Building an Email List + Sending Better Emails

The key to building an email list for your business is creating lead magnets that encourage more and more people to sign up!

When someone signs up for an email list, it is considered an exchange. For most people, their email is something that they check daily and it's important that they feel like they are truly getting something out of giving them your email!

A quality lead magnet is the best way to build your email list in a way that feels good for both you and your audience.

What is a lead magnet? Why is it important for building your email list?

Lead magnets are any type of free service, education, or information that is offered in exchange for contact details. Your content on social media can be considered a lead magnet, and a follow would be the exchange of contact details!

The beauty of lead magnets is that you can have many of different kinds that help drive people to your email list. The more lead magnets you have, the larger your funnel will be, and the bigger your community will grow.

I love talking about lead generation in terms of an octopus when it comes to building your email list, or any other platform for that matter.

Lead generation is a lot like an octopus. Each arm/leg represents a different strategy, and each strategy leads to the same thing-- your community (AKA the body). Optimizing each leg of your strategy helps the octopus grow comfortably and support itself.

Why should you build an email list?

Building your email list is just one strategy in your business, but it is an important one.

Email is one of the most checked social platforms out there and it is an essential piece of any business.

Email is necessary to protect your business and your audience. Email is one of the only platforms that you actually own your content and your list! All other social platforms do not come with that promise.

This is especially important for anyone who is a part of a marginalized community, anyone who speaks on community matters, and anyone who works on education surrounding taboo topics. Most social platforms have serious issues with censorship, wrongful termination of accounts, and more.

Building and sustaining an email list is important to make sure that the community you have cultivated will outlive the social platforms you are on if anything were to ever happen. An email list serves as a great back up plan for communication, even if you don't use it a ton or ever.

Some of my favorite lead magnets to build your email list include:

Quizzes- Quizzes are a great way to build your email list! Basically everyone loves taking a quiz and learning more about themselves or their business through them. People are always willing to share their email for quiz. Quizzes are also great passive strategies that can last a long time-- once you set up the quiz, it is a great evergreen strategy.

Workbooks/PDFs- Workbooks and PDFs are another great way to build your email list! The trick is to create a PDF with just the right amount of information. A mistake many people make is overloading their free resource with so much information that the individual receiving it, goes into information overload. Make sure that your resource solves a specific issue for your client and that you deliver the information in a concise manner!

Live Events- Live events such as workshops or masterclasses are another great way to get additions to your email list. Similar to workbooks, you want to make sure you aren't overloading your attendees with information! You want to give them tangible steps that they can implement as soon as they are done with the masterclass/workshop. People are craving that face-to-face connection, and live events are a great way to foster that and build your list!

Some Tips for Sending Better Emails:

-Include a quality call to action in every email. When you include a quality, and direct call to action in your email, you are more likely to get conversions! Being straight forward is a quality that is generally appreciated in email.

-Don't be afraid to repurpose content. Repurpose your posts from the week. Repurpose posts from months ago. Emails don't have to be new original content! Most likely, the people opening your emails aren't reading your posts fully on IG. It doesn't hurt to repurpose content.

-Don't be afraid to write a little more if you want! The cool thing about email is that you can write a little more because there is no character count. You can write a longer email and share more vulnerably, or you can keep it short and sweet! Either way, it is all up to you.

-Include your offers and information at the end of every email. Including all of your offers at the bottom of your emails and keeping the information concise and direct is helpful! This helps remind your community that there are tons of ways to work with you and stay connected.

-Work on your headlines and topics! This is a crucial part of each email. You want people to be opening your emails and the first step is an awesome subject line! You can check out my PDF that has over 30 ideas for creating open-worthy subject lines.