#197: How to Build a Profitable Email List Without Paid Ads

Welcome back to another edition of the Course, Creating an Incubator podcast. I’m your host, Gina Onativia here to get you excited about whatever you’re building right now. It could be an online course, a membership, a certification course, a live program. Whatever is going to light you up, generate revenue for you, and maybe, just maybe put you out there in a bigger way.

And have you caught up on the latest course Creation Incubator podcast episodes? Because last week’s was a good one. I talked about three prompts. I want you to think about before even touching any promotion. And these are three prompts that I use every time before I start a campaign. And I also make sure I’m in the middle of a few campaigns right now, including a campaign for our conversion copywriting playbook that I’m doing right now with the amazing Megan O’Leary.

Make sure to join the waitlist on that. We’re going to open it up very soon. I want you to be truly persuasive when it comes to your copy, specifically your email copy. So you sell more courses, more workshops, whatever it is you’re putting out there in a bigger way. Now, today, I want to talk about the health of your email list and how you are focusing and growing that because maybe you’re struggling a little bit to grow your email list without spending money on ads.

You’re not alone. I get questions all the time from entrepreneurs, business owners, of course, creators who are looking to really grow their audience in their list, and they’re struggling with that and they say, Regina, can I really do this without paid ads? And the answer is yes. And we’re going to talk about some organic strategies that you can use to really focus in on growing your email list to make sure you’re creating a list that’s engage and profitable.

Now, why are we focusing on email? And I’ve said it multiple times on this podcast, I say it every time I speak that email is king and social media is the support team. Okay, we want to emphasize email because it’s the most powerful tool for you as a of course, creator and entrepreneur, and we’ve seen it over the last few months.

How fickle social media is It can go down, you don’t know those followers. You don’t know when a platform is not going to be working. And that’s why, by the way, we’re talking about email when it comes to the conversion copywriting playbook. So today I’m going to talk about how to build up a profitable email list without paid ads so you can really focus on the health of your list.

And the great news is, especially if you have a very specific outcome, I don’t feel like you need paid ads, especially at first. Now, before I get there, there’s been kind of a mantra running through my head from when I worked at Tony Robbins. This idea of treating expectations for appreciation. I talked about how I ran this 10-K in the podcast a few weeks ago, and I really set myself up for success or actually I did it, my trainer did, because she said to me, an hour and 20 minutes is the new average for beginner runners for women in the U.S. So here I’m thinking, okay, I’ve got an hour and 20 minutes.

I really had 2 hours to do the course, actually. So as you know, if you signed up for a race, they tell you, hey, we’re not going to kick you off this course until a certain amount of time. So for the 10-K, it was really 2 hours. So I had 2 hours to run the entire course, but she had an hour and 20 minutes in my head because she’s like, Hey, that’s the average, you know, for a beginner.

I ended up doing it a little under an hour and 9 minutes and I thought I was the biggest rock star on Fiesta Island that morning because I crush that time that I had in my head, which was an hour and 20 minutes. Now, by the way, I ended up Googling it and I think she was being very generous to me.

I think the actual average is maybe an hour and 6 minutes, but she set me up with that expectation. She did me a favor. So I had zero expectations and instead I had appreciation that I could run it, that I could get there out on the bay, that I could move the way I wanted to move. And I think a lot of times we set ourselves up with lofty expectations.

And again, Tony Robbins talked about this all the time when I before we get him on stage or what we went into the studio, we set ourselves up for big expectations and then we get upset when reality doesn’t meet our expectations. And if reality is not meeting your expectations right now, I invite you to trade your expectations for appreciation and think how you could be improved should live in terms of how you’re creating your course or how you’re putting your offers out there are growing your business now, and you guys know I’m not a big woo woo person, right?

I’m a former New Yorker. I tell it like it is. But I also am learning to appreciate more and to have the gratitude instead of having the outlandish expectations. So trade expectations for appreciation and let’s see what we can get done together in terms of your business and your courses and your programs. Let’s get to the meat of the episode and why you’re here.

And we’ve talked about a little bit why email is king Because social media is unpredictable, right? There’s algorithm changes. There’s some bans on social media. A certain platform might not be there tomorrow. They’re shifting trends. Gosh, look what’s happening right now on Instagram. The size is on the grid. Everyone’s in an uproar about it. Well, that’s what happens with social, right?

You just have to adapt with whatever the social managers of those different platforms have decided to roll out. You have no control over it. And let’s be honest, as marketers, sometimes we don’t have a lot of control over how our potential audience reacts, how our prospects are going to respond to what we put out there. Like that’s part of the fun and sometimes part of the trauma of being a marketer, right?

We can’t control how people feel. We can’t control the emotions that they’re going to have against something that we put out there. But with email, I’ll tell you right now, you’re going to have more control over the messages, over the platform, etc. and highly engaged email subscribers convert better than social media followers. It is. You can look it up.

There is study after study about this email converts better. And if I’m engaging with someone, I’m always curious to know, Hey, how are you taking care of your list? How are you loving on them? Are you emailing them on the regular? Because I know social media followers are great because you want that for your presence and you want that for your authority.

But really, I want to know what’s the health of your list and how are you taking care of them? All right, now that we covered, why email is so powerful, let’s talk exactly how to grow your list organically, starting with an awesome lead magnet. Now, guys, if you’ve been listening to this podcast, you know, we’ve talked about this.

You need an awesome opt in lead magnet, freebie, whatever you want to call it, to grab your ideal person and you want to make it irresistible and value driven and results focus. I’ve got plenty of episodes on lead magnets, a link to those in the show notes. You want to make sure you’re addressing a pain point that doesn’t overwhelm your person.

And by the way, if you’re listening to me or watching me right now and you realize, Gina, I don’t really have a great lead magnet that really speaks to the pain that’s irresistible. Well, there’s a lot of low hanging fruit in terms of grabbing your best converting blog or your best three videos. Put that together in a cohesive package and call it your lead magnet.

Now, there are a few lead magnets that I think are performing better than others. For example, a great checklist does well because let’s be honest, who’s not looking for a checklist? Even folks who are just looking for a how to I’m a visual person. Sometimes it is painful for me. I did this this morning. I was watching a YouTube clip on pretty links and it was painful for me.

I wish I had a checklist on this just to hit up that quick read information. And so checklist always awesome templates. Who doesn’t love a good fill in the blank templates, plug and play mini training or workshops? Okay, I’m seeing people do video series. I’m seeing more and more of people be generous in terms of their free workshops and what they have to offer.

Don’t be afraid to be generous with your lead magnet, by the way. They’re really paying for the how to and access to you. Another great one is, of course, interactive quizzes because then you get to segment their answers according to what they are. But as a reminder, all roads lead to you in your course. So think through what’s the precursor to them working with you?

What is the freebie, the free thing that’s going to make them want to ultimately spend money with you? I’ve been seeing recently a kind of two part lead magnet where maybe you put out an audio series or a video series, you’ve got a companion PDF with that, but maybe you don’t put that PDF out there in a big way In the first email, first email, you talk up the audio series of the video series, then in the second email you say, Hey, by the way, did you see you had a companion checklist with that?

So it feels like even more value. So a great lead magnet is a must in terms of organic list building, because that’s what you’re going to promote any time you put out free content. And by the way, another piece, the second point is I want to make sure you’re putting out consistent content. Ideally each week you’re putting out high value content to drive sign ups, and every once in a while you’re giving out some content upgrades to capture their email.

So a great example of this is I just did a planning workshop. This was a couple of episodes ago. I link to it in the show notes and I included a planning worksheet with that. This was a no brainer if you’re listening to me plan and I went through prompts, I went step by step. By the way, I did those three prompts last week.

I could have included a worksheet with that. This is a little insider baseball, but I just want you thinking about if you’re putting out a video or an audio and maybe there are a few questions you left out that you didn’t cover or additional information or resources that can go inside of a download and you could be building your list that way.

Again, I want you putting out content on a consistent basis videos, blogs, newsletters. By the way, I’ve been seeing some really great monthly newsletters lately that are nurturing people and also driving leads. All right, here’s the third point of you organically building your list, collaborating and partnering with other experts and tapping into existing audiences. This could be through guest post podcasts, podcast appearances.

A great example. This is Meghan O’Leary and I. We’re getting together on the conversion copywriting playbook, and I’ll be honest with you, audience sharing. Was it my first outcome with this course with O’Leary? My first outcome was actually just doing something with her because I love her so much, and I promised myself this year that I was going to get out of my cave and do more partnerships.

And O’Leary is so collaborative and so fun. So, by the way, a quick plug. If you want to master email marketing and write emails that convert, make sure you’re on the waitlist. So by the way, the partnerships is a great way to be exposed to someone else’s audience. A link to an episode I did about relationships. So you can hear more about this another way, and I know we kind of left social in the dust, but you can use social media as a lead machine without ads.

There’s still organic growth to be had and you can use a piece strategy and a call to action to your most engaging post with your lead magnet, a.k.a your opt in and get folks to go from the platform from the social platform to your email list, and then you really own that name in that email. All right. I just rattled off a bunch of ideas for you to do some organic growth.

I mean, I could do a podcast on any of these ideas to drill down further. So think about what might work for you and do some research, listen to some other podcasts and a link to in the show notes and get a sense of what you think would really help you build up the health of your list. One final note on the lead magnet piece.

We’re doing a lead magnet campaign for a client. We’ve been running two different guides. One guide. We are clearly not getting the right audience. We are not attracting what we want. So we turn that off. But the other guide in this video ad that we’re using is working. So you’ve just got a test. You’ve just got to put several things out there to see what sticks in terms of capturing that audience that you want.

All right. I think I completely ripped through this, but just some closing thoughts. A small but engaged list will always outperform a large, disengaged one. I know people with huge email list. They get no traction. I rather you have a list of 400 and these folks are into you. Then a list of 4000 with people who never open and never want to hear from you.

And organic strategies take time. You have to build up relationships, especially with your partnerships, but you’re in it for the long term. I have a client who’s been guesting on podcasts and it’s been about six months and now we’re starting to see traction and reap the rewards of her being on those podcasts. So sometimes these strategies take a little bit longer.

So we need to be patient as course creators and entrepreneurs. All right, Thanks for listening. If you found this helpful, make sure you subscribe so you don’t miss the next episode and leave me a review. I love to read your comments until next week. Go create, be you and be brilliant and get it done.