Why should you care about growing your email list?

To be honest, I can’t believe this is even still a question in 2023. At this point, it should be an indisputable fact – email marketing is not dead. It’s still the highest ROI marketing tool in the game, a whopping 675%. Why is the ROI so high?

First, everyone has it – and I mean everyone – from Gen Z to your grandma, we all have email. And statistics say that 99% of email users check their email every day, some as much as 20 times a day! Second, it’s not algorithm based so when somebody opts into your list you can be confident they are at least going to have the opportunity to see it. Not to mention, it’s highly customizable. Thanks to segmentation features, you’re able to customize your emails to create an extremely personal experience for each reader, without extra work on your part. 

And the biggest reason email is the GOAT – you own your content. On other conversion platforms like Instagram, TikTok, and Twitter, you have no ownership over your content – it could be deleted at any time for any reason, with no explanation and no way to recover it. With email, you have unrestricted access to those email addresses (and therefore contact with your audience.)

How to grow your email list

So now that we agree growing your email list is important, how do we do that? The simple answer is – convince people that you’re going to offer them some type of value in exchange for access to their inbox. To get started you’ll need an email marketing system to create your opt-in forms and send your emails through, I recommend Flodesk for the most aesthetic and user friendly experience, and one of the following lead generators:

Free Resources

Let’s just get the most obvious one out of the way, shall we? A free resource is the most common form of lead magnet. At its core a lead magnet is a free piece of value given in exchange for an email address. But, I’ve audited hundreds of lead magnets and way too many of them miss the mark. So, what makes a good lead magnet? 

First of all, your lead magnet needs to attract the right type of person – your ideal client. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, but creating valuable content only matters if you’re creating content that your ideal client finds valuable. Which means you should start by asking yourself things like “does educating on this topic make sense for my brand? do I have an offer or content pillar that connects to this topic?” and “what type of person would this lead magnet be attractive to?”

Once the answer to both of those questions aligns with your ideal client, then it’s time to consider the value. You want your lead magnet to solve a specific problem and be valuable enough that they feel the exchange of their email address was worth it, but leave them wanting more. 

When it comes to format, the sky’s the limit, but two of the most common forms of free resources are PDF guides or video webinars. If you prefer to write, I recommend creating a pdf guide in Canva. If you prefer to speak, you can use a zoom recording or loom video for your webinar download.

Exclusive Weekly Content (aka your newsletter)

One of the biggest mistakes you can make with email marketing is only emailing your list when you’re selling. For that reason, along with a million others that I won’t rant about here (maybe a future blog post, idk, stay tuned) a weekly newsletter should be part of your content strategy if you want to make money from your email list. 

People love to feel special, they love feeling like they’re getting something that other people aren’t, so if you can deliver a valuable piece of information via email each week that they can’t get anywhere else  – you can bet that’s going to entice them to subscribe. 

And if you’re thinking “I have no idea what I would email my list every week” – I’ve got you, go read “How to create a content strategy you can actually keep up with” and that will be a worry of the past.

But in order for this strategy to work, your newsletter needs to feel exclusive. So, how do you do that? First, make it a thing. Give it a name and whip up a quick email banner in Canva that you add to the top of every email. For example, mine is Midweek Momentum. This is kind of like “the cool girl” table in middle school, there was absolutely nothing special about that table except the people who sat there and the fact that they told everyone it was better than the other tables – if you make your newsletter sound cool, that’s all most people need to be convinced.

Which is my next point, the way you talk about it matters. To convince your audience to join your list for weekly content, your opt-in copy should clearly tell them what they’ll be getting and how often. 

Take my opt in copy for example: The midweek pick-me-up your inbox needs.  Get tips to help you magnetize your dream clients, eliminate distractions, and propel your business forward that you can read in 5 minutes or less – delivered to your inbox every Wednesday.
p.s. I’m not much of a teacher, I’m more of a do-er. So, if this is the tactic you’re going with and you want someone to take care of building the strategy and writing these weekly emails for you, I’m your girl. If you’d rather do the work on your own but you need to learn how, my girl Sara Noel from Between the Lines Copy taught me everything I know about crafting a weekly newsletter strategy inside her Email Marketing Chapter Online Course and I highly recommend it if you want to see massive ROI from your email marketing strategy.

Website Quiz

Be honest, we’ve all gotten sucked into a personality or pop culture quiz (you know the ones that tell you what your spirit animal is or what celebrity hunk is your perfect match) at some point. And that is exactly why a quiz can be such a powerful tool for growing your email list.  they tap into people’s natural curiosity and desire for personalized experiences. 

Not only do they attract a lot of attention, quizzes are a great way to gather valuable data about your audience’s preferences, and give you the info you need to fine tune your marketing strategies and offerings. It’s a win-win for both your business and your audience. 

The biggest downside of quizzes in comparison to the other lead magnet strategies is the amount of work they take to develop. However, platforms like Interact help make the process a lot easier with templates and a user friendly set up. My clients, along with popular brand names like Jenna Kutcher and Lush Cosmetics, have built their custom quiz on Interact and seen massive results.

How people will find your lead magnet

This is the part that most entrepreneurs miss. They create the lead magnet, they write the newsletter, or they launch the quiz – but it stops there. In order for any of these things to work for growing your email list, people (specifically your ideal clients) need to know they exist. This isn’t magic, and unfortunately in this case the whole idea of “if you build it, they will come” doesn’t apply. So once you’ve decided on one of the three items above and created your lead generator, it’s time to shift your focus to gaining visibility for it.

I’ve gone through this process with dozens of clients (and tested it on my own lead generators) and here are the methods that I’ve found gained the most ROI:

Promote it on Pinterest

Contrary to what you may have heard, Pinterest is not just another social media platform. It’s a visual search engine – one that has over 465 million active users each month. In fact, 97% of top searches on Pinterest are unbranded and 80% of weekly Pinners have discovered a new brand or product on Pinterest – meaning when they have questions, they go to Pinterest for answers. Which is why Pinterest is one of the best places to market your lead generator. By sharing fresh weekly content that entices readers to join your list, you’re able to add hundreds, even thousands of new subscribers each month without creating any additional work.

How to do it? Each week, create a few beautifully designed pins that represent your free resource, weekly newsletter, or quiz, then optimize your pin descriptions with relevant keywords and save it to a board with the most relevant topic (p.s. You should have 10-15 boards that relate to different topics within your brand pillars, as well as a “freebie” board where people can easily find your free downloads.)
Ready to start leveraging Pinterest for auto-pilot marketing? Book a VIP Day for a custom Pinterest set up.

Share it on your Instagram Stories/Highlights

This is such a simple strategy that so often gets forgotten. While I don’t believe you need to be on social media apps every single day to grow your business, showing up consistently on stories will definitely help build trust with your audience and increase engagement. Sharing about your free resource, email newsletter, or quiz is a great way to show up on stories and offer a ton of value with minimal effort. 

Simply create a few different graphics in Canva that promote your lead generator (hint: they can be the same as your Pinterest graphics, no need to recreate the wheel here) and use one graphic per day. 

And don’t forget to create a highlight on your instagram bio for “freebies”  and save one of those graphics for each lead generator, so that new followers can quickly and easily access your free content too.

Add it as the call to action on all of your blogs

If you have The Blogging Essentials Playbook, you already know how crucial a call to action is on each and every blog. Your blog is likely attracting cold leads to your website, people that are hearing about you for the first time. So, inviting them to your email list (in exchange for more value) is the perfect way to nurture them down your sales funnel. 

Experiment with different CTA placements, such as at the beginning, middle, or end of the post, to understand what works best for your audience. And if you want to get really fancy, consider adding pop-ups to your website that trigger when a visitor is about to leave your site, offering the lead magnet as a last chance to capture their interest and email address.

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In case we haven’t met yet, I’m Michaela – content writer, behind the scenes expert, and chaos coordinator (aka the virgo energy to your creative spirit). And I’m completely obsessed with helping you turn your journal full of ideas into profit driving offers with research backed strategy, magnetic content, and streamlined systems.

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