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The Brand Design Masters Podcast with Philip VanDusen is dedicated to helping you build the skills you need to design bullet-proof brands - for yourself, your business and for the clients and customers you serve.
In every episode, Philip, his co-hosts and interview guests will share inspiration, ideas, trends and techniques that will lift you to greater heights as a creative professional or entrepreneur - so you can build a successful creative practice, business and personal brand in the Creative Economy.
Email List Building: Strategies and Tips
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Philip VanDusen:
Hey everybody, I'm really excited. And today I'm going to be talking to you about building an email list because email is still critically important. . It is real estate that you own, so to speak. email is still, the number one marketing tool. The reason why that is, is because you have direct contact with your audience.
And if you have their email address, that means they have given you permission to communicate with them. And so , you are a trusted entity to them. So that is step number one, having an email list enables you to have an audience that you are a trusted entity with, and hopefully they want to hear from you.
So it's always better to have an audience that is looking forward to hearing from you than a cold audience or an audience where you are promoting through paid advertising to them. And you may be. Presented to them in an ad when they don't want to see you. So having an email list is ideal.
Any of you who have a freelance business, if you are gainfully employed in a agency or on the client side, and you're trying to nurture or develop a personal brand, to some extent, it's always good to have some sort of marketing real estate that you own outside of your job.
And as you build a freelance business or start to develop a personal brand that's independent of your employer, which is always smart in terms of career insurance having and developing an email list is a great thing to do. So email still is the number one marketing tool.
So the big question is, how do you get people to sign up for it?
The first thing you can do is ask folks. So if you have friends or family or coworkers or LinkedIn connections that you communicate with fairly regularly, put it out there. It's a great place to start. It's always hard when you start with zero, but everybody starts with zero.
And so you may start with a list of 20 people, friends and family, and build from there. That's okay. Everyone starts at nothing. First of all, You have to sign up with an email provider, so either ConvertKit or ActiveCampaign or MailChimp. Many of them have free accounts for a certain number of email subscribers.
You have to use an email subscription service of some kind in order to Avoid being marked as spam. If you try to send out mass emails to 50, 100, 200 people blind cc'd on a regular email from a gmail account, you're going to get marked as spam by gmail and they're going to start delivering all of your emails that you send out even when you're just sending out a single email to somebody right into their spam folder.
So using an email service provider MailChimp, ConvertKit, ActiveCampaign, etc. is a must when you start building an email list because those systems are meant for that purpose and you won't get marked as spam. They're built for sending out mass emails to tens, hundreds of thousands of people.
So the question is, how do you get people to sign up? A lot of what we're going to be talking about today is content. But there's all sorts of different kinds of content and ways of going about.
Doing content and it doesn't have to be original content. Okay, so stick with me use content as a lure Use content as a magnet to attract people to your site Where they will download a PDF or some sort of digital asset of some kind And in exchange for getting access to that asset, they give you their name and email address.
And that form is linked to MailChimp, ConvertKit, whatever, and their email address is captured. Once it's captured, then they get access to that downloadable thing. So you use content as a lure. Very few people, are going to sign up to your email list unless you give them something.
The best way to get people to sign up to your email list is offer them something for free. Offer them something of value that they can use, that they're interested in, that they're curious about and then they will fork over their email address because there's a level of trust that goes into when you give before you ask.
If you just ask people to fill out a form and Hey, give me your email address, let me get you on my list. It's gonna be a fool's errand. Okay, so you use some sort of content to do that. The content It doesn't have to be huge. It doesn't have to be a hundred page e book. It doesn't have to be some gigantic asset.
So what are the kind of assets that you can use?
You want to make sure that you have it set up so when people go to a landing page or to your website, And there's, a lead magnet there that says get this free downloadable thing and they enter in their name and email address.
You got to deliver those goods quickly, so it should come in an immediate email or to a link to a page where they can download the asset immediately. You don't want to have there be any kind of lag time
E- books are really great. Lead magnets or opt in magnets.
And an e book doesn't have to be a hundred pages. It doesn't have to be like a book. An e book can be five, eight pages long, right? It can be short. It can be an article. Pepper in some images, do some layout. You can take 1, 000, 1, 500 words and turn that into an e book with a lot of illustrations, and they're very inexpensive to produce if you're a graphic designer or some sort of a creative professional and you have access to Photoshop and Illustrator or even Word for that matter, you can produce an e book.
Creating content that is evergreen, meaning content that can live for a long period of time on your website is the way to gather emails. And what I mean by evergreen is that, for instance, I have a downloadable ebook that is literally four pages long. That is part of the pop up on my website. That lead magnet "nine design elements your brand absolutely positively needs" has been the item on my pop up for over four years.
And it still converts at a very high rate because it's a great little ebook. I promote it on a lot of my earlier YouTube videos and it drives a lot of traffic and I get a lot of email signups because of that quick little downloadable lead magnet. And it's evergreen.
It works for me when I am sleeping. It has been working for me for four years. And the effort that it took to put that little e book together was maybe four hours of my time. And it has paid me with thousands and thousands of email addresses. You want to keep your content tight and focused.
You want to make sure that you're creating content that is interesting to people, that has a very interesting title. And so you don't have to have, a 20 30 page white paper, even though you can. You can keep it very tight and very focused.
Title is super important. You don't want to make it click baity sounding.
So you want, don't want to make it sound cheap, right? Or get rich quickie or, multi level marketing or something like that. But your title of what your lead magnet is very important. You want to make it sound like it's something that people want to have. And it should be linked back to something that your audience or the sort of people that you want to attract to your email list are interested in.
So I speak to digital entrepreneurs and creative professionals. So my " nine design elements" thing, where I talk about all of the sort of elements you need in a brand ecosystem is really attractive to people . And there are things on there that people generally don't think about.
So that has performed very well. In terms of my lead magnets. You want to make sure that , the content that you're putting in there is a really high quality because the last thing you want is for someone to fork over their email address to you and trust you with the delivery of a PDF. And then for them to be disappointed. You don't want them to be disappointed, you want them to feel good about the fact that they made this exchange with you, you may be a designer, a creative pro, maybe you're copywriting challenged, but you may have to have some sort of copywriting in your lead magnet.
If you need to, hire some professional help. You can hire a copywriter to give you some great serviceable copy or take an idea of yours and turn it into a blog post or a mini ebook for not a lot of money. So if you need help, you can hire it. Because that investment, that financial investment that's going to go into your content, into your lead magnet will pay itself off in terms of returning email addresses to your list.
Let's talk a little bit about what are the other kinds of lead magnets that we have, right?
Okay, so you could have an article. A blog post , a mini e book 5, 8, 10, 15 pages of a little book.
You can have a checklist. People love checklists.
Checklists are really easy to produce too. It's the 15 things you should ask new clients. 25 discovery call questions. Those sorts of things. People love checklists. I don't know what it is about them, but people love that sort of content.
Another lead magnet that I've used on my website, which is really helpful is resource lists. So it could be the 20 best digital cameras or webcams or free image editing software, or.
In my case, when I put out my newsletter, every time I put out my newsletter, I always include four or five cool, interesting resources. And so after putting out 50 newsletters, I decided, Oh, I'll go back. I'll take all of those resources and I'll take a hundred of those resources and I'll put them in a single PDF and say, "A hundred cool, resources for graphic designers and creative professionals".
And so that's what I did. And I've been able to create three now "hundred resource lists" that I use for lead magnets and people love them because a lot of those resources are very cool. The resource section of my newsletter is constantly the most clicked section of my newsletter. So people love resources. That's another idea for lead magnets.
So how are you going to get people to go to your website to download this thing?
Okay. They could show up there by chance by Google search, right? But the chances of that are pretty low. So you have to drive them there. The idea is to post on social media, on Facebook, on Twitter, on Instagram, the LinkedIn feed.
Post about this free asset, describe it a little bit, create a link that goes back to your website or to a landing page where they can enter the email address and download this asset. You have to promote the lead magnet that you have. I'm sure you guys have clicked on lead magnets and signed up for people's email lists in order to get a free asset you know how it works, right?
And so you want to create some sort of a landing page or an independent page on your website there's an email form connected to your email service provider that serves up this digital asset. You can build those sorts of landing pages. If you have MailChimp or you can have ConvertKit there, they actually have landing page builders inside of the email service provider software as a service.
So you can actually do it all there and they have it set up so you can, upload a a lead magnet, which it will then give whoever signs up access to it ability to download it. So you want to promote it out on social media and and do that fairly constantly.
Remember, the life cycle of a tweet is about 10 minutes. After 10 minutes, it's so far down the feed, no one's going to see it again. So if you're promoting on Twitter, you should be promoting that thing like 3 or 4 times a day. Okay? If you're promoting on Facebook, maybe once a day. If you're promoting on LinkedIn, maybe a couple times a week.
So the feed on LinkedIn refreshes a lot slower than it does on Facebook or it does on Twitter. So keep in mind the. feed speed or the life of content feed on that particular social channel to judge how often you should promote your lead magnet on that channel. And you want to promote it there and you want to send people to your signup page.
Another thing that you can do. To get people to sign up to your email list is create a watering hole. And what I mean by that is, for instance, I created the Brand Design Masters Facebook group. If you're not a member of the Brand Design Masters Facebook group, it's a free private Facebook group.
You go to facebook. com slash groups slash Brand Design Masters and you can answer a few questions. I have it set up so you have to enter your email address. If you don't enter your email address, you don't get into the group for free. You don't get into the group. Giving me your email address and permission to add you to my email list is the cost of entry to the Brand Design Masters Facebook group.
I didn't actually start it that way. The first maybe thousand people who got in didn't have to do that. But then I was like, I realized, oh, duh. And I got some recommendations from some of the people in my peer mastermind to do this. Now I'm doing it. So everyone who joins this group gives me permission to put them on my email list.
And it's the cost of admission to my watering hole. And it's a really great watering hole. There are a lot of creative professionals in there. Very senior people. Very junior people. Photographers. Writers. 3D artists. Web developers. Some really talented folks. posting really cool stuff, resources, getting feedback on their work.
It's a vibrant community. And to be part of that community, you have to pony up. So that's a way that you can do it. You can create a watering hole. It could be a Facebook group. It could be a LinkedIn group. By promoting and giving people access to something that is of value to them, that can be the cost of admission.
The other thing I want to tell you about is that pop ups work. Everyone hates pop ups. I hate pop ups. Five years ago, when someone suggested to me,, to get email signups, you should put a pop up on your website. I was like oh, wait, I don't do pop ups.
Pop ups are evil. Everyone hates pop ups. And the person who was recommending that to me said, yeah, but pop ups work. Pop ups work. Everyone hates them, but in your pop up have a lead magnet available. If they sign up in that pop up, they get that lead magnet and you get an email that's going to give them that download link, or it's going to take them to a download page.
It puts that email signup and that carrot on a stick right in front of people. I have email signup forms and lead magnets all over my website. There's probably two on the homepage. There's, it's in the footer of every page. But I have a pop up. 85 percent of my email sign ups come through my pop up.
I don't care how many pages people go to, how many footers they see, how many lead mags they see embedded in pages, 85 percent of my email sign ups come from the lead magnet in my pop up on my website. Get over yourself. Pop ups work. Use them. Okay? Now, you also have to get over yourself in terms of asking people.
If you have a newsletter, Or if you send out an email, or if you post any sort of content or tweets, Facebook, LinkedIn, ask people to join your email list. And when you start sending out emails to your list, in your emails, promotional, newsletter, whatever it is you're sending out from your email list, trend, inspiration, thoughts of the day, ask people to share it.
And there's so many people who never ask, they send great content out via email to their list, but they never ask their list. To share it with others. They never ask their list to forward it to some of their friends. You have to ask for people to do things. And if you're giving them great content through what you're sending them on your email list and they feel good about that stuff.
They will develop "subliminal reciprocity". I talk about this a lot, which is that if you give people enough value, they will want to give you value in return. They will want to return the favor if you keep giving them great stuff, great content. So if you are giving them great content via email.
And you're not asking them to share your email with other people or their group or make recommendations for you. Do that because you have to ask people and they will want to help you. .
There's another thing that I wanted to tell you about in terms of ways to grow your email list, which is something that not a lot of people think of. And that is partnerships. It's partnerships with other people who have email lists. So if you understand about, blogging, right?
And guest posting. So you ask someone who's got a blog, can I do a guest post? And you write a blog article and they post it on their blog, right? So you get exposure to their audience. It's a give and get situation. You may ask people to guest post on your blog. And just like podcasting, people invite each other on each other's podcasts.
So one of the ways that you can build your audience, just like podcasters who invite each other on each other's podcasts and then promote the podcast that they're on, as well as their own, is they're leveraging and growing their audience by leveraging other people's audiences.
You can do the same thing with email lists. Okay, hear me out. If , you put out a newsletter, you put out emails, you put out resources lists, thoughts of the day to your mailing list, you have a little mailing list, or you maybe have a thousand people or whatever, wherever it is in terms of size, you can find other people who are in your space, who do what you do, interested in what you're interested in, have the same type of audience that you do, right?
And you can say, Hey, Can I be featured in your newsletter, in your thoughts of the day? Can you do a link to my lead magnet in your newsletter, to your email list, right? Return the favor. Let them do the same thing with your email list. It's a way to leverage and grow your email list through leveraging other people's lists.
But you're not doing it in a smarmy way because if you are offering content in a lead magnet and something of real value to people to sign up to your email list, you're golden, right? You are giving them value and you have empathy for where they are in their life and you care about giving them something of importance to drive them forward and to help them with their business and their lives.
And so by offering that cool lead magnet, it's a great feature for someone else to put in their newsletter or their email out to their list and same thing, you just have to make sure that you return the favor, but it's a way that you can get exposure to someone else's audience in a very easy and reciprocal way.
Another way is , to get interviewed on podcasts, to appear in webinars, to appear in digital conferences, to be asked to speak. Wherever you can appear, be interviewed, show up. Podcast, YouTube interview shows, conferences, whatever, you will always get the opportunity to promote yourself and what do you promote?
You promote your lead magnet, right? You say, Hey, all the audience listening to this podcast today, I have a great freebie for you. Nine design elements you absolutely positively need. It's cool little four page ebook. You're going to love it. The thousands of people have downloaded it. Go to philipvandusen.
com slash freebie and you can download it. And in fact, if you guys want to go to philipvandusen. com slash phoebe, you can download it because that's the URL I use when I speak at conferences. So that is another way that you can make visible your lead magnets is get out there, become visible, Either, on video or in audio , or as a guest posting in someone's blog and link back to your lead magnets.
All right. So that is the meat of what I wanted to talk to you about.
Oh, and the other thing I would mention is even though I was talking about the pop up and saying, I have all these other places on my web pages to sign up have other places on your website for people to sign up. I would put an email sign up in the footer of your website so it shows up on every single page.. So no matter what page people drop in on, a blog post, whatever that is on your website, your portfolio, however they happened upon your site, there's going to be a lead magnet on that page. But if you put it to the bottom towards the footer, it's not obtrusive and they're gonna probably come across it.
And your chances of getting them on your email list is greater. , I have two different places on my home page where that can happen, plus the sign up in the footer. Plus the pop up. So I hit you over the head with the ability to sign up to my email list, depending on how you come across my site, what your particular interest is, whether you want to get a newsletter, whether you want to get a downloadable ebook give people options.
Just like when it comes to producing content, people like to consume content in different ways. Some people like to listen to it. Oh, that's another thing. That's another, format of lead magnet that you could offer. You can offer audio files. If you're a musician, offer a free song.
If you're podcaster, you're a poet offer a free reading of a poem or a collection of your poems. You can offer audio files as downloadable lead magnets too, right? You can offer videos or creative movies or motion design things as downloadable lead magnets. There are people who are motion designers who offer templates as lead magnets.
There are writers who offer resume formats as lead magnets. There's all sorts of things that you can offer as lead magnets, depending on what kind of creative professional you are, what you're a specialist at and what your audience wants to get from you.
This has been super fun. It's been an intense year, right? So relax. Take a walk, breathe some fresh air, walk your dog, take a hike in the park, be healthy, be safe, feed your brain, because fresh air feeds creativity, I guarantee you.
And it's been great talking to you today, hope you've enjoyed this content on building your email list. And with that, you guys take care, and I'll see you next time.