First Stage of List Growth

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Now, this is an exciting video. We are now officially diving in to building your email list going from zero to not zero. As I so eloquently put at the end of last video, however, it is what we are doing. We're ready to start building our email list because we have our email service provider set up. We have our custom domain to start building our sender reputation, and we have implemented our mail system with Google workspace.
So it's time to start collecting those emails. Now, every list starts at zero. And that can be a little bit sad, I guess, or underwhelming what this module is ultimately all about is getting you off the start line to get you off the start line and start building your email lists and engaging with your people.
That is the point of all of this. After all. Now I know zero can seem a little bit. Sad maybe or overwhelming, or maybe even underwhelming at the same time, but zero really is great news in lots of ways. And you are in the right place with the list launching lab because starting from zero, starting from scratch it starting fresh.
And with that comes the opportunity to be a conscious email list builder. The list launching lab is not about growing your email list. By endless bounds, that doesn't really matter. The size of your email list is basically a relevant, a hundred people that like you, and that care, what you have to say is infinitely more valuable than a thousand or 10,000 or a hundred thousand people that are just mad because it is ultimately those hundred people or however many it ends up being, but of those real people that care, those are ultimately the people.
That can be transformed by your work that can be helped by your work, and that can ultimately sustain your business financially, because that is ultimately why we're here. We both serve our clients and our customers. And however it is that we do that, but we're also here to be profitable, to be entrepreneurs and to make all this effort worth it.
And that's ultimately what conscious list building means. To us at the list launching lab is just being conscious of sustainably building your email list with the purpose of finding people that really care, and that will really purchase and engage with you and your services. We are really just trying to create a healthy.
Email list. And we're really just planting the seed right now at the very beginning. And with us planting the seed and just starting our email list, just getting it off that zero off that start point, we're going to start off doing the right things, to be able to build a great, healthy and conscious list.
And building a healthy list starts from the beginning as we're going to cover in this module, but it also permeates through all of your list, building effort throughout time and keeping a healthy email list changes over time. And we'll cover that more in depth in a future module of how to ensure your list stays healthy as it grows.
So let's get into setting the roots of your email list to build a strong foundation to grow and a friendly reminder that this is always an evolving practice. I don't think anybody in the history of the world has got it right the first time. And it's just simply about evolving to excellence in all aspects, including keeping a healthy email list, because ultimately what we want to do is stay on target and something we cover in a future module is called the PCM perfect client model.
And that is a module to explore. When you start expanding your list to new people, people that have never heard of you, it's important that you're reaching the right people, but that is something, again, as I said, we cover in much more detail later, because what we want to do is start with. Low hanging fruit.
And I believe that there's three stages of growth for an email list. The first is what I call your BFFs. These are the people you already have a relationship with. The next stage of growth is your friends. These are people that you're already connected with, but you wouldn't already have. Their contact information.
I use the term friends because it kind of refers to say a Facebook friend. It's not that you email back and forth or you text each other. However, you do have connections and you are known to one another to a varying degree. Now the third step is really expansion into new people. And that is where your PCM and clarity around your PCM, which we cover in a future module is critical because again, It's not about building an email list without being conscious of who we're bringing on to that list.
And what we're really doing is moving from. Warm people to cold people. Your BFFs are obviously quite warm. They already know you. There's not much convincing. They're probably excited to support you. Your friends are sort of in the middle, but certainly on the warmer side, because they have some recognition to you and then all the way to a cold audience, which is where you're going to be expanding.
Now let's dive into the details of what I mean by. DFS. This is your main people, your friends, people you have regular contact with, and it also could include your family. I call these two people, your feedback crew, because they probably aren't people that are going to be buying things from you. The purpose of these.
People are not necessarily to buy, but it's to be your eyes and ears, your sort of feedback loop or your feedback crew. And I think it's great when you reach out to them because you do have that relationship that you sort of lay that foundation to them and say, Hey, I'm doing this thing. This is what I want to do.
And it would be great if you were on my email list to just provide me feedback and what you think. Along my journey, these sorts of people are invaluable and what can end up happening something that's happened to us, which is possibly the most powerful thing that's happened to our business is our feedback crew has become our clients in lots of way.
We have lots of regular people that engage with lots of. New things that we create. And it's extremely powerful because they give us a real feedback to make our work even better to serve even more people. And into that expansion stage of email is building those cold people. That feedback is critical.
And if you start with your feedback crew, being people that probably already love you and want you to be successful, it's amazing. And that feedback crew can grow over time. Another source of BFFs or people you already have some sort of relationship with is business cards. We all have probably collected business cards over our time networking.
And this is quite possibly the first time you will put those to use. I know I have a drawer of business cards that I, frankly, hopefully it's not one of you all, but have probably never even looked at however, this is an opportunity to compile these people. And see if we can finally tap into those networking events that you went to and that you shared your business card with and collected business cards.
And I'll get to how to track these in a moment, I have a very easy template to help you with that. Another thing you can do is you could export your contacts from your address book. If you use Apple contacts or your phone contacts. Now this comes with a serious asterix, because again, we're not diving.
Deeply into your PCM, but just because someone has a contact in your computer or your phone doesn't necessarily mean that you want them on your email list, but it is a worthwhile exercise to scroll through them and see if you can find anybody. And these two groups of people really are those low hanging fruit, because there is a distinction between your feedback crew, which really are not buyers.
They're really just there to help you. Improve, ultimately be a cheerleader and maybe also a critique at times, but these business cards and your contacts, they are really your low-hanging fruit and a way to really get you off that start line with your email list from zero to not zero as we are so eloquently calling it now your road to a thousand subscribers.
I want to touch on the number 1000, because when doing some research, it really came up that people really thought that that was a meaningful amount. Like, wow. If I had a thousand subscribers, that would be amazing. So that's why I use it as an example. However, I will say that I actually don't believe that a thousand is important because if I go back to conscious list-building and the idea that a hundred people that care are more valuable than say a thousand or 10,000 people that are just men, this is why.
Ultimately the number of subscribers a thousand in this case, it doesn't really matter. It really just matters how many people care. However, I also understand that building your email list to a certain level is meaningful and you have goals. And I think a thousand is a great number because. Looking back.
I believe that we figured out a lot of very fundamental things about our audience, what they like, what they didn't like once we hit those 1000 subscribers. So it is an arbitrary number, but at the same time, I do think it has some merit looking back on our journey over the years. And I feel like the emails we send, the feedback we received between that zero and a thousand subscribers really laid the foundation for the content that we created moving.
Right. Forward, and I think it will for you too. And that's why I've kept this thousand number, but I also don't want you to get stuck on it. I've heard people say in the past, Oh, should I wait to sell something or offer anything until I have a thousand subscribers? And the answer is complicated, but ultimately probably know if you're selling a 10 person coaching program, for example, and you have a 50 person email list that is engaged and cares about what you're doing.
I think, why not try and sell it. Why not the number doesn't really matter. It's really just the amount of engaged people that care about what you offer. So I digress about the thousand number. I hope that clarifies things and makes sense, and maybe settles any fear that you have, that you have to get to a certain number or whatever.
Now, something I think I know for sure is everyone's road to a thousand or journey. Building their email list looks very different. Some people will have a huge amount of BFS that they already have relationships with and maybe have slightly less friends. And then we'll rely a little bit less on expanding to cold people.
Whereas somebody else might not have very many BFFs at all. Very little friends and we'll rely heavily on expansion to build their lists. Or some variants in between, not that many close to you, but a lot of social and network connections that you would rely on. And ultimately all of these scenarios is fine.
It doesn't really matter. It's more about going through each step one by one. And identifying the people that you can and converting them to people onto your list. And whether you end up with a hundred people or 2000, it doesn't really matter. It's simply about going through the steps specifically, the first two steps to convert those people that already have at least an inkling of who you are and get them onto your email list.
So how do we go about collecting your BFFs in an organized fashion? Again, we're looking for your main people, your friends. And also your family. And then we're going to go through all our business cards and maybe any contact and what I did to make it easy for you is I made a cool Google sheet for you to track this.
So you can go through your business cards and input your information. You can see your first name, email, and then there's this checkbox of welcome sent, which I'll get to in a second. But this is available as link that you can make a copy. And this is again a Google sheet, and that is part of your Google workspace subscription.
So it's going to connect right to you. You can make a copy that no one else can see it's just in your account. And if you click the link below, it'll basically cue you to make a copy that you can then work from. Now, once we do that, we could theoretically say, okay, let's just. Import all of these contacts into convert kit, but that would be wrong again because we want to do conscious list building.
We want to be scrappy is what I call it. We want to take the extra time to be personal at every stage that we can, because people can sense your authenticity. And whenever we have the opportunity to be more authentic, we should always take that opportunity. So once you go through your BFF, which is again, your main people, your family, your business card, and some of your contacts use your judgment with those and add them to your Google sheet.
We are going to send them a personalized note to each and every one of these people, whether you have 10 or a hundred or maybe more, I want you to send a personalized email to them. Each of them, and this is how you set the tone and become a conscious list builder that will then pay off in spades because a healthy list is a good list.
And I wanted to take the time to really tell you about the importance of consciousness building. This comes from a place from learning from our mistakes. Stakes at the very beginning of my list, building with Kathleen and our company, I was very hungry for the numbers. I really categorize success as the amount of subscribers we got and the new subscribers we were bringing in.
And we got really, really good at bringing in a lot of subscribers. However, the quality was not what it should be. We ultimately weren't following all the things we teach in list launching lab. Now, again, this was years ago, however, The great and powerful thing about you being enlist launching lab. And I think ultimately its greatest value proposition is that I truly believe that the list launching lab and what we talk about can save you from my estimation, at least three or four years worth of mistakes that we made.
I truly believe that. These lessons, you can avoid learning those lessons. You can avoid spending money advertising and building your list to people that ended up not really caring and growing a list to some huge number of tens of thousands of people, but only having a small percentage really care. And that's the power of lists launching lab.
That's the power of. The conscious choice you made to join this launching lab. And that is ultimately the return on your investment is you are going to save so much time and realistically probably save a lot of money. So with that, I'm going to go over the template that I have for you in order to engage these low hanging fruit people that you have identified in your Google sheet and convert them into meaningful subscribers to get your list from zero.
To not zero. So this is the email template we have put together for you. And I am very happy with it and to go over it just at a high level, I think it'll make perfect sense, but I gave some subject options because with emails, subject lines will be something that we talk about more in depth. As we work through this launching lab, but they're very important because it's your one opportunity to give the person that's receiving the email insight into what you are going to share.
And ultimately with the subject line, we are playing some mind games is what the truth is because we want to leave a sort of cliffhanger. We want people to go. Hmm. I wonder. What they're saying, we want to be descriptive enough that we're not being weird or spammy, but be intriguing enough that it's like, well, I want to open that.
I want to see what this is about. So I have a list of subject lines that are pretty basic, but the thing to do is just do a self check. If you got this subject line from somebody, what would you do? Would you open it? Would you think, Oh, I know this is going to be about and play around with a subject line until you find one that you think resonates with what you're sending.
Will resonate with your audience and will also generate the most opens. Now we are not sending any bulk emails with this. This is not a mass send. This is very high touchpoint personalization, and it really is planting the seed to grow your list in a very authentic and engaged. Way. So I assure you that the extra time that it takes today doing this with your first few subscribers is worth it.
And obviously going forward, this is not scalable. When we get into the expansion stage of list, growing to those cold people. This is not something that you do. So it's something that we put our big people pants on and we put the time in, we put the work in and it is worth it. I assure you now, because these are your contacts.
I expect that you have some sort of connection with them. So it's good to start this email with a personal touch point. And also a personal update about yourself. And I added examples and I was kind of laughing at myself. I should probably add context that Bentley is my dog, and I couldn't really think of what personal update to provide as an example that should live on kind of forever.
So we went with the dog. So I'm sorry that my. Personal updates. And my personal touchpoints might seem a little goofy. And that is because they're about my dog. So hopefully you will have a better personal update than my examples. So after you really make that connection with people, you do want to get to the point and be direct.
Something I've learned through social media and email is to really just get to the point and ask for what you want. You can't get what you want if you don't ask. So really get to the point and be clear with what you're asking about person that that is an effective way of communicating. Personally in your personal life and it's even more important professionally when it comes to email list, building emailing probably in general and also just overall communication strategy in your business.
Clarity really is King. It's not about being sharp or pointed. It's just about asking for what you want in a nice way. I also think it's really important as you're building your list from the very beginning with these contexts of yours to give a good indication. Of what your general plan is, as well as the rough frequency of emails.
We just want to give people insight into whether or not they want to subscribe. Because at this point we're generating this list in your Google sheet of emails, right. Of contacts that you're going to then send this email to. And when you send it to that person, you'll click the check box, but we're not importing these people.
They are not on your list yet. We want to entice them to get on your list. So that means maybe if you send this to say a hundred people for easy math, not everyone will sign up, but the number of people, whatever the number is, is better than just dumping all those contacts into convert kit and crossing our fingers that they don't unsubscribe.
So giving them your general plan, as best as you know, and also the frequency of email, just because for somebody like me, I kind of guard my inbox a lot and. I am actually a big fan of newsletters and email touchpoints, but I do like to know what I'm getting myself into. Is this a weekly email? Is this a daily email?
That context is important to me. I think it's important to a lot of people and something to note about your general plan, be as generic as you can. Something that I learned is to under promise and over deliver. If. Just as an example, let's say you have a goal of starting a podcast don't you probably don't want to commit to saying, I'm going to send you my weekly podcast, just in case it takes a little longer to get off the ground.
So say my intention is to share with you all the things I create, including an exciting podcast idea. I have stay tuned for that. You know, you want to entice people give a general plan, but you don't want to be too specific that then people are going like, wait, I thought you were going to start your podcast because everything takes longer than you think.
So it's just a general piece of advice to keep it relatively general and make sure you can deliver on everything that you say you will. And it's always better to over deliver. And at the bottom it ends with basically a final call to action. So what do you say. I want you to join me and feel free to edit this and obviously put it all into your own words to make sure it's speaking from an authentic place for you.
And then you will notice that I have a convert kit landing page link. And in the next video, that is what we are going to create. Because as I said, these people are not subscribed yet. We are going to send this email to each of them after we create the landing page. It's just going to be very basic, very functional.
And what it's going to do is they read this email. You create a personal touch point. You tell them what the plan is. You ask them to click and take action. They click they land on the landing page and they provide your email, which will formally put them into your convert kit. Account as a subscriber.
And again, that means maybe less people will sign up than what you send it to. Again, say you set it to a hundred, a hundred people probably won't take this action. However, again, whoever does, you know, really wants to hear from you and that's all that really matters. So this is exciting. This template is linked for you down below.
Again, it is a Google doc. Something you can create a copy of and put it right into your Google workspace account and work from an edit and get just right. And then what we're going to do in the next video is create the landing page link so that you can then go through and create these personalized email for each of those people you identified in your Google sheet list to then convert them into subscribers.
We are well on our way to not having zero subscribers.