I got a couple of emails a few weeks back from readers of ***this article****. We went back and forth a bit chatting about the article and methods to grow our lists. So I decided to try to write a more detailed piece with some more effective methods. I’ve been putting this article together since those emails and hope it will help a few people. You have to build an email list. Every guru will tell you this. But they are right! This is one of only a few things that guru’s constantly talk about that I actually agree with.

Why?

When you build a list of emails it allows you to market to them again in the future without having to spend expensive PPC money or drop thousands of dollars on media buying. The higher the quality of emails you collect, the easier they are going to convert when you send them future offers.

This is how these super gurus make their money. They build a list of sheep that will buy anything they send out to their list. These sheep are so loyal that they would buy a shit popsicle if they were offered it. These are the kinds of emails you want!

You want people that love what you sell and will automatically want whatever you offer next. This works for both services and products. It doesn’t matter what you sell.. you need to build n email list.

The bigger your list, the more money you are going to make every time you mail it.

You can’t just put a form on your website and cross your fingers and hope that every person that visits your website gives you their email address. It doesn’t work like that. Not even close! If you just put a form on your site without promoting it at all you would be LUCKY if 5 people out of every 1,000 handed it over. You have to make an effort to squeeze it out of them. You do this by giving them offers they can’t refuse.. bribing them to hand over that email!

Free eBooks, newsletters, and some kinds of digital download are the easiest bait to create and manage. There are so many download manager plugins that will protect your digital products and only give access once that email has been submitted.

Come up with a cool offer that your competition isn’t offering. Stand out and be different.

Here are some easy ways to grow your email list like a BOSS!

 

Bother your social media followers until every single one of them bends over and gives you what you want.. that email address

If you are operating a real business then you have social media accounts. Facebook and Twitter for sure.. and maybe even Pinterest and G+ as well. You have to. Every real business has to be active on social media because that is where the customers are.

Some people.. like affiliates and people pushing CPA offers typically aren’t going to have social profiles.. so if you fall under this sorry, this won’t apply to you. Some businesses are active on social media because like I said you have to be.. and some are active on social media because it works. They connect with people and then they head over to their site and make a purchase or do something of value.

Over time your social media followers and fans increase. They follow you because their friends do.. they click your social icons on your website.. or they find you on social media and follow you because they think they might be interested in whatever you sell.

So many businesses assume that their followers are on their email list. Also, some people are scared to ask them to join their list because they think they will unlike their Facebook page or unfollow them on Twitter. Know what? Who cares! They are useless to you unless they are making you money!

There are too many clowns that think follower count matters. It doesn’t. It only becomes relevant when all those followers are buying stuff from you.. then of course you want millions of them.

So post about your offers and let your social media connections know how they can join your email list. Post often. Send them a direct URL to click so they can subscribe.. send them to your offer page.. whatever. Just do it!

Are you really going to be upset if “Joe Broke” unfollows you because you posted 2 times in a single day trying to get more email addresses? Screw him! He was worthless. Know who worries about hurting peoples feelings on social media? People who don’t make money!

Look at some of the biggest marketers on social media. They SLAM their list with offers 24/7. Why? Because they can AND because they don’t give a crap. They aren’t sensitive little bitches. They are money making machines!

(Now take a 2 min break from reading this and post on all your social media and see how many new emails you can get. Seriously.. go do it!)

 

Gate premium content and require a email and social share (Twitter or Facebook) to access it

Ever see generic subscriber forms on a website? There is no offer. No idea what you get. Just some BS like “Subscribe to us” and a submit button. Subscribe for what? Naked picture of your mom? Hot stock tips? What the fuck do you want my email for?

You have to give your website visitors something worthwhile. And don’t just say it’s a newsletter. Newsletters are fine.. but generic ones suck. Be details. What is the newsletter about. Why should they sign up for it instead of the other 4,345,345 newsletters that are out there. What makes yours different?

If you offer something that people want you can also GET MORE OUT OF THEM! Not only will they hand over their email address but they will also be more than happy to click a tweet button or a Facebook share button to unlock whatever you are offering.

This way you get the email address that you wanted but then you also have this new subscriber promoting the offer to anyone that is connected to their social media. Set your social message to say something like “I just downloaded this sick eBook about banging supermodels and how to grow an extra 6 inches on your pipe overnight. Click here to get it too!”

Think of how many times you see your friends retweet something or share something on Facebook. Admit it.. you look! Don’t worry.. we all do! It is human nature to be interested in what your friends are doing. That is why this strategy works so well. So many people see these social shares and think “well if Bob did this I’m going to do it also” and then you gain extra subscribers AND MORE SOCIAL SHARES. A really good offer can snowball fast and your lists explode with subscribers.

Tossing a contest out there is another good way to get a lot of social love. There is no right answer here.. use anything that your niche will like. Do you have a food blog? Then offer some celebrity recipes as a download.. have a sports blog? Offer a chance to win an autographed baseball. Anything.. just get creative and offer something that your niche is going to want bad enough that they will give you an email address and click some share buttons without even blinking.

 

Spend some money on social media ads (have to spend money to make money!)

You want to make money right? Well then you need to be ready to spend some! Too many people want to make piles of money without investing a dime. That is a fairytale.. and you all know I don’t BS.. I’m right to the point.

“But Tommy.. social media is expensive”

It isn’t when you know what you are doing. So many people will just try to target a major country like the U.S. and say well a Facebook click is going to be $2.. that is too high.

Guess what? There are fat people all over the world that would buy your weight loss eBook.. and some of those clicks might just cost 5 CENTS! You can kick ass on social media when you do three things:

  1. Stop being scared to spend money
  2. Be willing to test
  3. Use smart targeting

I see so many threads on forums that talk about testing Facebook ads with $10 and then being all upset because there were no sales. With ten fucking dollars? Facebook ads is a form of media buying that requires money. There are a lot of media buying gems posted by member “wasted” and if you notice he always tested with a minimum of $500 but most of the times he spent a couple thousand dollars and then continued to test.. but this is how he made a lot of money with media buys. He wasn’t scared to spend money.

You aren’t going to build a winning campaign with $10 or a $50 ad voucher. If that is all you have to spend don’t waste it.

Testing is key. Images, wording and the offer all need to be tested. You aren’t going to know if it can get better unless you test.

You also have to know how to target correctly. “Tommy my product is English speaking and US clicks are expensive”.. then target in other English speaking countries and use cheap clicks to test.. then once you have a good campaign built roll it out to the more expensive countries.

Now, take whatever offer you are promoting on your website and promote it through paid social media advertising. So many people fail to use paid social media when trying to build their email lists.

Give it a try and you will see that social media traffic is more willing to bite. It’s cheaper then PPC traffic and it converts better. The targeting is really good also. For example, if you have a website about dog training and your offer is an eBook about dog training tricks you could run a Twitter ad campaign that only targeted people that follow Purina and the other popular dog food brands. This type of targeting can really put your offer in front of the right eyes.

 

Put offers all over your site (and different ones)

Let me guess.. you have an offer on your right sidebar.. yeah? Well so does every other website. Yeah it’s a good spot for one.. but not your only one!

Every site is different but just a few examples of what to use and where to put them:

Hello Bar

This is a simple opt in tool that you can set to stay at the very top of your pages or to remain on top and float, so it is always in view even when the person scrolls to the bottom of a page. It’s just another nice location to put an offer. You don’t have to use it to collect emails though.. you can introduce an offer and create a “Click Here” button that directs your traffic to an offer page where you can then try to convert them into email subscribers.

 

Ninja Forms

This is a simple WordPress plugin that takes zero coding skills to use. You just drag and drop. You can make email submit forms and place them anywhere with this simple plugin. You can also use this plugin to handle your contact forms as well.

 

Use a popup offer (and don’t listen to people that say they are annoying)

Popups work. Forget what anyone else tells you. Look at every guru website.. they all use when. Why? Because the sheep LOVE them. They don’t get annoyed by them. They enter in their email and click submit. The people that say they don’t like popups aren’t going to buy anything from you anyway.. who gives a crap if they are annoyed.

You can set them to popup right away or you can do it only on the exit. Test different times. There are so many options. There are a lot of WP plugins but they are crappy.. they look like crap and load like crap. There are 3 solid options that I suggest.

 

Exit Mist

This is a good option for those that are new to popups or on a very tight budget because this one has a nice free trial. The only downsize is that it doesn’t seem to work as well as other options. You get what you pay for I guess.. but if you have no other options this one will do the trick and help you collect some more emails.

 

Picreel

This one is nice because they have a simple editor within their dashboard that allows you to quickly make a bunch of different popups and actually test them all. It will rotate them out and you can see what ones work better. They actually have a free trial now too. There isn’t a plugin with this.. so you need to at the very least be able to insert a single line of code on your site through FTP. You can get this for as low as $19 month.. and the price increases as your page views increase.

 

Optin Monster

This is a good option for the WordPress user that doesn’t want to try to insert code. This is a plugin that you install and edit right in your WP dashboard. It is very easy to use and the nice thing about this one is that it is a flat one time price. Price is as low as $49 for 1 site. It doesn’t matter how much traffic your site receives. The price is $49.

 

AND IF YOU HAVE CRAZY MONEY…

Bounce Exchange

Now, if you want to drop $6K per month on a popup this is the one for you. (I’m not joking.. price STARTS at $6K per month and the next step up is $10K per month).. this is only if you are on super duper guru level

That’s it for now guys.. I may do a 3rd part to this if anyone is interested. Any questions? or input on your own methods of list growing.. fire away! As always I hope you enjoyed the read. Until next time..


Tommy McDonald

Tommy is an SEO professional with years of experience running highly successful SEO companies, founded SerpLogic after noticing there was a major void when it came to options for SEO agencies needing a reliable and professional one-stop outsource solution.You can read all about me in the “About” page here on our blog!


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