the successful launch of those products.

If you follow some of the best email list building names out there, such as Josh Earl, Bryan Harris, and Noah Kagan, there are a few commonalities:

• Consistently publish actionable, detailed, lengthy, and relevant content geared for your audience.  Here this would include articles just like this:  How and Why I’m choosing to focus on email list building.  For PodcastMotor it is more of the same types of articles that the team has been writing for the past few months.
• Give people multiple chances to opt in to your email list.  This is done on my sites with SumoMe, a free (with paid version optional) tool that allows for both the pop up, top bar, and full screen optin forms that engage site visitors.
• Offer an optin incentive to visitors.  Nobody wants to just give away their email address for nothing in return. So you have to have a resource, cheat sheet, email course…something to entice visitors to enter their email to get what you’re offering.

Do these things, and do them well and you will build your email list over time.

But one thing that’s been shown to build email lists quickly is Giveaways.  Giveaways have been chronicled to build email lists very quickly, and retaining the specificity of the type and quality of people you want on your list.

But what’s the best way to do this?

I’ve chosen to do a giveaway first for PodcastMotor, and then will do one here on CraigHewitt.me both utilizing the KingSumo WordPress plugin.  This is a tool that promotes virality of your giveaway by giving subscribers and promoters of the giveaway improved odds of winning as they share the giveaway with their networks.  This essentially puts their name in the “hat” multiple times every time they share the contest with someone.

I’ll implement the giveaway first for PodcastMotor with a bundle of services, hardware, and my own consulting time in a package that will be announced when the giveaway begins, which should be next week.

Stay tuned for more details on the giveaway, what its results were for our email list, and how you can replicate that performance for your business.  This is all about sharing best practices, and I hope to relay some things I’ve learned to you.

Until next time, go make your future happen!