The money is in the list.
I’m sure you’ve heard it 100 times. The reason why is because having an email list is essential to making money if you own your own business.
Many people over the years have said that email is dead when in fact the ROI of email is increasing because of all the advanced tools created every day to help you get more out of email.
Email is not dead. And yes, the money is in the list.
What is dead is hundreds of the methods that people used to use with email, like black hat techniques to rank on google. These methods are dead. There are a few methods that worked very well in 2017 and will continue to work in 2018.
Here Are The Top 9 Tips To Build Your Email List In 2018:
1. Add a Viral Element to Your Opt-in
What’s better than getting 10 subscribers from every hour you spend promoting your posts/etc? Having those subscribers work for you to bring in even more subscribers.
And the new ones bring you more subscribers, and so on.
Like a snowball rolling down a hill, it starts small, but with time it becomes so big that you can’t stop it. You can create the same effect with your email list.
I first heard about this idea from Noah Kagan. In his traffic 1m course, when you opt-in to receive the first email in the course, you are redirected to a page where you’re given more bonuses worth $2500 if you share some info about the course on Twitter and email it to a friend.
Would you do it? 70% or more of the people seeing the offer did it, bringing in more people and those people brought in more, creating a chain reaction.
You can even do this without hiring a developer. Luckily, Bryan Harris created a plugin called Smart Bribe. He said that because of applying the above technique, he was able to increase his traffic by 22%.
2. Use the Upside Down Homepage
Another great technique I learned from Bryan Harris.
We all build homepages the traditional way. There’s a navigation menu at the top where you show readers different pages on your site, and the main purpose of your homepage is to show how great your website is and to link to tons of pages on your blog, and then at the end, you have an opt-in form.
What about flipping the script?
Yep, move everything at the top to the bottom and vice versa. So you put your opt-in form first thing on the homepage and your navigation menu at the bottom.
After all, the money is in the list. And your primary goal is to build your email list, so why put it at the bottom?
If you want to check out some great examples of homepages that use this technique, then check out:
- VideoFruit. Bryan’s blog
- Michael Hyatt
- Backlinko
More and more people are using it because of its effectiveness, you need to hop on and try it. If you’re wondering how to build yours, check out this template from Thrive Architect.
3. Write Epic Shit
Corbett Barr first said this phrase back in 2012, and it couldn’t be more accurate today.
He created a post to show people how writing epic content is essential for every successful blog. You can check out his post here.
It’s been the key to building a successful business since the Internet first started.
One piece of epic content can do wonders for your business. Why waste your time writing 10 short, useless posts?
Focus your effort on writing one high-quality post, and promote the hell out of it.
I could write a 10,000-word article on this topic, which I may do soon 🙂
In the meantime, you can check out these epic posts that show you how to do the same:
- The Ultimate Guide to Writing Epic Content That Will Go Viral
- Demystifying Epic Content: How to Create It (Not Just Jabber About How Important It Is)
- How to Brainstorm and Write an Epic Blog Post in 4 Simple Steps
These blog posts will help you create epic content. Take the time and write one piece of heroic content. It can do you wonders. Don’t try to create multiple posts a day. Even if that means writing one post a month, go for it. It’s better than creating 30 low-quality jobs a month.
4. Create Content Upgrades For Popular Posts
A content upgrade is an incentive you give to your readers when they read any of your post that helps them in applying what is in the post or give them extra resources/tips.
So, for example, you see a post, and you like what’s in it. And then you’re asked to give your email in return for a checklist or more resources. Would you do it? Absolutely. These convert 20-30% of visitors, which is better than the 0.5-2% of a conventional sidebar opt-in.
You can do the same with your epic content. Start with already published and favorite posts on your blog.
You can find these in the Google Analytics Audience report. After you do that, think about an incentive that your visitors would be happy to give you their email address for when they read that post.
Maybe more tips? More resources to help them apply what was shared? A template that they could use? A checklist or cheat sheet with all the steps so they could refer to it (I love this one the most)?
As you can see, it’s the simple things that attract subscribers like hungry children for a birthday cake. Don’t over complicate things.
After you decide on it, create it, save it as a pdf, and then add the opt-in form in that post.
If you want to learn more about the technical side of how to do this, check out this post, The Complete Guide to Setting up Post Specific Bonuses with Mailchimp (save yourself $300/month).
The link above will teach you how to do it with MailChimp and lead pages without needing to use infusionsoft.
5. Make Use of the Author Byline
This is something I learned from James Clear. He is a great marketer and has a great blog about productivity and self-improvement.
One day, I found that he added an opt-in form in the byline and I think that was genius.
And when you click on it, an opt-in form is shown. Brilliant! A great way to sneak an opt-in form without being pushy.
You can do the same using Leadboxes in Leadpages or by using Thrive Architect.
6. Write Guest Posts
I know it’s an old method, but it still works. Yes, the quantity of subscribers is much lower than back in the days, but again, guest post subscribers are the most engaged ones. They already read your stuff, and they like it, so they’re subscribing because they know that you share high-quality stuff.
You could add content upgrades for your guest posts to get more subscribers.
But the real value of guest posts is not in the number of subscribers you get directly from it. The cost is in the relationship that you build with the author of the blog.
If you create favorite posts, they’ll be happy to return the favor and maybe share your posts in the future with their big audience, or maybe help you by promoting a paid course, thus sending your buyers directly.
That’s why guest blogging should be in your marketing plan in 2018.
7. Test Your Placements
A/B split testing has grown in popularity over the last year. You need to test to find out how you can get the most amount of subscribers from the same amount of visitors.
That means testing different placements on the same page, testing different opt-in forms, testing the wording of the opt-in form, testing the timing of the appearance of the form, and maybe testing the opt-in offer itself.
Don’t bother with this if your site gets less than 10,000 visitors a month; instead, focus on growing first.
But once you get enough visitors, start testing to get the best results.
You can do split testing in Thrive Architects for every form. I like the testing system there. If you want to test with landing pages, check out the landing pages.
8. Use the Poster Boy Formula
Another great way to build your email list is to use the poster boy formula. This term was coined by Bryan Harris (I mentioned him a lot because he is a true list-building genius).
In this formula, you become the poster boy for a product or a course or maybe for an article.
After you apply the stuff shared in a post, share your results with the author.
Authors love to brag that their content/product works. That’s why they’ll be willing to post about you, thus getting more traffic to your blog.
Here’s an example where Bryan was able to get featured on Noah’s course “How to make $1000 a month.”
This mention leads him to appear on Lifehacker and get more buyers for his course.
Start Building Your List
A lot of people think it’s harder to build your list nowadays, but it isn’t. All you need to do is use the right techniques.
In this post, you learned the 8 techniques that will work in 2018. Take action and start applying them now.
Do this, and you will grow your list in 2018.
Hi Kulwant, excellent tips around building an amazing email list.
We all know how important it is to have an engaging email list. I personally feel that, having an email list is way better than having a bigger FB group because you own your email list (and FB groups are owned by FB, not you, so you never know when things go south).
Besides that, you need to really focus on attracting the high quality people to join your email list instead of freebie seekers. Here’s where you need to use smart tactics like providing exceptional content upgrades, using social media, content marketing techniques to grow your email list quickly.
As you said, adding viral elements to your opt-in forms can really help. Just make sure to provide highly relevant and high quality lead magnets such as eBooks, themes, plugins and so on so you can build quality subscribers.
Building a list is one thing and increasing the engagement is another thing and here’s where most people fail. Few studies have shown that 33% of people open an email based on the subject line alone. So you must know how to write captivating subject lines to be able to get more open rates. Above all, it can help you develop effective newsletter copies that get opened and read by your email list.
Keep up the great work Kulwant!