5 Myths About Building Your Email List

Before we bust some myths, I would like to thank Mckayla from Comma Mama for welcoming me into her community as a guest blogger.  I’m so happy to be here. 

So you’ve probably already heard from every single online business owner out there how important it is to build your list. Guess what, they’re right!

Email marketing is the best way to share content that is going to attract and entice your dreamy clients to take action. 

Listen, I know you’re busy. You’re most likely a one-woman show, with the dreams of hiring help once your business is making some consistent cash. 

Every week, you most likely have a combination of the following on your plate:

• Blog posts
• Podcast episodes
• Social media content
• Youtube videos
• Pinterest pins
• Creating graphics

While it’s obvious we can’t and shouldn’t want to ignore email marketing, it can often feel like just another piece of content to create. 

I fully understand that creating all the things to get seen, noticed, and turning those followers into buyers is exhausting. Adding yet another thing to do to your already overflowing list often doesn’t happen because let’s face it, you’re overwhelmed and exhausted. 

Real talk:

Is what you’re doing now resulting in real-life customers? 

If you answered no, I want you to keep on reading. 

Yes, I get it, email marketing doesn’t look at sexy as the gram or any other social platform but email marketing should be your top priority. 

I’m talking from real-life experience here. Email marketing seemed like a beast to me when I was starting out, I didn’t understand it. When I dipped my toes into the marketing waters I was overwhelmed and confused. So what did I do, I doubled down into social media. Cuz it’s fun, sexy, and you get instant gratification. 

So what changed?

After struggling with an email service provider for a couple of years, I’m going to repeat that for those in the back…I struggled for a couple of years!!! You guys, I wasted 2 + years here. Learn from me and don’t make the same mistake. 

This is why I’m so passionate about email marketing today. I don’t want others to suffer as I did. 

As you start to create your email marketing strategy, you’ll encounter a butt load of myths about what it takes to truly build and grow your email list. 

Let’s bust some of those myths together, shall we?

Myth #1 – YOU NEED TO HAVE A WEBSITE FIRST BEFORE YOU START BUILDING YOUR LIST

Nope, not true. 

All you need is an email service provider to capture the emails you gather from your lead magnet/freebie/opt-in, whatever you want to call it. 

Let me break this down even further for you. 

1. You create an opt-in for your dreamy client, let say it’s a PDF. This can be housed in either Dropbox or your One Drive account.
2. You share all about your new opt-in on Instagram and your other social networks, directing your dreamy clients to your sign-up page (tip, use the link space in your bio) where you’ll collect their info like name and email. The email service provider you use will house your sign up forms. I like to use Mailerlite for its easy to use interface and it’s the platform I use inside my membership, List Love Society. 
3. On the thank you page, inside the email platform you will link to your PDF opt-in to be downloaded.

And just like that…BAM, myth #1 busted!

If you want some ideas to get your wheels turning on what to offer as an opt-in check out this blog post

Myth #2 – THE TECH IS TOO HARD FOR SOMEONE JUST STARTING OUT

Yes, while there are service providers out there that are not user-friendly, others like Mailerlite have thought of the user experience first and have done it right.

Using the right platform will directly affect how you feel about email marketing. 

I came from Mailchimp and let me tell you, I had many nights of pulling my hair out in frustration trying to create an automation workflow. So much so that I put it off completely and ignored it. 

Can you relate to this?

You guys, I spent hours, days even watching Youtube videos trying to figure it out. Heck, I built my WordPress site, so I know I can do hard things.  

During a call with my mentor, full disclosure, I was in tears over the whole damn thing, she so calmly said, why don’t you switch to Mailerlite. I hadn’t even heard of that platform. That evening, I created my account, imported all my Mailchimp subscribers and started creating my new sign up forms and workflow. 

This was also a pivot point in my business. I thought of all the other women with dreams of building their empires doing something that they love and struggling with building their email list. Instead, building their empires on rented land (hello social media) and not sustainably building their business. This lit me up and why I’m here today. 

So, myth busted, you don’t need a website. Don’t let this hold you back from building your list. 

Pro tip: Don’t look at someone who’s way ahead of you in their business journey with all the social media followers, the prettiest of websites,  money rolling in from anything they talk about. 

Pssst, they started where you are right now, at the beginning without all of the above. 

Myth #3 – YOU NEED TO HAVE A PROGRAM OR OFFER BEFORE YOU CAN START BUILDING YOUR LIST.

Nope, false again! 

What you do need is something of value to offer in exchange for their email address. 

Notice I said of value. You need to know what your dreamy client is struggling with and create something that is going to give them a quick win. 

If you’re just starting to build your email list (kudos to you) and you’re not quite sure what your offer or program is going to be yet, that’s ok. You can still gather those emails and build your list up. Heck, I would much rather you start building your list now, even if you don’t know what you’re going to offer yet. 

Here’s why you’re going to want to give incentive for those on your list so that when you’re ready to pre-launch your offer or program, those on your list will get some sort of discount before you ever launch your offer or program. 

Let’s say you’ve built your list of 250 dreamy clients. You’ve been emailing them weekly so they can get to know, like, and trust you. You’ve been giving little snippets of the new program you’re putting together. Letting them know for being part of your community they’re going to get a special price, as a thank you. 

You did it, you completed your program/offer, you’ve emailed your list with all the details with how they can activate their special pricing. Let’s say you’re giving them $100 off. Your program cost is $297 but for them, being part of your community, they’re getting $100 off, only costing them $197. 

Let’s say that 25 people sign up, BAM you just earned $4925. 

Let me ask you a question, how much money have you earned from Instagram? 

This is why I love showing other women how to build their email lists. You’re building a community of people who raised their hand and said, what you’re offering, I want. They want to be there, they want to hear from you. Done right, they will buy from you. 

You could offer your pre-launch to your list only, go through it live with them, gathering more data, places to improve, and best of all, the testimonials.  Think of this as your beta round, but they have skin in the game, so they’ll be more likely to complete the program/offer. 

Once you have all these other nuggets of gold, you create a sales page, still no website required here, adding your testimonials and of course upping your price to $297, perhaps offering some sort of bonus to get those quick action takers to purchase. 

Rinse and repeat and you’ll be handing in your 2 weeks notice in no time.

Myth #4 – YOU NEED TO SPEND HOURS A WEEK BUILDING YOUR EMAIL LIST

This one might be my favourite. I know I thought this way too in the beginning but quickly saw that this is simply not true. 

Ideally, when someone lands on your list you want to take them on a journey getting to know, like, and trust you. This is done with automation and creating a welcome sequence. The beauty of a welcome sequence is you create it once and the platform will deliver a set of emails to your new community members when they join, getting to know you and your business better. 

How great is this?

Now all you have to do is deliver high value, tips, behind the scenes, etc. emails once a week in the form of your newsletter. I fully recommend batching this task, not only will it save you time but this will prevent you from falling off and not emailing your list. This is what you don’t want. You don’t want your list to go cold, meaning that they receive your freebie and never hear from you again until you have something for them to buy. This is just icky, don’t do this. 

You might be wondering what the heck batching even is. Batching is when you do like tasks together. So if you need to create 4 newsletters for the month you would essentially write all 4 emails in one sitting or over a period of time. 

When you jump from one task to another and then another task pops into your head, you think, “oh yeah, I should do that too”. You keep having to switch to a different part of the brain that requires that task to get done. To settle into a task you generally need 15 mins for this to happen. 

I dedicate 1 day (4 hour day for me) to write my newsletters for the month, this includes creating all necessary graphics for social media and Pinterest to accompany these newsletters. Schedule into Mailerlite and Later for my social posts and pins. 

Myth #5 – YOU NEED TO HAVE THOUSANDS ON YOUR LIST BEFORE YOU CAN SELL TO THEM

False, pure ?

Don’t get trapped into thinking before you can start making money in your business you need to have a huge list. 

FALSE, FALSE, FALSE

Looking back at myth #3 the conversion rate of 25 people buying from your list of 250 people is 1%. If you don’t know about conversion rates, this is good. Typically you want to see your offers convert at about 1-2%.

The more niched down your list community is the higher your conversion rates will be. But starting at 1% is good.  

Taking the example in myth #3, you now have your landing page built with your testimonials, you go into launch mode. You run a webinar and grow your list by another 100. You now have 350 on your list. You sell another 20 spots (10 news subscribers and 10 old ones that you’ve continued to prime and show that you know what you’re talking about in your weekly newsletters) into your program at $297, you make $5940 from your launch. 

Your business has just made $10,865 from your pre-launch and launch. Woot Woot, happy dance time ?? You’re still converting between 1-2%. 

If you launch your program/offer every quarter, 4 times a year (rinse and repeat) you can see how you can replace, double, or triple your current salary and truly live the life you’ve been dreaming about. 

Between launches, you’ll be building your list and providing high-value content to your community.  

So there you have it, the 5 myths busted. 

Building your list should be fun, something a few years back I would have NEVER said and that maybe you can relate to too. 

I hope you can see that building your list should not be an afterthought for your business. It should be your big lofty goal of 2021. 

If you haven’t watched the free video training, what are you waiting for? It could the catalyst that turns your hobby into a sustainable business in 2021.

Rooting for you always,

Alesha

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