How do you grow an email list?
Hey guys, I wanted some advice in how to grow an email list as it is something I have never done before. Would there be anyone willing to share some insight on common pitfalls I need to be aware of, or any essentials I should definitely know.
I am also wanting to create an online presence (finally) and was wondering what are people's approach in building an engaged audience. Also how do people go about coming up with micro content such as tweets, it feels like I am spitting things into the void.
Appreciate the love. Finally biting the bullet to become an Indie Hacker after my stint on Wall Street as a trader.
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It can be really daunting in the beginning, but as what @zerotousers and @rosiesherry have already mentioned, it boils down to you writing useful and actionable content, and keep that consistency.
Just for transparency, I curate a newsletter called the The Slice and I'm at 820+ subs after 4 months, which isn't an amazingly high amount, but high enough for me to give you some advice :)
With being said, here is the approach that I took to build my list.
Find your tribe
You need to find out where your ideal audience is. In my case, they were here on Indie Hackers, a few Subreddits and Twitter. In the beginning, I quite literally just used cold outreach in the form of a DM or Twitter, and posting questions and engaging in discussion here on IH.
I was quite active on a few subreddits and due to the nature of my newsletter where I add features, I politely asked users on my subreddits if they wanted their product featured on my newsletter and a large bulk of my audience came from there.
Build in public
Let people know, how your doing, tell them your challenges that you are facing, and how you solve them, ask questions and make Twitter threads about what you're doing or what you're going to do. From doing this, you will have already a tiny audience that you can leverage.
Ask and you shall receive
I know it can be scary to reach out to more prominent members of the community, and I was also scared and shy, but ask questions. I often get DMs on Twitter or a cold email, and people ask me "Nic, how do I do this", and I love engaging back and offering advice.
Even now, there are still so many things that I don't know, but ill reach out to people who do know, from here you even start to network a bit with other creators.
Hope this helps!
Hey thanks for the structured advice, quite helpful. Is it simply a question of getting used to beaming something into the void, or is there ways to increase engagement.
I actually have been experimenting with another project for the last 2 months and have gotten about 400 people in my facebook group with about 4k in total revenue. However the engagement hasn't been that great and it often feels like I am beeming content I am building out into the void. What is the engagement like for your newsletter, and are there any takeaways in how to iterate your content?
That being said, I do get the occasional encouraging comments, so I do see the value in building in public. I just need to bite the bullet of being in more socials I guess, so that is my action item! Thanks.
I'm still at my initial stage growing subscribers for https://thedailycoding.com
The one thing that worked for me is sharing with my friends. If your newsletter is tailored towards an audience that would attract general audience then you'd not have much trouble converting them into subscribers.
Engaging in communities that would benefit your newsletter is also a good way to acquire subscribers.
Okay I will start off trying this then, thanks for the tip! How do you sort your email onboarding experience, for instance say when a customer subscribes, I send them a daily question a day from a content backlog.
I am trying to do something similar to you I think, where I send out daily trading or data science questions - just so I can wrap my head around how to build a simple product.
My landing page currently is https://quantmusing.com/daily
I am stuck with how to do the back-end right now in terms of getting the email newsletter sorted out.
Everything in my newsletter is dependent on Mailerlite. From the landing page to automation. What you can do is use their automation feature and create user journey.
Say for instance, when a user joins in what email should he recieves? and then you can keep a delay of 1 day and send another email the next day.
Mailerlite is something I'd highly recommend if you're looking to build something what I've built.
Hey! Thank you for the input, I will definitely check mailerlite out. What are its advantages over other email service providers that you have tried?
In the same way you grow a website. I basically write interesting/useful content, share it on various channels. Some of them notice me and my website, go to it, see I have an email list and subscribe.
Do you have any helpful tools that help you quick capture your thoughts, or go back to writing notes/prompts? I have actually started a habit of writing something down every day and my free version of evernote is getting quite unruly.
Often people get overwhelmed at the idea of building an email list, but really it comes down to writing something interesting and maintaining consistency. There's no need to make it more complicated than that.
Of course, other things matter. People need to sign up and find where to sign up. You may need some good design habits to create engaging content. And of course, people need to find it.
For building an audience, it may be worth checking out the Building in Public group.
Will check out building in public group, thank you for that.
Do you have any idea on how to build a content manager such that when someone onboards, they get content from the first post chronologically. Furthermore how do you have half of the email being free, and the other half being visible only when being a paid subscriber.
I have been tackling this problem for about 40 hours now, and am a little stumped as it is something I have never done before.
To grow an email list, you'll need to put in some work to attract subscribers. You can start by creating great content that will appeal to your target audience. Once you have some content to share, you can promote it through social media, your website, and other channels. You can also offer incentives to encourage people to sign up for your list, such as free e-books or exclusive discounts. Keep growing your list by continuing to produce quality content and offering value to your subscribers.
? There are several effective ways to create a contact list:
I put this little guide together for a project I'm working on. http://albertideation.com/change
I will argue against the conventional wisdom. Don't wait for a very small percentage of visitors to sign up. Start a conversation by cold outreach.
What I read is age old processes. Outdated at best.
One of the things that worked for my product, www.ruttl.com, was exhausting my current network and trying to outreach people who might be interested in the product. Doing this gets the ball rolling, and as you start scaling up, you should start using marketing campaigns targeted towards your potential audience.
These can include things such as social media marketing on channels like LinkedIn and Instagram, community engagement on sites and showcasing your product to generate useful leads and of course, running paid ads on various social platforms.
If your product has the right appeal to the right audience, you should be able to generate the email list effectively.
Keep up the great work!
Cheers!
Thanks for the advice and I have definitely spent the last 1-2 months testing a project pretty much solely on reddit and gathered about 400 followers. What would you say is your main take aways on how to best curate your content for each particular platform?
Content curation is mainly dependent on the type of audience that visits the platform. So let's say if you deal with business executives like I do for Ruttl, you might have to keep the content on a formal side so that it taps into the network.
P.S - You can check out a the content marketing course offered by Hubspot. It's a great way to get started and it can surely help you in this process
Give them sweets! Give people some information they enjoy reading in exchange for their email address... If your sweets are addictive you will be on your way to World domination.
haha giving people dopamine candy, one email at a time
For growing an email list, you really want to providing something of value to your target audience. What are you offering that will get people to 'give up' something as personal as their email address to you? This could be marketing advice via an email newsletter, a coupon code for a discount off your product, or a giveaway contest. The next step is advertising that offer and directing your audience to the place where you are collecting emails. (Something like a landing page is great for this.) This is a really quick overview, but if you want a step-by-step walkthrough then I'd suggest this post that covers a lot of good essential tips for building an email list.
When it comes to micro content, I'd recommend leveraging Twitter threads. Great way to create thought leadership content beyond a single tweet, incorporate images or quotes, and get your audience to read through each post if you're looking to direct them to a specific link.
Outside of threads, you can also try crowdsourcing content by asking a question and asking people to reply. (I.e., "What are your biggest problems with XYZ?" or "Who are some expert marketers to follow?") Tagging relevant experts/followers/users you follow can also help kick off engagement with your content.
Thanks for the link, will take a read! Do you have any pointers to a content manager for the email list?
All-in-one platforms like ActiveCampaign or Mailchimp are great in my opinion. They not only let you send emails, but also let you manage and organize your email lists. Both are relatively inexpensive options too, with Mailchimp being the cheaper option.
Will check it out! Thank you.