If you’re reading this podcast within a few weeks of its release, it’s the new year, and it’s a fabulous time to boost your business by growing your mailing list with 100 new people.
In this episode of the Heart-Centred Business Podcast, I’m going to walk you step-by-step through one strategy that could help you get 100 people on your mailing list within the next month.
We’re going to go through it week by week. Plus, I have a fabulous free resource for you at the end.
Let’s dive in!
Here for the links referenced in the show notes?
Grab my free Grow Your Audience training: tashcorbin.com/audience
EPISODE 450: Listen using the player below, or click the links to your fave platform to subscribe and listen over there:
Listen on Apple Podcasts Listen on SpotifListen on YouTube
There are hundreds of different ways that you can grow your mailing list. I’ve got one strategy that I love to help people roll out when they want to start building their mailing list more consistently.
This strategy takes four to five weeks to implement, and will get approximately 100 people or more onto your mailing list within that time.
It does mean that you’re going to have to do some strong foundational work, but I’m sure you’re up for the challenge.
Before we dive into the week-by-week actions, we need to spend a few hours getting some foundational things nailed…
Step 1: Get clear on who and why
Who do you want specifically to attract to your mailing list? And why is it valuable for them to be on it?
This is often something that is overlooked when it comes to mailing list growth.
People are so focused on why it’s valuable for them as a business owner to have people on their mailing list. But they’re not considering what’s in it for the audience.
Get super clear. What is the value proposition of being on your mailing list? What exactly do people get from you? And why would your ideal client want to have that coming into their inbox on the regular?
Take some time to jot down who it is that you specifically want to attract and why.
Step 2: Ensure you are sending an email to your mailing list at least weekly
Make that a non-negotiable part of your business strategy.
You need to look after your existing mailing list in order to attract more people to it.
The fastest way to dry up mailing list growth is to neglect your mailing list. What is the point of attracting people to a mailing list when you don’t email them?
In a lot of cases, the reason why people aren’t mailing their list consistently is that they haven’t sold themselves on that value proposition, which loops us back to step one.
If you don’t deeply and inherently believe that it’s valuable for people to be on your mailing list, then how on earth are you supposed to attract people to it?
And if you don’t deeply and inherently believe that being on your mailing list is valuable, you won’t email them.
This is where we’ve got to get clear on those foundations and make that commitment.
You are going to email your list every single week because you have value to share with them.
Steps one and two can be done in a matter of hours. Just spending some time clarifying who and why, getting that first email out to your mailing list and making that commitment that you’re going to email them weekly is very simple and straightforward to take care of.
Now it’s time for us to get into the deeper work.
How do you attract 100 new people to that list in a matter of weeks?
Week 1: Create or update an existing lead magnet with a high value proposition
Make something spectacular. When I say something spectacular, I don’t mean something long-winded.
You need to be able to create it quickly, and your audience needs to be able to consume it and implement it quickly as well.
Think instead about something that would be valuable for your audience to have accomplished. Something that would be valuable for them to put in place. Something that would be valuable for them to have achieved.
Can you create a short and sharp free resource that helps them to achieve that outcome?
The three principles that I apply to lead magnet creation are:
1. Generous
2. Narrow
3. Precise
I’m generous in what I help people to achieve for free.
I’m narrow in the target market or audience that I create it for.
And I’m precise in the way that I give the instruction and the specific strategy that I’m teaching or getting people to implement.
I’m not wasting people’s time. I’m not being broad – I’m being very narrow in who it’s for. But I’m also not being stingy with what I give away for free.
There’s a big difference between giving away 10 hours of long-winded content that kind of goes nowhere, versus being generous with a 45-minute training that gets precise and specific results for people.
Be generous, be narrow and be precise.
That will take you about a week to create it, set up the opt-in and set up the email to deliver that free resource.
I’m going to give you a generous amount of time to get that done, so let’s say it takes you a week.
We’ve now got three weeks left to get 100 people signed up to your mailing list through that new or updated lead magnet.
Week 2: Launch it to your warmest audiences for its first week of launch
Send it out to your existing email list. You might think that’s a waste because it’s not going to grow your mailing list, but on the contrary, people from your existing mailing list are:
1. The most likely to sign up for it.
2. The most likely to share it and tell their friends about it.
3. Most likely to engage in content that you share on social media talking about it and saying how valuable it was
4. Most likely to reply to the emails that go with it and let you know if it’s missing something, if something was particularly valuable, and engage with you in that free resource.
Start by sending it out to your existing mailing list.
Then I would recommend doing a yes ladder on your socials.
This involves doing a post on your Instagram or Facebook where you say “I’ve built a brand new free resource. It will help you to [outcome] and [outcome]. If you want it, let me know!” and people comment in order for you to then give them the information as to how they can sign up for that free resource.
Whenever I launch a new free resource, I try and launch it with a yes ladder. This is because it gets my warmest audience engaging on my socials, whilst also ensuring that that post gets plenty of reach.
And then, I recommend you reach out to 50 to 100 people, one at a time, to offer them that free resource because you know it would be valuable to them.
I’m not saying to cold message strangers or slide into anyone’s DMs who doesn’t know you. What I’m saying is that you could probably, in your mind, come up with a list of 50 people right now who you have an existing relationship with who would benefit from your free resource.
For example:
- Existing clients
- People you’ve spoken to about working together before
- People you’ve been in masterminds or programs with who you’ve interacted with
- Anyone you’ve helped before
I’m sure every single person listening to this podcast, if they really put their mind to it, could come up with a list of 50 people who may be interested in this free resource.
It could be quite beneficial to reach out to those people one-on-one and say, “I’ve just put together a new free resource. It helps people to [outcome], and I thought you might find it helpful. Do you want me to send it to you?”
By doing so, you’re:
1. Validating that your free resource is valuable to people and they agree that the outcome you have focused on in your free resource is something that people want to achieve.
2. Recruiting people to your mailing list one at a time, which is one of the most powerful and effective ways that you can grow your mailing list, especially with a new free resource.
There are three strategies to launch to your warm audience, and I would recommend that’s your first week of the launch of this free resource.
That’s week two of our little project.
Week 3: Organic launch on social media and your website (if applicable)
We’re going to do a post every second day on your social media and in the Facebook groups that you belong to, where you can promote a free resource every day for week two of your launch.
In that process, we’re also going to be looking at using lots and lots of different ways to describe your opt-in, different promo strategies and different focal points.
You’re using different copy and different imagery for every single post.
This is your opportunity to test your messaging as to how effectively you can speak to the value of this free resource and being on your mailing list. You can test the conversion rate of your sign-up page for your new opt-in, and make sure that you’re getting a good portion of those people who come over to check it out actually signing up.
Anything above a 50% conversion rate for an opt-in page is pretty good these days, and it also allows you to convert visitors to your website into people on your mailing list.
You could feature this new freebie on the homepage of your website.
You could also feature this new freebie in your latest podcast episodes, blog posts or whatever feature content you might be releasing on a regular basis.
Find all the different spaces on your website where it would be worthwhile to mention this free resource and take the time to install it into those spaces on your website.
That’s three weeks of focusing on growing your mailing list.
We’ve spent a week in the creation and setup, a week promoting it to your warmest audience first, a week doing an organic launch on socials and making sure it’s embedded and mentioned on your website wherever possible, and we have one week left…
Week 4: Boost your best-performing post on your primary platform to your warmest audience
Is Facebook your primary social platform? Or is Instagram? The way you optimise for each is very different. You want to make sure that you’re really clear on what your primary social platform is and boost your warmest audience there.
You could spend $100 to $200 boosting this to your existing audience, just using the Boost Post function to people who like your page or have engaged with your page in the last 365 days. Any of those warm audiences would be fine.
After a couple of days, if you want to then boost it to a colder audience and expand the reach of that ad, you can absolutely do that as well. But the first 100 people to sign up to a new opt-in are generally people who already know you in some way, or are connected to you in some way.
Have a play around with some different ways to boost your post and see how quickly those new leads start flowing into your mailing list.
As I said at the start of this podcast episode, there are hundreds and hundreds of ways to grow your mailing list. This is just one strategy that you could roll out over four weeks to get 100 people on your mailing list in that period of time.
It does require that you get those foundations clear, and for some people, you might get yourself a little tripped up here and there on some of the strategies.
But progress over perfection is the name of the game.
If you haven’t been growing your mailing list consistently, why not give it a try?
If you’re an absolute newbie to mailing list growth and you want to ensure that you are growing your audience in a meaningful and effective way, I’ve got a great free resource for you.
It’s called Grow Your Audience.
It’s a 45-minute training that walks you step-by-step through the four phases of list growth and audience growth in general.
Make sure you grab that free resource at: tashcorbin.com/audience
Thank you so much for joining me for this episode of the podcast. Now go get those 100 people onto your mailing list!
Until next time, I cannot WAIT to see you SHINE.
