This blog post was originally written in 2016, just after the rise and fall of a social media platform called Blab. Since then, many other social media platforms have come and gone, or are currently falling apart, like Twitter/X. Which just reinforces my point below about why you need your own email list. I’ve updated this post to include current information and give you more tips on how to start your own email list, so you never have to worry about losing your audience to a social media failure again.
This is the title of an article on Medium, written by Shaan Puri, the CEO of Blab, explaining why he shut the social media platform down permanently on August 12th 2016.
In the article he explains that Blab was created as a hackathon project. They grew this crazy project, which they built in 3 weeks, to 3.9 million users in less than a year. Yay for them.
But then they shut it down.
Which caused nearly 4 million people to lose their connections to each other via Blab.
And a lot of entrepreneurs, social media influencers and business people lost their audience on Blab. That sucks. Especially if, for some odd reason, Blab was the only place these people paid attention to those businesses.
“Well, yeah,” you say. “But those folks can find those businesses on other social media platforms.”
Yes, they can. But will they?
That’s the kicker. People tend to pay attention to what’s in front of them. If someone follows you on one social media platform, they may not follow you on others.
And if that social media platform suddenly disappears, like Blab did…
Or if people flee a particular social media platform because it gets bought by someone they don’t like, who changes everything about it, as is the current case with Twitter/X…
Can you guarantee that every member of your audience will find you somewhere else? Can you rest assured that your audience on another social media platform will grow by just as many followers as you lost on your other one?
No, you can’t.
Perhaps people just prefer a certain social media platform and won’t use another one. Perhaps they’ve got too many other things they’re following on other social media platforms and adding you will overwhelm them.
Guess what. If you didn’t collect email addresses from those folks, you’re stuck with no way to contact them directly. Which is why you really need to have an email list.
Why Do I Need an Email List?
“I’ve already got a great following on social media. Why would I duplicate that?” I hear you say.
Yes, you probably do. But, what happens if one of your social media channels changes drastically or disappears (like in the case of Blab, and Twitter, and any number of other social media platforms in the last few years)? Or worse yet, what happens if your account is deleted (either by mistake or because the social media company believes you violated their rules)? Can you still contact all of your followers? Not without their email addresses.
Email is more personal than social media. We all “know” people on social media (meaning we’ve friended or followed them, but we’ve never met them in person). But when an email hits our inboxes it tends to feel more like a real relationship. And people want to buy from people they like and have a relationship with.
Think about it. You may check your social media channels a few times a day. How many times do you check your email? Most people check their email boxes multiple times a day. We’re still used to getting important messages via email. Your message could be very important to some, or all, of your subscribers.
How Do I Start an Email List?
To start an email list, you need five things:
- An email service provider (ESP): MailerLite, Drip, and ActiveCampaign are all good examples of ESPs. There are dozens of others out there.
- A way to collect email addresses: This can be a static or pop-up form on your website, or a landing page dedicated solely to collecting email addresses.
- A lead magnet, or opt-in bribe: This can be a one-page resource guide, a chapter from a book, a coupon, or anything else you come up with. You want to give people a reason to sign up.
- A “thank you” page: A thank you page tells people you’ve received their email address and helps you continue your relationship with your new subscribers.
- A “welcome” email sequence: This gets sent out as soon as someone subscribes to your list. It’s an acknowledgement of receiving their email address and letting them know they’ll receive useful information on a regular basis.
String these together and you’ve got a perfect lead generation funnel sending email addresses to your list.
Here’s a little more detail on each step:
Email Service Providers
Email service providers are basically SaaS (software as a service) companies that help you collect email addresses and send bulk emails while being in accordance with the CAN SPAM act (yes, that’s really what it’s called, it makes me giggle every time I read it).
As mentioned above, there are dozens of them out there. An ESP collects and stores email addresses (or subscribers) in your account and lets you send out emails to them whenever you have something to share, on a certain schedule, or when someone triggers an automation sequence.
MailerLite offers a “free” version for folks who have under 1000 subscribers. It doesn’t give you all of the functionality and automation of a paid account, but it’s a good place to start.
Drip has a 14-day free trial and a starting price of $39 per month. The price goes up as your list gets larger. But their automation system is pretty slick. They’re geared toward e-commerce customers, but you can use their system for any type of business.
ActiveCampaign is a good option for any business that expects to grow quickly. It’s more expensive at $49 a month, but it also comes with more bells and whistles.
Lots of other ESPs offer free and trial memberships. These are just three I have experience with.
Forms and Landing Pages
Your email service provider will have static and pop-up forms you can install on your website. These are usually HTML code snippets that you copy and paste into your website code. Some have plugins you can install on your WordPress site.
You can add as many or as few fields as you want to your email subscriber form, but generally speaking, the fewer fields, the better. Studies have shown that people are more likely to click on the “submit” button if they don’t have to give up tons of information about themselves.
Email address is required (that’s sort of a no-brainer). You can also add first and last name, and other identifiers that you may want to know about your audience. Most ESPs will also let you add radio buttons or dropdown menus for multiple choice questions.
A landing page (also referred to as a “squeeze page” if it’s collecting email addresses) is a single page, dedicated solely to collecting emails. Check out my landing page to see how simple they can be. And download the lead magnet while you’re there, to get an idea of how to create one.
Lead Magnet
A lead magnet is something you give away as an incentive to get people to give you their email addresses. (That’s why the other common term for them is “opt-in bribe.”) Your lead magnet can be as simple or as complicated as you want it to be.
If you go to my landing page, you’ll see a picture of the lead magnet on the right side of the page. It’s a PDF resource guide. It took me a couple of hours to make, including formatting and converting it to a PDF. But it’s something people are interested in, so they enter their email addresses to get it.
You can use any of these things as a lead magnet:
- Checklists
- Resource guides
- A chapter of a book
- An entire eBook
- A coupon for your product
- A free trial of your service
The important thing is, you want your lead magnet to be something useful that people will download. You want it to be interesting, and you want it to benefit your new subscribers so they remember you when you email them.
Thank You Page
So, usually when you subscribe to someone’s email list, you get a message that says something to the effect of “email submitted” and that’s about it. Or you get a page that says, “We’ve gotten your email address, thanks.”
This cuts your relationship with your new subscriber short. It’s kind of like saying, “I got your email address, that’s all I really care about.”
The better thing to use is what’s commonly called a “Thank You And…” page. This page thanks the subscriber for subscribing, tells them their lead magnet is on the way and it asks them to do something additional.
Take a look at this Thank You page. It’s what you see after you download the lead magnet from my landing page.
I thank my subscribers for downloading my lead magnet. I let them know that it will arrive in their inbox and to look in their Spam folder if it doesn’t show up.
Then I’m giving them an opportunity to buy something from me. It’s relevant to the thing they just downloaded, and it will help them with the problem they’re having.
This is commonly referred to as a “tripwire.” The psychology behind this is people will say yes to something immediately after they’ve just said yes to something else.
Pro Tip: Don’t let new subscribers download your lead magnet from your Thank You page. Send them an email instead. This does 3 important things:
- It verifies their email address as valid because you’ll know if their email bounced.
- It gets them to open your email, which is good for your deliverability rating.
- It tells their internet service provider (ISP) that they want to hear from you, so your emails should sail through the spam filter.
Email Welcome Sequence
You need to have at least one automated email set up in your ESP and ready to go out as soon as someone subscribes to your list. It doesn’t need to be long or complicated. All it really needs to say is:
- Welcome to the community, thanks for subscribing.
- Here is the download link for the lead magnet.
- More cool stuff will be coming your way every (day, week, month, however often you intend to send stuff to your email list).
- Thanks so much and enjoy the content.
As soon as your ESP receives the new email address from your form or landing page, it will send this email to your new subscriber.
If you want to write a full email welcome sequence, this blog post will show you how.
This starts building the relationship between you and your new subscriber. The more emails you send, the more the relationship flourishes. They grow to know, like, and trust you, and they’ll buy from you.
That’s it. You’ve set up your email list. Now you’ll have a way to capture email addresses from your audience. And, you’ll be able to stay in direct contact with them on a regular basis.
Okay, What do I do Next?
You tell your audience on social media about your cool new lead magnet and you direct them to your landing page. You can also drive paid traffic to your website or landing page. You may already use paid traffic on your chosen social media channels anyway, so use it to get folks to download your lead magnet.
Once you’ve got some names on your email list, you start writing content regularly so you have something to send.
What Do I Write?
That depends on your business.
I send two emails every week. The first email usually promotes a blog post like this one. The second is usually a longer email that gives my subscribers more useful information about email marketing and how they can use it in their businesses.
I also receive a lot of these weekly or monthly emails.
Some of them are similar to mine, with a short note and links to that day’s or week’s blog post. Others are a quick note from the person I’m following and a long list of cool articles that person found to share with me. Some are newsletters with information that is exclusively for subscribers to the email list.
You can also send out weekly or monthly specials on your products. How about a “deal of the week” coupon? I’m sure you can come up with all sorts of ideas.
To get you started, I recommend that you check out my lead magnet, which is a list of 30 Subject Lines to Keep Your Subscribers Opening and Reading Every Email. Plus, you’ll get a writing prompt for each subject line, so you’re not stuck staring at “the white screen of death.”
Click on the button below to download your list of 30 Subject Lines and Writing Prompts now.
Now Go Start Your Email List
Do yourself and your audience the kindness of giving them a reliable way to stay in touch with you. You can find links to every tool you need to create your own email list in this blog post. Trust me, you’ll be happy you did.