Growing Your Email List w/o Being an Unethical Pest

Debbie,

Great question. I think it's a little more challenging growing your email list through telecourses. We have had great success getting more e-letter subscribers through our blogging and marketing with e-newsletters workshops. But 1) we have that face-to-face contact at live events and 2) the newsletter content supplements and expands on topics we cover in the workshops. We also send a direct link to our archives so they can check out the quality of the product and sign up easily if they like what they see. The result: we are building our opt-in list and, when we have developed credibility with our subscribers, we can send them offers from time to time.

It also depends, I think, on whether value is perceived. Some people develop a list just to inform people of their upcoming workshops. There is nothing wrong with this, but it is not always perceived as valuable.

On the other hand, you may have a very helpful e-newsletter that subscribers to your list will get. If your telecourse touches on the same rich content, I would subtly tie that content to your newsletter content. (In the telecourse, when you talk about XYZ, tell people that your free newsletter expands on this topic and provides more tips/ strategies for doing ______.)

That way, at the end of your telecourse, you can send an email with a direct link to sign up. It also helps if people can see an example of what they will be getting. (For us, it''s our e-letter archives we send them to, where there is a simple e-letter sign-up form, too.)

If through the telecourse, you can show them that the wonderful stuff they got will continue when they join your list, they will be more likely to sign up. Don't be shy about just asking them to join!

Hi Debbie, Good for you for making sure you're not being a spammy pest with your email, and for doing teleclasses!

A few suggestions that might help:

1) These days it's hard to get people to sign up for another email newsletter...Unless you also offer something more powerful, valuable and immediate. Try a free report or downloadable audio as your front-end offer, and the newsletter as an added bonus.

This works wonders for me.

2) If I'm trying to use teleseminars to grow my list, I interview another expert and ask them to promote our call to their list. Then I have a signup form for the call that includes my newsletter as a bonus.

3) I've had the best luck with submitting really meaty articles online and including an offer for my powerful free report with a link back to a signup page for that report. Again, the newsletter subscription is a bonus.

4) You might want to consider greater frequency with your e-newsletter. A month is a long time to wait for something of value. As time passes they're likely to forget who you are and why they signed up. Then they'll stop reading and/or unsubscribe.

Hope this helps.

Here's to your future success! Stacy

Hi Debbie, You have gotten some great tips from Stacy and Judy - wonderful women!

I thought I might offer a couple of things in addition to the rich feedback you have already received.

Why not have them added to your list when they sign up for the teleseminar - that is the freebie that they get for signing up and the newsletter is built as added value.

I might also try offering a 'special report' on a squeeze page, and your blog. By getting the special report that you compile with other industry experts (cross promotion) you can then capture their contact info.

And as a side note. I get a lot of newsletters, weekly, bi-weekly and monthly. Some quarterly. I have signed up because something captivated me about them and their information or they had a cool offer I wanted. The ones that I have dropped were because the value for the free product exceeded that value of continuing the relationship. Meaning, I got bored. The ones I keep give me meaty tips I can use and more often than not, it is the ones I get more frequently, like weekly. The ones that are sporadic or few and far between lose my interest because I forget about them and then get kind of annoyed when they pop in after no attention for several weeks/months.

Hope that's helpful. Good luck on your endeavor!!

Tammy

If you're wanting to stay in touch, an email list is one of the worst ways to go about it.

Likely you'll just join the wads of stuff people get about stuff they're not really bothered about.

Sure, if you're amazon and have large amounts of new releases it can be a useful service to recipients. But in more personal businesses it's not such a big deal.

It's better to get them interested enough to develop a habit of visiting you to see what's new.

I don't remember to go visit people's sites...

Demonstrates my point that you're not sufficiently interested in their stuff. They've not 'hooked' you strongly enough.

That's not a critique of you, it's advice for us as vendors.

In your case, your 'Emails are sent no more than once per month' subtle list is unlikely to do much to build fervor for your stuff.

Email lists, newsletters, and Update emails are all one thing to me: Something I sign up for with the best of intentions, and then delete the moment they come into my inbox.

On the other hand, one of the reasons the Power Chicks group is so vibrant on Biznik is that Lynn - the owner of the group - sends out a weekly newsletter to all the members, and summarizes the week's activity in the group.

This inspires people to come back and participate more. It is the positive version of a Vicious Cycle... a "Virtuous Cycle" maybe?

So effective use of an email/newsletter system is actually a delicate balancing act:
Compelling content,
delivered in a timely manner,
to people who have had the proper expectations set,
and it ultimately inspires the reader to engage and create more content.

How many people actually execute on all those points? You can probably count them on one hand.