Earlier on this blog, I explained the importance of building marketing assets. If you review my list of recommendations, you’ll see that an email list is the most important. That’s because nothing is more critical than having contact information to reach your readers, donors, or customers.
Without a contact list, you have to restart every new book launch, donor campaign, or product debut from scratch. No entrepreneur or business can survive if they have to start over every time. A growing email list helps you avoid that fate.
But, how do you build a rapidly growing email list that gets bigger every year? As a consultant, I’ve taught numerous clients how to increase the size of their email list without spending much money. Here are recent some examples and secrets that I use.
I recently helped an author client grow her email list from 6,000 to over 25,000 subscribers in 6 months. We used the author’s large social media following on Facebook and Instagram to get new subscribers by offering attractive free e-books. It didn’t cost the author any money to convert her social media fans into email subscribers. Now, she has their contact information and the ability to reach a much wider audience than Facebook allows – without having to waste money on boosting posts or buying ads.
I also recently trained the marketing staff at two mid-size publishing houses how to build their company email list of potential book buyers. Again, I taught them to give away various types of free e-books, including backlist titles, devotionals, recipe downloads, and videos to attract new email subscribers. Within one year of applying my tactics, one publisher doubled their house email list from 17,000 to 35,000 subscribers. The other publisher surpassed over 160,000 total subscribers. And, they spent very little money on outside advertising to achieve those results.
When I helped the 23-year-old backlist book, Boundaries, become a New York Times bestseller in 2015 and 2016, I built an email list from zero to 50,000 subscribers in 9 months. The key to success was developing joint venture partnerships with other large organizations who drove massive amounts of traffic to my free content offers. I gave them lots of great content they wanted. In return, they provided the audience reach that I needed.
Notice the similarities in the three client examples I just described:
- Dramatic growth was attained without spending much money on advertising.
- Results took 6 – 12 months to create. Success didn’t happen overnight.
- New email subscribers were attracted by offering a lot of free content.
- Joint venture partnerships escalate results – like pouring gasoline on a fire.
- The process works for authors, publishers, non-profits, and any size business.
Money doesn’t grow on trees. Likewise, if you want a high-value appreciating asset, such as an email list, it won’t grow unless you make it a constant priority. Use the secrets shared above from my successful work with clients to create a list that turns into an appreciating asset for you.
By the way, I do this for a living. If you’re struggling to build your email list, call me at 770-887-1462 or contact me here. It’s too important to put off getting better results.
