I just finished listening to an exceptional book – Ryan Holiday’s Perennial Seller. In it, Holiday makes one of the best arguments for building an email list that I’ve ever heard.
In a chapter aptly entitled “Build your list – Build your list – Build your list”, Holiday calls email
“the single most important and effective way to communicate with your potential audience and customers.”
Mic drop.
Why? If you do the work to build a mailing list of people who are interested in knowing about what you have to sell, you will thrive in good times and survive in the tough times, because you’ve moved towards self-sufficiency and reduced your reliance on intermediaries to drive your business.
Investing the time to build and nurture a mailing list is the best way to own the customer connection – not social media, and certainly not traditional advertising.
Social media is a wonderful way to engage with your customers, don’t get me wrong. But as algorithms change and different platforms change policies, are purchased, or simply go away, if you’ve over-invested in social media without an emphasis on building an equally vibrant email list, you’re kind of up s*** creek.
I listened to this chapter on a drive through some back roads in western Washington and raised some hallelujah hands (well, just one hallelujah… I was driving, after all) as Holiday made point after point.
And then I kind of gulped as I sat down to write this post and realized that I HAD NOT YET DONE THE VERY THING I ADVOCATE.
Today’s projects were lined out and clear at 6 am: write this blog post, and produce 4 critical documents for my upcoming free email course, Email Essentials 101.
It’s presently 3:56 pm, I have to pick my kids up from daycare in 45 minutes, and guess what I spent most of today on?
Implementing email acquisition to my website + writing, designing, and implementing my own welcome campaign.
Email marketing best practice is something that I’m extremely well-versed in, but I’m new to this whole “solopreneur” thing. I’ve helped many businesses with their own acquisition and onboarding programs, but when it came time to produce my own, I found myself feeling pretty overwhelmed.
Here’s how I broke it down:
What subscriber info do I want vs. need in order to connect with the people on my list?
I decided that I’d require first name and business name in addition to (duh) email address. I want to be able to connect with subscribers like a freakin’ human after all, and understanding their business and being able to call them by their first name seemed pretty important to me.
What is the most valuable thing my email program delivers?
In positioning my email program to potential subscribers, I wanted to be sure that the “What’s in it for me?” was prominent (as in, what value will my subscribers receive because they’re given me permission to stay in touch). This is how I present the “ask” on my website, and it’s reiterated a few times in the automated welcome campaign I set up.
And what else?
As mentioned above, I’m working on a free email course that will launch the first week of July. I wanted to include a quick teaser while I’ve got new subscribers’ attention, within the welcome campaign. I also wanted to be sure and ask the new subscriber to provide me with feedback on how I can best deliver value to their inbox… I have a lot of ideas, but I want to know what you guys want to see, too! And finally, I included a way to engage with my social media platforms as well… you never know who might want to see what I’m eating for lunch today.
So, why should you start an email list today?
- Email is a powerful and effective way to connect with your customers and future customers.
- Email avoids the middle man and gives you direct access to the people who want to hear about what you have going on.
- You can start today (I gave you a really quick how-to above to get you started)!
In Perennial Seller, Ryan Holiday drops another great quotable:
“Lists have one thing in common: They all start at zero.”
What are you waiting for?
Hi,
Great post and I learned alot about email lists, here is a question I have. Couldn’t direct messaging someone you know of social media be just effective as email? I have multiple email address and I sign up for a lot of newsletters, so to me newsletters are beginning to look like junk mail. Also the emails can be just as impersonal once they are automated, for example , I have signed up for webinars, and didn’t go, but then I got an email saying we are glad you attended. LOL. I wan’t even at the webinar. How do you avoid the trap of becoming impersonal as you begin to scale your email lists? Nice post.
Hi Steven – Thank you for taking the time to read my post and share your questions. I definitely believe in the power of real one-to-one communications, and hope that nothing I share here would dissuade a person in business from taking the time to reach out directly to a connection personally, either to answer a question or extend an invitation to their business, you name it! And I am also not a stranger to the worst of all culprits, automation gone wrong, where an automation based on a certain data point (e.g. signed up for webinar) assumes another data point (attended said webinar). That’s the worst. My recommendation with automation is to a build a system that can scale from the start. Only ask for and/or store data that you’ll be able to use effectively, and test test test so that you don’t fall victim to personalization or automation gone wrong. The idea behind automating some parts of your marketing isn’t to disguise computer activity as real human interaction, but rather, to free up your time to focus on more valuable interactions. I hope that this helps; please, keep the questions coming!
LOVE this! Super practical advice. I’m slowly trying to build my own…my fiance is great at it. Would love to keep learning from you!
Tiff
Hi Tiff – I’m glad you found some value in this post and of course, had to visit your website to see what you’re up to. I’m pretty sure I’m going to be learning from you as well! I look forward to it!