How to Start Your Email List and Grow It Fast

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You’ve heard over and over again that building an email list is one of the best ways to grow your online business, whether you want to get more clients or you want to sell more products.

And if you haven’t heard, then where have you been my friend?

You’ve got to start an email list today!

You can’t afford to ignore email marketing.

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How does starting an email list equal making money with your blog?

Your readers are your followers and fans.

They want to get to know you better and having an email list allows you to further your relationship with them.

When you get people on your email list from your blog, you can share more personal things and sell more of your services.

An email list increases the connection between you, your blog, and your readers. It’s how you create raving fans and loyal followers.

Steps to Starting and Growing Your Email List

In order to build an email list, you have to have an email service provider.

There are a lot of email service providers that are free and are paid. Which one is the best for you? 

Well, there are many different options, but I’ll recommend my favorite:

I use and love ConvertKit.

I like ConvertKit better than other options (especially if you want to monetize your blog and list) because you can easily:

• deliver lead magnets to your audience and tag the lead as interested (over time, this will help you know what your customers are most interested in)
• create many different types of forms for your website and blog
• get great form stats to see which convert best
• segment your subscribers based on which lead magnets they download
• build multiple automated email sequences (super important as your funnels get more sophisticated)

In addition, ConvertKit has a dedicated deliverability team to make sure that emails get into inboxes (instead of junk folders).

This means that the people who opted in to your list are more likely to see all of that important content you send them!

You can try out ConvertKit for free (up to 1 month).  Yes, before you commit to using ConvertKit, you can try it out for an entire month for free by using my special link.

In this blog post, I’m sharing 3 simple ways that will work to quickly build your email list from your blog readers:

How to Get Blog Readers to Subscribe to Your Email List

1. Place opt-in forms in strategic locations

You want to ensure that your blog readers see your opt-in box. The best way to do this is to include your forms in strategic, highly-visible places. For example, you can place one right below or above the header of your blog. As soon as they get to your blog, they’ll already be thinking about subscribing!

Additional locations to place opt-in forms include:

• Your website header or footer
• A dedicated page on your website
• Your blog’s sidebar
• At the end of each blog post
• Within the body of a blog post
• As a pop-up for new blog post visitors

Bonus Tip: Use Opt-In Monster to easily create beautiful opt-in forms that are proven to convert. and deliver your lead magnet to your subscribers. It gives you a huge variety of options such as a floating bar and a fullscreen welcome mat.

2. Incorporate content upgrades into all of your blog posts

If you are like most businesses that are blogging, you are only realizing about a 1% to 2% conversion rate.

How would you like to get ten times more email subscribers than you do right now?

You can absolutely achieve this kind of result by strategically placing a specialized type of opt-in on your blog posts called a content upgrade.

Content upgrades are highly-specific opt-in offers that will turn each and every one of your blog posts into an email list-building machine on steroids.

Content upgrades are amazing email list builders, but only if your readers actually see them! That’s why I suggest putting your opt-in box in two places in your blog post: after the introductory paragraphs and at the end.

Both ConvertKit and Opt-In Monster have inline forms that you can use to showcase your content upgrades and get your readers on to your list.

Want to learn more? Read my blog post “Content upgrades boost conversions like crazy“

3) Share your lead magnets in Facebook groups

There are a lot of Facebook groups for businesses and bloggers. They put up prompts each week that allowed you to share your lead magnets or blog posts or social media handles. Some even let you promote a paid service or product! I’ve skyrocketed my website traffic and subscriber list using this technique.

If you want to learn more about how I’ve done it, you can read a detailed post here: How to rapidly build your email list leveraging Facebook groups

When all is said and done, nothing can replace showing that you care about your readers and adding genuine values to your audience’s lives. If you do that and then implement the tactics I mention above, you will quickly build a list of enthusiastic and loyal leads who will be eager to buy your services and programs.

4) Email Your Subscribers Regularly

You must send regular emails to your list. So you may be wondering: What the heck do I email to my list to nurture them and make more sales?

Great question!

Because if you aren’t writing to them, your email list is not only doing you any good as a business owner, but it’s not bringing any value to your ideal clients (who are hanging out on your list waiting for you to write to them).

Over time, your email list gets freezer burn because it’s so cold and your poor, neglected list members will unsubscribe.

Never fear, my friend!

I’ve written an entire blog post with 25 email types and examples to send to your email list, what to include in them, and when to send to them.

You can use this list of tips over and over so that you will never are stuck for content ideas again!

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