Sam and Jayson walk through the steps to quickly and effectively build an email list from scratch, including tools and tactics.
--Episode 9 - 7 Ways to Build an Email List From Scratch--
Sam McRoberts, CEO of VUDU Marketing and the author of Screw the Zoo, and Jayson DeMers, CEO of EmailAnalytics, discuss 7 Ways to Build an Email List From Scratch.
With many decades of combined business and digital marketing experience, Jayson and Sam will walk you through everything you need to know as you go through your own entrepreneurial journey.
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Jayson: Welcome to the Entrepreneur Cast, your source for tactical lessons in entrepreneurship, from a cast of entrepreneurs. I'm Jayson DeMers.
Sam: And I'm Sam McRoberts.
Jayson: And today we're going to talk about seven ways to build an email list from scratch.
Sam: This will be an interesting one. And I have to admit, I'm guilty of not doing this anywhere near as much as I probably should, over the years. I have a few little email lists that I rarely send emails to them. I should probably do better.
Jayson: You know, I don't send a lot of emails either because I don't want to spam people. But over the course of the last, oh, 12, 13, 14 years or so I've sent a lot of emails to people so, I can talk about this intelligently. My first job out of college actually was, I worked for a company called 1105 Media, and they hired me on as an online marketing coordinator. And most of my job was getting leads through email marketing. And we had lots of lists with over a million people on the list, and it was my job to segment the list and target the list and its big list. All day, every day, I was creating emails, I was sending out emails to different segments of the list, and I was driving leads. So, I did a lot of this. And then I did a lot of this for when I had my marketing agency Audience Bloom, and I've slowed down on it now with email analytics. I do have an email list with email analytics, but I'm waiting to really start leveraging it until we're ready to launch version 2.0 of the app, which is just around the corner, because I don't to tire people out with something that they might consider spammy or something. I want to have a big bang sort of announcement and so, that's sort of why I'm waiting for that.
Sam: That's my thing. That's the reason that I haven't ever done a whole lot of email marketing because I don't want to crowd somebody's inbox with self promotional shit. You know, if I'm going to send an email, like, yeah, I get it, you know, you need to promote your own stuff you need to, like, be your own spokesperson. But I feel like, if I'm going to send an email to somebody, I need to be providing tremendous value in there that far outweighs whatever ask I'm going to end up making.
Jayson: Yeah, I agree. And I will say that, I have found an email list to be tremendously valuable for driving tricks-- clicks and traffic. And for people who are on your email list will convert pretty well, I've found. And that they'll convert better if you send more emails because they're more familiar with you, and because the more emails you send, the more people who are going to unsubscribe because they're not that interested, meaning that the ones who are left, are the ones who--
Sam: That's true.
Jayson: Yeah, the ones who are left are the ones who are most likely to buy. So, you're going to see those conversion rates. So, having an email list is really important to, it's a very valuable business asset, and it's really important to really any business these days, you should be building an email list. And no matter how much you decide to use it or leverage it, you should be at least building it. So, that's why we're going to talk about how to do that today.
Sam: Yep, and that I agree with, it's always good to have a channel that's fully in your control and not at somebody else's mercy, and this is a good one. So, you know, if you're going to start building an email list, obviously, the first thing you're going to need is to sign up with some sort of email list provider, whether that's MailChimp or ConvertKit, or, you know, take your pick of probably hundreds of options at this point. But essentially, what those places do is, they serve as a repository for all of those emails, and they allow you to quickly put together and send out newsletters, custom one-off emails, whatever and push them out through their system. And they handle things like, the rate at which those go out. They pay attention to things like deliverability, you know, making sure they're going to live functioning email addresses, that they're not bouncing, that they're not getting flagged as spam, they essentially help to keep the like running and functioning smoothly as you communicate with your list. And some of them are free up to a certain amount, I think MailChimp, it's what? 1000 or 10,000 people in your list before they start charging you.
Jayson: I thought it was like 2000. But I could be wrong about that.
Sam: It's somewhere in the low thousands. And then, I think ConvertKit, is maybe 100 for free, and then you have to pay, something small. But each of them have pros and cons, they do different things. You know, some of them are just for sending an email, some of them also include landing pages or custom forms, some of them have, you know, really interesting, like logic built into the systems like, "Hey, if they open this email, then send them this next, if they don't open it, send this one next.". So, but you need some sort of an email list provider, if you're going to be collecting emails.
Jayson: Yep. So, pick and choose one. You can, you know, I've used MailChimp and I think it's fine. It's very, very widely used and well known, and it integrates with a lot of things through API and so on. So, that a safe bet. But--
Sam: I use ConvertKit.
Jayson: Yeah. And I know that Neil Patel also uses ConvertKit, and he's happy with that. So, that's probably a safe bet too. So, after you pick your email service provider, you need to create a way for people to become part of your email list. So, what you're going to do is create a newsletter opt in form, and you're going to-- the first thing you want to do is think about where you can put it on your website. There are a few places that makes sense and that you'll see on most websites. So, one would be for instance in a feature box or up in a pop up, a lot of people hate pop ups, but they really work. So, actually Sam, the number one source of free trial signups on emailanalytics.com is our exit intent pop up. I know and-- but I can't take it down even though it's annoying because it works so well.
Sam: Alright, this is a good aside. So, Neil Patel is one of our friends, he used to live a couple blocks away from us in downtown Seattle, we'd hang out we talk about this stuff. Neil's website is infamous for his double or triple layer pop ups. And you know, they're not all at once. It's not like, the old school porn sites that fill your screen with the pop ups. Like, it's not that bad. But there are multiple, and it's obvious, and it's a little bit annoying. And I'd give Neil shit for it, he'd be like, "You know, it's terrible, but they work so well. Like, I capture so many emails doing this.". And I'm like, "You know, I can't argue with that. I may not like it from a user experience perspective, but if people are giving you their email addresses, they're giving you their email addresses. So, whatever works for you, buddy.".
Jayson: Well, not only that, but I i have to say how much free content am I giving on the site that I have put a lot of time and money and effort into, the least you can do is look at a pop up that you can X out as fast as you want, or maybe you'll give me your email address and I can, and we can do some business down the road. I mean, this is a lot of free stuff. Yeah. So, you can see it from both sides. Is it annoying? Yeah, absolutely. I don't like getting exit intent pop ups either. But it's not that bad. I mean, I just click the X and it's gone. So
Sam: I mean, unless the X is like hidden, or super difficult to click, which somebody will do, like yeah. So, I mean, my only two cents would be, try not to throw up the pop up immediately. Like, the second somebody hits your site, don't throw up the pop up, they don't have any relationship with you, they don't know if your stuff is good. Like, give them enough time to know that your quality before you ask for an email address, so that they can at least say, you know, like, "I really enjoyed that blog post. Why not?". So, your exit intent pop up, I think is actually perfect. That's the right time, if they've taken the time to actually look at your content and learn a little bit about you, and now they're going to leave the site to go do something else, good time to try and build a future relationship.
Jayson: And by the way, if you're like, "What is an exit intent pop up?", that's where the user scrolls their mouse up to the browser, URL bar, or you know where the X is on the tab and they're going to, it's like they're going to open up a new tab or they're going to do a new search or put in a new website. If they scroll their mouse up there, then the exit intent pop up will trigger and it will show the full screen pop up. So, it's like somebody was getting-- was on their way out, they're getting ready to leave and then you hit them with this sort of one last wait before you go offer. And you can do this using, there's a couple tools that are good that I've tried. One is Hello Bar, that is, Neil is a co-founder or co-owner of that tool. But there's another one called OptinMonster, which is also very good. And I've tried that and then Sam, you've tried Ice Gram, right?
Sam: I use Ice Gram. It gives you a lot of functionality for free. I like it, I like the features, but it's essentially a rip on Hello Bar, very similar to OptinMonster, and each of them have small differences but functionally, they do the same thing. They let you put a form capture, an email capture in different places on your site and trigger it based on different rules.
Jayson: Yeah, but these things really, really work. And if you want to build an email list, it's almost I mean, if that's your goal, is to grow your numbers, then that's how you do it. Some other places--
Sam: Sometimes, I won't lie, sometimes they work obscenely well. I had, on one of my old blogs, I had one specific piece of content, it was extremely niche, it ranked really, really well, and my conversion rate on my pop up for email capture on that page was 77%.
Jayson: Wow. That's incredible. Yeah, you know, with-- when I was at Audience Bloom, I built our email list to well over 60,000 by using e-book, an e-book pop up. So, you know, people would be on a certain, maybe a social media related blog post, and I would pop up a social media e-book that I had written and it would say, "Hey, do you want to, you know, download the full Definitive Guide to Social Media Marketing?", "Well, yeah, I mean, I'm reading about social media, I'd love to have the definitive guide.", so, that's a really great way and that's-- I'm actually getting-- I'm getting a little bit ahead of ourselves but--
Sam: Go for it, keep going.
Jayson: Yeah, you know, let me just finish up, aside from pop ups people are like, "Well where else? Okay, I get the pop ups thing you guys, where else do I put my lead capture forms?". So, you can put it at the top of your sidebar, usually on the right side, sort of on the right at the top is a good spot, after each blog post, if you're on WordPress, you can use a site called-- sorry a plug in called Append Content, which will automatically put certain content at the bottom of every blog posts. So, I use this and it's really nice, you can put it on your about page or you can even put it on like a little bar that's not a pop up, but like a bar that goes across the top or the bottom of your page, you've probably seen some websites doing this. And you can use again, a plugin like Hello Bar or the Attention Grabber plugin if you're using WordPress to do something like that.
Sam: Awesome. So, you know as Jayson mentioned, you know, once you have your forms to capture these emails, the next thing you need is what's called in the industry, a lead magnet. So, why should somebody give you their email address? And the most popular are, things like e-books, reports, or unique research that you've done, guides to doing something, can be educational materials, checklists, templates, the key is to make sure that whatever you're offering as a lead magnet is closely related to either the topic or theme of your site or the specific page that you have the ask on. And you can get pretty sophisticated with it. You know, if you have a post about social media, you could offer a guide to social media, if you have a post about custom tabletops, you could have a guide about custom tabletops. Like, you want to make sure that you're matching up those things so that people are more likely to give you their information. And you want to make sure you're doing it after they've had a chance to know what you're about, and if you provide valuable information like, there's no point in asking somebody to download this lead magnet like two seconds after they hit your site, they don't have a relationship or any reason to trust you. You'll also find, though, that even if you do your very best at all these things like you're still going to get some pretty shitty email addresses sometimes like, the junk email addresses or the throw-aways, or the whatever. But overall, you'll find that if you create real value and offer it to people, it's a fair trade, they're willing to give you an email address and have some sort of a relationship that way, because you've given them something of value. So, make sure you give them something of serious value.
Jayson: Agreed. And there's another way to give people something of value other than creating a lead magnet, and that would be to create a tool. So, this is a method that I use currently with email analytics. So, the main, the primary way that I build my email list is I offer access, obviously to the tool which is email analytics, which visualizes Gmail and G Suite email activity either of you or your team. So, for instance, if somebody wants to visit the site, and visualize their email activity, they're going to log in, and when they log in, I'm going to capture their email address, which they consent to, and then the tool is going to automatically display a bunch of, you know, cool graphs, charts and figures about their email activity. In the meantime, I've just gotten a new subscriber to my email lists, which I can then, you know, essentially send out email campaigns to. So, my primary call to action and my sort of conversion action that I want people to take on the site is to sign up for the free trial. In doing so, not only do you get to see the tool so that maybe you'll go on and upgrade to a paid version of it, but I get your email address, which I can then use to help sort of push that conversion through. Neil does this as well with Uber Suggests which is his keyword research tool. So, he requires sign up and sign in, and he captures email address and then he sends out email campaigns. So, yeah, login to get access to a tool, thereby giving your email address, and there you go, you can build your email list that way.
Sam: Another good one, which I think is kind of bouncing back in popularity are webinars. You know, put together a webinar where you teach people something over the course of 30 to 60 minutes. A webinar is essentially, you know, a presentation of material done over video to an audience ranging from 50 people to, you know, 1000, 2000 people, depending on the system and how many people want to attend and how interesting the topic is. But with a webinar, you know, during the webinar, towards the end, at the end, you can have an offer, you know, "Hey, since you attended and you've listened this far, I'm going to do a special deal for you, and here's what you're going to get, go over to this page and sign up.", and you send them to a landing page, recapture a name and an email address and maybe payment info if you're selling something directly. But you could just do a legion, you know, give them a great webinar, "Hey, if you want more material like this, or if you'd like to get a copy of the webinar sent to you afterwards, go here.", and really just running a website in the first place, people are going to have to put in their email address to attend right off the bat, so that they know when the webinar is occurring and the link to attend. So, you grab emails that way. So, you know, a webinar can be a fantastic way to get emails and sales directly, in one go.
Jayson: Yeah, and you can do live webinars, or you can do recorded webinars that feel like they're live. And I've tried this and it's pretty cool, you can use a tool, I think it's called Ever Webinar to do that.
Sam: Another one is, yeah, another one's Webinar Ninja. And then, I feel like there's a handful more, they're kind of overpriced, I feel like somebody should come in and make a webinar tool that's cheaper than everybody else because every webinar and Webinar jam which are owned by the same company, in particular, are very pricey. But yeah, the Evergreen webinars, you record it once and you put it up and some of these tools have features built in that make it look like it's live like, you can pre-program comments and you can like, fake the number of users in the webinars so, it seems like there's a lot of people. I find that kind of ridiculous, but the idea of letting people attend a webinar at whatever time is good for them, even if it's not good for you, that makes sense, and I think is a good idea.
Jayson: Yeah, well, it works really well. So, it's worth a try, if you're looking for ideas. Another idea to try would be gated content. So, imagine your blog, and you've got a lot of great blog posts that are up there for anyone to see, but imagine that you've got a really popular one that a lot of people come to your site for, and you could, what you could do is gate it so that you can, when they click on it, it just says, "Hey, you know, this is sort of a free for members only, this blog post, and to unlock it, just tell us your name and email address, and you'll become a member and that will unlock this post.". Well, if somebody wants to read your post, you know, maybe it solves a problem, they might just do that. And this is a tactic that I've seen Brian Dean used to great success.
Sam: Yes, I just saw it on Backlinko recently. I was like, that, it made me pretty mad. It's like, he does put up a lot of really good stuff for free, but when I'm already, because the way he does it, you actually can read part of the article first and as you scroll, then you hit the lock, and you put in the email, and it's like, "Actually, if you want to finish reading this.", I'm like, "You son of a bitch. You're going to make me pay with my email address to read more.". And the funny thing is, I'm already on his email list. So, having to do that, again, like maybe the cookies aren't quite perfect there. But I'm sure it works really well.
Jayson: Yeah, I mean, shout out to Brian Dean, I'm also on his email list. And I know that he does a lot of testing, these guys who we talk about, like Neil and Brian Dean and others, you know, these guys are real genius marketers, and we can-- there's a lot that anybody can learn from them. And so, I would say, if they're doing it, they're probably doing it after results after lots of testing and decision making. And it's a vetted process in all likelihood, you know what we're seeing.
Sam: And like you said earlier, right? It's fair, you can't be expected to constantly produce extremely high quality and, in some cases, very expensive content for absolutely nothing. It's just, it's not reasonable. And you know, they don't want just random email addresses, like they want to be able to connect with people who are interested in that content or work in that industry, because they're constantly doing stuff that's relevant to you. So, it's a fair trade. But yeah, sometimes it can be annoying.
Jayson: Agreed. So, ask yourself, do you want to grow your numbers? Because if so, you might have to just bite the bullet a little bit and be a little bit annoying. But hey, you know, if it's about the numbers, it's about the numbers. So
Sam: Agreed, the last of course, would be doing something like giveaways or running a contest, or even you know, I guess like a poll, you can capture emails through a tiny form or something. But like, this can be a fantastic way to get a very large number of email addresses right off the bat. I'd say the key though is, to make sure if you're doing a giveaway or a contest, don't make it something generic, try if you can to make it something topically related. So, for example, I was on Pat Flynn's Smart Passive Income podcast a few years back, and afterwards, he partnered up with me to do an audit, one of my full SEO audits as a giveaway to one of his listeners. And so, gathered email addresses from people who wanted to be a part of the giveaway, and then I ended up doing an audit for one of those people. So, in that case, right, this is a really good, it's a really good list. These are all people who obviously have websites and know enough about SEO to know that they want or need an audit. So, you get a pretty niche list out of doing a giveaway like that. If you do a giveaway or a contest for something generic, cash, car, gift card, you know, whatever, like you're going to get everybody under the sun, it's not going to be a very high quality or clean email list and it's going to be much less effective. So, I would try and make it closely related to what you do if you can.
Jayson: Yeah, that's really good insight and Sam, I know that there are a bunch of tools and software out there that sort of facilitate running a contest and they help you capture submissions and emails. I-- nothing is coming to mind to the top of my head right now. I mean, do you know of any?
Sam: Yeah, the one I'm thinking of off the top of the bat is King Sumo. So, I'm pretty sure it's associated with Noah Kagan and the whole Sumo Empire app, Sumo King, Sumo WordPress plugin. But yeah, King Sumo helps to facilitate doing giveaways, but I'm not sure what else is out there. I'm sure there's more.
Jayson: Yeah, I've seen more. I've come across a few and I've written them down as stuff that I wanted to try. I haven't jumped into doing giveaways. I've more sort of spent sticking with lead magnets and creating tools, and the other sorts of things that we mentioned. I have done giveaways in the past.
Sam: Quick google, gleam.io is one, Woobox, W-O-O-B-O-X is one, looks like that maybe geared towards Facebook. Yeah, I mean, if you just Google contest software, giveaway software, something like that, I'm sure you'll find tons.
Jayson: Yeah, they facilitate you running contests through Facebook or Twitter or social media or outside of social channels as well. So, there's a lot of options there. But it's a good way to get people drummed up and excited and give you their email address. So, that's a good way to go.
Sam: I would say with that one, you may need to take one extra step which is looking to legal stuff related to that and some you know, there's a lot of legal restrictions around giveaways, drawings, lotteries, stuff like that. So, make sure that it's legit to do, you're following you know, whatever rules are associated with that, etc, talk to a lawyer. I am not one.
Jayson: Yeah, me neither. That’s always good advice; talk to a lawyer if in doubt.
Sam: But there you go, you know, those are seven ways you can use to start building an email list from scratch. And as always, if you have any questions, find us on Twitter, reach out, we are happy to chat about this and answer any questions. Thank you again for listening.
Jayson: Thanks guys and if you wouldn't mind leaving us a review or dropping us some feedback or telling a friend, we would really appreciate, it helps us out a lot.