Every year at least one new Social Platform hits the market. Last year it was first Ello (didn’t really take off) and the other one worth mentioning is Blab (that one did take off). So with all these tools on the market, people could easily get tricked into thinking that email marketing finally hit the dust. But they would be wrong. Building an Email List is still the most important marketing strategy of your small business.
How do you build an email list? You give before you get. You offer your audience something they really need, in exchange for their email address. This ‘thing’ has different names: opt-in, freebie, free give-away and there might be others.
I see many business owners struggle with this free offer, which is why I’m sharing this easy
6-step process on how to create your free opt-in in 1 hour or less
1. Pick a topic that is relevant and sought after by your ideal client
You want to give something away that your site visitors really need. Answers to their questions, solutions to their problems. One easy way to find out what they need is to head over to Amazon and type in your idea and then see what kind of book titles come up and which ones have the best and most reviews. Another idea is to create a freebie related to a blog post that you’ve just published. Make an easy to follow ‘Worksheet’, a ‘Resource Sheet’ in which you list all the resources (& links) which you referred to in your post, or an ‘Advanced Tips Cheat Sheet’ where you share some additional tips for the advanced users. Those Freebies work quite well because they are directly related to the content. However you need to have enough traffic to that page.
2. Create or source the content
Next you need to create the content. Most likely you already have it. Either in the form of previous blog posts, presentations or maybe even a book you have written. Copy & paste the text in a new document and reorganize it into a logical sequence. Headlines are important, since people are scanners and often only scan through the content they download for free. Also bold the most important sentence of each paragraph.
3. Come up with the title
I suggest to come up with the title only after you have put together all the content. It needs to be something catchy, a solution to a problem. Click here for a headline swipe file to help you come up with the right title.
4. Design
You can either work with your favorite designer, hire someone on Fiverr.com or create it yourself on Canva.com. The latter has great templates you can use and it’s really quite user friendly. Give it a try. Don’t forget to add your contact details (website, e-mail) in the footer of each page. Make sure you use enough white space. Save it as a pdf.
5. Proofread
Don’t forget to proofread your e-book. It’s always a good idea to have another pair of eyes look at it.
6. Upload & connect with your Autoresponder tool
After you have uploaded your masterpiece to your site you need to now connect it with your Autoresponder tool of choice (Mailchimp, Aweber etc. > see tools I use in my business). Create a new list for this Freebie and then set up a series of messages: the first one includes the link to the free download, the follow-up messages can be either messages meant to nurture the relationship with your subscriber or lead to a sale of your product or service.
Ta da! How long did that take you? Ok, maybe the first one will take a bit more than 1 hour. But once you figured out the process you can just rinse and repeat this.
Sarah: Your post gave me push to create my first real newsletter!
very happy to hear, Martin !! 🙂
Have just started studying Online Marketing and I feel I have learnt something of value today. Off to research more on this topic. 😀