The biggest mistake someone can ever make with their online business?
Not building their email list.
If you’ve been around long enough, you may have heard about how “the money is in the list.”
Building an email list is important, we get it.
But why?
Looking for other list building posts on this blog?
- List Building 101: How to Build An Email List That Makes Money (Cheatsheet Included)
- Newsletter Content Ideas To Send & Engage Your Subscribers
- Why I Switched to Using Convertkit As My Email Service Provider
- 10 Game-Changing Strategies I Used To Create an Irresistible Lead Magnet/ Freebie That Got Me 711 Downloads in 3 Months
- Get More Subscribers: 6 Hotspots To Place Your Email Opt-in Boxes
- The Hello Bar Alternative: How I Got 196 New Subscribers With Just 15 Minutes of Work
Building my list: Truth to be told…
I never thought much about the importance of building an email list until the time came when I wanted to launch my first course.
I posted about it on Twitter: Crickets.
Facebook? Slightly better.
By then I was crying internally, thinking that I just spent tons of time for NOTHING because this was something that my community wasn’t interested in purchasing.
Suddenly I remembered that I had an email list as well, and decided to send an email to my list.
And the sales started coming in.
Here are all the reasons why you should take your email list seriously, starting TODAY.
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1. You own your list
I’m so tired of all the algorithm changes that Facebook is always meting out; I don’t even pay much attention to them anymore.
You don’t own your social media followers, and you never will. For the same reason, I always advise people not to pick free blogging platforms and to self-host their own blogs.
You own your list, not your email service provider. You can always download the .csv file from your email service provider, and those emails are yours.
Nobody can post ads to them, nobody can legally send them emails except for you.
2. You have some control over when people will receive your emails
Most people check their emails daily (in particular, people working in companies).
When you send an email out, you can immediately drive traffic to your website, landing page or sales page.
This means that when you’ve something to sell, people will be there to listen and perhaps buy.
However, when you post something on social media, there is no guarantee that your followers will see them.
At any time, only a certain percentage of your followers will see your posts… (and a very small percentage at that!)
3. An email inbox is a personal space
When someone invites you to their inbox, it is a sacred, personal space!
Unlike in social media, where everyone is shouting at the top of their lungs, someone’s inbox is more private.
What does this mean for you? You get more air time for them to know, like and trust you.
And build a relationship, of course.
4. Automations make email marketing a great tool!
With a good email service provider like Convertkit, you’re able to send customized automated emails to people without you lifting a finger.
For instance, you can send a particular email to people that’ve subscribed for 5 days, or you can send a particular email when someone clicks on a link in an email you send.
This means that you can send different things to different people. Isn’t that amazing?
As your subscribers are at different stage of the buying cycle, being able to customize what you send them according to their needs is a powerful tool indeed.
For instance, I send a welcome email to new subscribers.
For the next 80 days, they receive a special sequence of emails for me to build a relationship with them.
During launch times when I’ll be sending more real-time emails, I switch off the sequence.
5. Email just converts better, period.
I could put a ton of reasons and go on and on and on… but the bottom line is this: When someone is a subscriber, they are more likely to end up buying from you.
The importance of getting more subscribers
To put it real clearly, if you have more subscribers, you will have more people opening your emails and clicking on what you send them.
When you write a blog post, you can drive more traffic to your blog post.
When you have a webinar, you can drive people to sign up for your webinar (and pitch them something later)
When you’re an affiliate, you can drive people to buy your product so that you can get more commissions.
When you offer products, courses or services, you get more people going to your sales pages, and this results in more profits.
Some things that aren’t as important as the number of subscribers…
Page views aren’t as important.
Social media shares aren’t as important.
No. of followers aren’t as important.
They are good to have but not essential.
But at the end of the day, the metric that you really want to focus on (aside from profits) is your number of subscribers.
How can you get started with building an email list?
You’ll need an email service provider to collect emails and to send people emails from. These emails will include automated emails (you write once and set it up to run on autopilot) or broadcasts (you write this live and send them immediately)
I recommend Convertkit (click here to check it out), and this is the email service provider that I personally use. I’ve used MailChimp, Aweber, and Getresponse as well, and Convertkit wins hands down.
Here’s why I recommend it: Why I Switched to Using Convertkit As My Email Service Provider.
Please go ahead and read that, and then sign up for Convertkit. Feel free to email me if you face any troubles with getting your email list started if you use my link!
Looking for other list building posts on this blog?
- List Building 101: How to Build An Email List That Makes Money (Cheatsheet Included)
- Newsletter Content Ideas To Send & Engage Your Subscribers
- Why I Switched to Using Convertkit As My Email Service Provider
- 10 Game-Changing Strategies I Used To Create an Irresistible Lead Magnet/ Freebie That Got Me 711 Downloads in 3 Months
- Get More Subscribers: 6 Hotspots To Place Your Email Opt-in Boxes
- The Hello Bar Alternative: How I Got 196 New Subscribers With Just 15 Minutes of Work
The best way to get more subscribers…
Is to join my signature list building course, Traffic Subscribers Yours. It is a complete step-by-step list system to grow your traffic and get your first 1,000 subscribers without the guesswork.
In the course, I also go through exactly how I got from 0 to 1000 subscribers in 4 months, plus my best traffic + list building strategies from my 10 years of blogging experience!
Click here to learn more about Traffic Subscribers Yours.
Many online entrepreneurs spend years trying to get their first 1k subscribers and end up giving up, but it does not have to be this way for you.
P.S. Also, check out my free list building webinar, 3 Key Strategies Behind How I Got 10,000 Subscribers In The Last 12 Months to learn about how you can rapidly grow your email list.
Disclaimer: There’s a pitch for Traffic Subscribers Yours at the end, but the 3 strategies I cover will already be 1000% more than any free content you can find out there about growing your audience.
xx Raelyn
Shani says
August 31, 2017 at 12:18 pmI am just starting and basically doing this for me. As therapy so to speak, so do I really need an email list. Plus I have no idea what to say or how to get started.?
Raelyn Tan says
September 12, 2017 at 5:06 amYou can get started with this post! -> http://raelyntan.com/list-building 🙂 And, here are some ideas that will help you with thinking of what to send your list: http://raelyntan.com/newsletter-content-ideas 🙂 I hope this helps, Shani! Thanks for stopping by.
Liliya says
December 12, 2018 at 6:59 pmHi Raelyn, I’m about to launch my own blog; using it as a social engagement tool and a business tool*. I have a couple of points to make:
1. Immensely grateful for bringing Divi to my attention. Divi ROCKS! I was despairing with awkward builder that came in a bundle in with my webhosting offer; it was slow, ungainly and the customisation options were limited. I jumped the ship with Divi, and my only regret is I have not done it sooner.
2. It should be pointed out that the $249.00 you pay with Divi is a ONE OFF LIFETIME MEMBERSHIP FEE! They have annual plans, too, for about a third of the price. It is an option, if people are REALLY hurting financially, or if they want to look before they leap. My decision was swayed by a simple math: Lifetime membership gives you LIFETIME FREE ACCESS to ALL Divi- based products, past, current and future. Since the lifetime fee itself is paid for by 3 years’ worth of annual fees, the math was clear as crystal. I already benefited from the lifetime membership scheme, having enjoyed access to all the themes, layouts and updates released for Cyber Monday deal. ?
3. I don’t know, but I find your greeting new subscriber email sequence a little too intrusive. Remember, I don’t really know how it should work, so I am kind of working it out for myself, too. Perhaps, halving the frequency would work just as well? Or, better maybe? Feel free to remove this last point from the published comment, btw.
*I am a Psychiatrist (physician specialising in mental health) living in UK. I am also on Autism Spectrum. I want to use my blog as a means to deliver modern reality of autism to general public: i.e, by talking about my internal world, my life experiences, my observations, but also popular neuroscience and current understanding of autism ( which is very far from a kind of a freaky mix of an “idiot savant” ( e.g., Rain Man) and a movingly naïve, geeky and socially awkward science & technology genius (e.g., Sheldon in Big Bang). The SITE LAUNCHING LATER THIS WEEK, ITS NOT READY YET. ?
Raelyn Tan says
December 19, 2018 at 4:55 pmOh yes Divi is a great theme, I’m glad you liked it! I’m in the midst of revamping the subscriber email sequence actually! Just curious, what’s your preferred frequency?