This article is by Hernan Vazquez. Hernan is an Entrepreneur and Digital Marketing expert. He works on providing value on his YouTube channel about the latest marketing approaches and strategies, as well as connecting with fellow entrepreneurs and business owners on his Facebook Group.
You’d be surprised how many entrepreneurs out there are not collecting emails and leveraging the power of email marketing to grow their online businesses.
That’s about to change today, because I’ll show you the impact and the power that collecting emails can have in your business, both in terms of sales and growing a community of raving fans and customers.
Why Bother Collecting Emails?
But first, let’s start with “Why.” Why should you bother building an email list for your business? You could argue that most of your sales are not conducted via email anyways. And that’s one of the main reasons.
You see, if you’re not collecting emails when people land on your website, you’re missing out on a big opportunity to create a relationship with them. It is said that people need from eight to 10 points of contact to make a purchasing decision, so why should your business be any different?
However, if you offer something valuable the minute people visit your site, your ecommerce store or your contact form, you can keep the conversation going, add value and actually help show those people that you can help them in the future (when they purchase your product or service) by helping them right now!
Another big point to start collecting emails is independence. It is said that your purchasers and subscribers list is your business #1 asset. I believe that your #1 asset is the “relationship” that you have with your subscribers (as I mentioned before).
Relying on Others to Deliver Traffic to Your Website is Risky
If you don’t have an email list, you’ll have to always depend on some other company to deliver traffic to your website. Whether it is Google via Search Engine Optimization (SEO) or Facebook via Facebook Advertising, you’re relying on “someone else” to bring traffic and leads to your website. That can be risky!
I’m sure you’ve heard those horror stories of Google algorithms updating or Facebook ads account getting banned and closed, and companies going out of business because of this. If you’re depending on one source of traffic to get sales, then you don’t have a business!
By having an email list, you can command traffic every time you want. Selling a new product? Email your list. Do you have a new service? Let your subscribers know. Are you going in Christmas sale mode? Send a new broadcast email! You’ll get traffic on demand by doing so.
Last but not least, email marketing is still one of the highest Return On The Investment (ROI) forms of advertising available today. Remember that you only pay for a lead once, but you can market to them for as long as you have them in your email list.
So let’s say that you pay $5 to get a new lead, but the Lifetime Value (meaning the amount of money they spend with your company over time) is $500. That’s a 100 to one ratio! And it’s completely attainable with a good sales funnel and email marketing campaign.
3 Simple Steps to Collecting Emails
Now that I got you all excited and hungry about collecting emails, let’s see how you can implement three simple steps to make this happen in your business.
Step 1: Choose your Autoresponder Carefully
An autoresponder is simply the service you will be using to communicate with your subscribers via email. And this is one important choice to make.
I consult with clients pretty much every week that are still using Gmail’s or Outlook’s address book and manually sending emails to 20-30 contacts at a time. That’s not only time consuming but it’s also mind numbing! Plus it’s not scalable! What would happen if you get 1500 or 5000 subscribers over the next six months?
You’ll need a reliable solution that will allow you to communicate with your prospects efficiently and effectively.
There are a ton of different companies out there that you can pick from, but my go-to favorite over the past 18 months has been Active Campaign. This tool fulfills all of the basic functionality every autoresponder should have, and it has some wicked automation features.
You don’t need to over complicate this though, just pick an autoresponder that’s inexpensive to begin with, that will integrate with your landing page builder (more about that in a minute) and that will allow you to scale.
Active Campaign is definitely my go-to tool nowadays because it allows you to become really ninja with your email marketing. For example, why would a subscriber that never opens your email and a subscriber that’s super engaged with your brand be treated the same? That’s called behavioral sequence, but that’s for another post ;).
Now that you have picked your autoresponder, it’s time to craft your lead magnet and your landing page.
Step 2: Crafting your Lead Magnet and Landing Page
What is a lead magnet? A lead magnet is a piece of content that is valuable, it’s easily consumed and it allows you to “open the conversation” with your potential buyers. My favorite lead magnets are the ones that give away massive value and they build your authority at the same time. Some examples are:
- Mindmaps
- Checklists
- Cheat Sheets
- Reports
- Ebooks
- Templates
- Swipe Files
This small piece of content has to solve a specific need and be short and to the point. You don’t want to promote a 12 step video course as a lead magnet. Most of the time people will not even consume it!
You can make it yourself (if you feel fancy designing) or get somebody on Fiverr or Upwork to do it for you at an inexpensive price.
Next step is setting up your landing page. To do this you can use a tool such as LeadPages, Instapage, OptimizePress or ClickFunnels. These are all landing pages builders and you can get them done in no time. Plus they have beautiful pre-made templates that are usually converting really well.
It’s up to you what you choose but should you decide to use ClickFunnels, here’s a video I made on how to setup your landing page step by step.
I plan on doing more for the other page builders mentioned so stay tuned!
The most important step here is to connect your autoresponder with your landing page builder. Because you want people to immediately receive your lead magnet once they sign up. This will depend on which autoresponder and landing page builder combination you’ve chosen, but most of the former integrates with most of the latter.
Step 3: Promote Your Lead Magnet and Landing Page
Now that you have them both integrated with your autoresponder, it’s time to promote them! The best way of doing so is by adding them in your email signature, in your banners and even in your call to actions in your blog posts.
I’ve found that sending paid advertising, such as Facebook ads, to your landing page works amazingly well to grow your email list and give away value (your lead magnet). Use every possible opportunity to promote your lead magnet and start building a relationship with your potential audience right off the bat.
Bonus Step: Tweak, Test and Split/Test
There’s a high chance that your lead magnet will not “convert” that well initially. By converting I mean turning visitors into leads. So you might need to develop several iterations of your lead magnet. If a checklist doesn’t work, try with a free report, or with a free video, or with something else.
The other thing to test is your landing page. We will talk about optimizing and split testing more in the future but just have in mind that if your landing page gets 20 new leads for every 100 visitors, then it has a 20% conversion rate. Incrementing this in 10% will give you a lot more leads for the same amount of money or effort.
Now it’s time to take action. Start building an email list immediately. Your business and your monthly revenue will thank you for it.
