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How I Would Start an Email List from the Beginning
I started my email list 7 years ago, and when I did I researched the heck out of how to start one. How to get people to join your list, how to set one up, how to choose your email platform, how to create a freebie, what to send to your list … on and on it goes. I had an entire notebook dedicated just to the notes I was taking from my research.
And I did what all of the research says. I created a freebie, I created a welcome sequence, and I shared about the freebie.
But if I was starting my email list from scratch? I’d do things differently. And i’d do them in a way that I think a lot of marketers would disagree with. So I’m here to maybe ruffle a few feathers, but I’ll share the thought process behind WHY I’d do things differently as well.
Links and Resources Mentioned in This Episode:
- Want even more help simplifying your marketing and business? Love the Chasing Simple podcast? If so, I want to invite you to join me on Monday evenings at 4:00 pm Pacific time/7:00 pm Eastern time for my weekly YouTube Lives. Each week I’ll have a topic for the week, but after my short 5-minute teaching, you’ll have the chance to ask me questions about your marketing and get an answer from me in real time. Until now, the only way to get this kind of access to me was through my membership, courses, or 1:1 services. But now, all you have to do is show up live with me on Mondays! You can find my channel by searching for my handle on YT – @mrsamandawarfield or by heading to amandawarfield.com/youtube/ – I hope to see you Monday!
- Get Your First Month Free inside The Community
- Take the Quiz to Learn How to Best Grow Your Audience
- This week’s action step: Work your way down this list – whichever is the first you don’t have in place already, start there.
- This week’s book recommendation: Things We Never Got Over by Lucy Score
- Find me on Instagram and tell me you completed this week’s action step: @mrsamandawarfield
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Rather Read? – Here’s the Transcript!
*Just a heads up – the provided transcript is likely to not be 100% accurate
I started my email list seven years ago, and when I did, I researched the heck out of how to start one, how to get people to join your list, how to set one up, how to choose your email platform, how to create a freebie, what to send to your list. On and on and on it goes. I had an entire notebook dedicated just to the notes that I was taking from my research.
And I did what all of the research says. I created a freebie, I created a welcome sequence, I shared about the freebie, and it worked. But if I was starting my email list from scratch, I’d do things differently. And I’d do them in a way that I think a lot of marketers would actually disagree with. So I’m here to maybe ruffle a few feathers, but I’ll also share the thought process behind why I do things differently as well.
Bye. You’re listening to episode 222 of the Chasing Simple podcast, and I’m your host, Amanda Warfield. This episode was brought to you by my book, Chasing Simple Marketing, and you can grab your own at amandawarfield. com / book.
How do I find time to create content without overwhelming myself? Where should I even be showing up in my marketing? How do I come up with fresh content ideas? Where should I be focusing my marketing efforts? What is lead generation anyways and how do I do it? Are launches still a thing? And most importantly, how do I put it all together to market my business strategically?
Can I really grow my business without spending all of my time marketing? These are some of the questions that float around in your head when you think of marketing. Welcome, friend. This is Chasing Simple, where practical marketing strategy meets simplicity. I’m your host, Amanda Warfield, simplicity focused content marketing and launch strategist, speaker, educator, and author of Chasing Simple Marketing.
I traded in my classroom lesson plans for helping creative entrepreneurs sustainably fit marketing into their business without it taking over their business, so that they have time to grow their business, take time off, and live the life they dreamed about when they first decided to go out on their own.
When I’m working, you can find me working with one on one clients, such as The Contract Shop and Rebecca Rice Photography on their marketing strategy and copywriting, or helping my students simplify their marketing and launches. And when I’m not, you can find me spending time outside with my husband, Russell, reading in our hammock, watching Gamecock Sports, traveling, or forcing our cats to snuggle me.
If you feel overwhelmed by marketing, you aren’t alone. Many entrepreneurs find marketing frustrating, overwhelming, and simply an obligation. They know they need it, but they don’t enjoy how easily it can suck up their time when what they really want to be doing is the thing that they started their business to do.
Which is why I’m here, to help make marketing simple and less time consuming, so that you can spend less time on your marketing, and more time growing your business and doing what you love. Each week I’ll bring you transparent conversations, actionable steps, and judgment free community to encourage and equip you.
So grab yourself a cup of coffee or whatever your drink of choice is and meet me here each week for love, support, practical tips, and advice on uncomplicating your marketing and business. Let’s do this entrepreneurship thing together, shall we? Want even more help simplifying your marketing and business?
Love the Chasing Simple podcast? If so, I want to invite you to join me on Monday evenings at 4pm Pacific Time, 7pm Eastern Time for my weekly YouTube lives. Each week, I’ll have a topic for the week, but after my short 5 minute teaching, you’ll have the chance to ask me questions about your marketing and get an answer from me in real time.
Until now, the only way to get this kind of access to me was through my membership, courses, or one on one services. But now, all you have to do is show up live with me on Mondays. You can find my channel by searching for my handle on YouTube, at Mrs. Amanda Warfield, or by heading to amandawarfield. com / YouTube.
I hope to see you Monday! The first thing that I would focus on if I was to start my email list over and from the beginning would actually be my offer. And I say this because when I did first start, I took all the advice that was out there to just get started, to just create a freebie, get started, start emailing your list, start building your list, so that when you had an offer to sell, that you could then, you know, launch to said list.
Which in theory makes so much sense but my problem was and what I think a lot of us as entrepreneurs end up having our problem is that We have a hard time coming up with a freebie and coming up with things to say and things to send our audience because we don’t Know what to talk about because we’re not sure where we’re sending them.
Eventually. We haven’t figured out what our offer is and so I would actually Spend that time where I was initially researching email lists and researching what to send and researching how to create a freebie I would put all that on pause and just focus on getting my offer set up first and foremost because the reality is Before you even have your first offer What’s the point of having a list?
And I know that the idea is to build it up so that you have people to sell to, but you probably don’t have an audience big enough to really sell to anyways. Most of us, that’s not to say there are some that have an audience, you know, before they start their business, in which case this is a different conversation, but regardless, that would be my suggestion, because I find that it’s so much easier to create an opt in Thank you.
And to create newsletters for an audience when you know what you’re driving them to. So, first and foremost, I would focus on my offer. What is your offer going to be? And if it’s, you know, a one on one offer, that’s still an offer. You don’t need to have a digital product. You don’t need to have a course.
You don’t need to have any of that created yet. You just need to know what your offer is. Now, that being said, if you know, okay, my offer is going to be a course or something like that, and you want to go ahead and get started collecting emails and collecting leads while you’re building out said course, that is a good Is a different story.
You don’t need to have the offer totally complete and finished necessarily in that case As long as you know what the offer is going to be called And you have a general idea of what it’s going to be about and who it’s going to be for you can start a wait list And then as you’re driving people as we’ll talk about in a minute to set offer throughout these other parts of having your email list You’re driving them to the waitlist page.
And so you’re growing that audience for specifically when that course or whatever comes out. So in that case, you don’t need the offer fully figured out. But if it’s something like a one on one service or, you know, a digital offer, that’s not going to take you very long to create. That’s a totally different thing.
And I would say, let’s get the offer set up and let’s get the messaging around that offer created before we start working on some of these other things. The second thing, after you’ve got your offer figured out, whether it’s created or you’re driving to a waitlist page, once you have your offer messaging, then you can focus on your opt in.
And that way, you can make sure that your opt in is leading directly back to that offer. So, you will take whatever your offer is and whatever the goal of your offer is, right? What is that transformation? Well, what does your audience need to do before they can start your offer In order to be ready for your offer, what do they need, right?
How can they prepare themselves for your offer? That’s what your opt in should be about. So, for example, my big opt in for content patching bootcamp is An audio training all about how to get your content created more quickly And so once people have, you know worked through their current systems and they’ve you know Minimized their time spent and they’ve really simplified their current systems as much as possible Then they’re ready to create a system that will actually help them batch But they really need to cut that extra fluff off first.
So that is an opt in that leads directly into an offer So Or, for example, you’ve got my quiz that I’ve mentioned over and over again if you’ve listened to other podcast episodes where you can take the quiz and it’ll tell you what marketing strategies are going to fit your offer and your business best right now.
And so you take the quiz and it says, okay, here are growth strategies that you should focus on. Well, that leads directly into Chase and Simple the Community, my membership, because the membership is awesome. all about growing your audience and growing your business. That’s our focus is, okay, we’ve got our content, but also how do we see growth?
And so you want to make sure that your opt in leads directly into that offer, whether it’s the step before, or if it’s just giving them the knowledge they need, like, you know, The community to determine, or the quiz, I guess I should say, to determine what it is they need to do in order to see that growth.
And then you say, okay, great. The community is how you see that growth, right? So opt in would be next. You figure out what the step before your offer is and you create an opt in around it. Within the opt in, make sure you mention, you’re not hard selling, but you want to mention your offer, right? So that they at least hear about it.
It’s a touch point for your offer. After you’ve created your opt in, then I encourage you to create your sales sequence. This doesn’t have to be perfect, it doesn’t have to be a ton of emails, but just a few emails that talk about your offer and that sell your offer. That way, when people opt in, Then they go through your sales sequence and then hopefully they buy your offer, right?
And so once you have those three things set up and ready to go, then you want to really focus on driving traffic. Now as you’re doing all of this, you’re still, you’re creating your content, right? You’re still nurturing the people that are in your audience already, but doing these three things will really help you focus on that growth so that you can bring new people in and bring in the audience in a new way to your email list.
So offer opt in sales sequence. Then you want to drive traffic. Again, there are so many different ways that you can drive traffic and Honestly, the quiz is the best resource I have for you to figure out which ones work best for where you’re at in business I also have a whole section in my book Chasing Simple Marketing about Different growth marketing strategies and how you can use them.
So That’s a great resource as well if you’re like, I don’t even know how to begin driving traffic, but things like Pinterest, things like SEO, things like guest blogging, guest podcasting, sponsoring, ads. There’s so many different ways that you can really focus on growing your audience and driving traffic to the opt in.
So you drive that traffic to the opt in, then they go through the sales sequence, then hopefully they buy your offer. After you’ve done all that, you’ve started driving that traffic, once you have the rest of that set up and you’re driving the traffic, then I would recommend starting with your welcome sequence.
And I know that that seems a little out of order. A lot of people actually say, start with your opt in, then your welcome sequence, right? And I completely understand why they do, because you want to have something you can drive people to, you want people to get to know you. But frankly, what I see happen over and over again, is is business owners, especially solopreneurs, they start with the opt in, and they create an opt in that they’re not really sure about, that they’re not confident in, one that doesn’t actually drive sales to anything, and then they create the welcome sequence.
And the welcome sequence is great, and it is important to have, but it again doesn’t really drive sales all that much, and so what ends up happening is they’ve Put all this work in and then they’ve still got to find time to create an offer and create a sales sequence and they’re overwhelmed because they’re trying to do all the things with their marketing and all of a sudden they’re like, I’m putting all this time and effort into marketing and I’m not making any sales.
So I recommend setting yourself up for sales from the beginning and then go back and tweaking and improving and adding that welcome sequence in. So your action step for this week is to work your way down this list offer opt in sales sequence drive traffic Welcome sequence and whichever is the first thing that you don’t have in place already start there So if you don’t have an offer or at least an offer You know, outlined and messaging and waitlist page set up, start there.
If you have that, but you don’t have an opt in that leads directly into that offer, start there. If you have that opt in, but you don’t have a sales sequence, start there. So on and so forth. Right? So work your way down that list, whichever is first that you don’t have in place already. Start there with setting that up next as your next big marketing project.
Now I mentioned this briefly, but I also do want to encourage you to Join the community. This membership is built and geared towards accountability and action. We meet every single Tuesday and we have a call every single Tuesday so that you’re held accountable to actually taking steps to complete these Projects that are going to help you make those sales in your business.
You can have questions answered You can have your marketing looked over but the accountability is everyone’s favorite thing and just that Ability to brainstorm and strategize with other business owners If you head to the link in the show notes That link will take you to a special offer where you can get your first month free inside the community And try it out yourself But we have quarterly themes and we’ve already done a quarterly theme all about creating an opt in that’ll convert to sales.
We’ve, as I’m recording this, we’re wrapping up a quarterly theme all about sales sequences and we’re getting ready to start a quarterly theme all about driving traffic to your opt in. So, so many of what we’re talking about here in this episode, we’ve. Already covered or are in the process of covering right now in the community and you get access to all of the Old quote unquote information all of the past private podcast episodes everything so you have the ability to work your way through all of those at the pace that you need while also showing up weekly to Make sure that you’re getting what you need and getting that accountability.
So anyways, i’ll get off my soapbox with that. But if you You Know you need accountability. Know you need that little extra push to actually grow your audience and drive that traffic to your offers. I’d love to see you inside the community. And again, the link in the show notes is a special offer where you can get that first month free.
Now, your book recommendation for this week is Things We Never Got Over by Lucy Score. I am pretty sure this is a Kindle Unlimited book, so if you have Kindle Unlimited, There you go. I will say, the premise of this book is so cheesy. Like, ridiculously cheesy. A woman gets a call from her twin that’s like the black sheep of the family.
He’s cut off contact with her family. Like, total opposites, right? You’ve got the perfect perfectionist overachiever and then you’ve got the like, the bad girl that steals and does drugs and like, Total opposite twins. Like, that whole bit of cheesiness. But then, a little bit of a spoiler, the good twin, quote unquote, discovers that the twin has a 13 year old daughter that nobody ever knew about, and then she ends up taking her.
It’s a whole thing. The premise is cheesy. The actual writing is so good, though. I read this one so quickly. Uh, it’s actually a three book series. The first book, incredible. The second book was okay. Again, that’s just like, alright, second books are just never as good as the first and the last. Third one, amazing.
So, I recommend Things We Never Got Over by Lucy Skor. That entire, I don’t know what the like series is called, but that whole series is really, really good. So, I’ll link that in the show notes for you. And until next time, I hope you’ll go out and uncomplicate your marketing and business.
Thank you so much for joining me here today, friend. You can find this episode show notes as well as all of the resources you need to simplify your marketing over@amandawarfield.com. If you liked what you heard here today, be sure to subscribe to the podcast so that you never miss an episode. And if you could take a moment to leave a rating and review, it would truly mean the world to me.
Ratings and reviews are the number one way that you can support a podcast, and ensure that it sticks around for many more episodes to come. I’ll see you next time, now go out and uncomplicate your marketing and business.
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