How to Build Your Email List from Zero to Thousands of Subscribers

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I currently have 20 thousand subscribers on my various email lists. When I started coaching and building my online business, I had no email list what so ever.

I am about to tell you how I build my email list from scratch in nine steps and how you can do what I did. This will take time and effort. It can not be done overnight. But it can be done, and without gimmicks, hype or over the top selling.

Nine steps to building a large email list from scratch:

Step 1: Create a website or a blog, or even a one page site, if you don’t yet have one.

You will want your own domain name rather than something with blogspot or worpress in the url. If you are going to successfully build an email list, you want people to trust you with their email address. Proprietary domain names inspire more trust. Get yourself a domain name here and register it for 2 years or more.

Now create a web page, website or a blog using the easiest way possible, which is this one.
Here are the reasons to use this service in particular:

• You can build a blog, or a site, or both using the same service
• Fairly small technological learning curve
• Extensive help database
• The service’s back end is being constantly updated, so your site/blog will always be leading edge without you doing any of the work to keep up with technology

You can be up and running with a website, blog or a page in just a few hours.

Step 2: Decide what you will offer people who get on your email list.

Will you offer them an email newsletter? Will you offer them a free report, an short email course? What ever it is, make it easy to create but of value to your future subscribes.

Here are some ideas:

• Seven part mini-course educating people about your industry
• Daily inspirational email
• Weekly mini-newsletter or what’s happening update
• Etc.

Create it and write a short, catchy phrase about this thing you created and/or your newsletter. Something to the tune of : “Subscribe to our newsletter to receive hot cooking tips weekly!” Or how about this one: Want to stay in the know about hot destination spots? Get our newsletter here!”

Step 3: Get an account with a email campaign management service.

Email campaign management service is just a fancy term for an online service where your email list subscribers will be kept and where you will create and manage the emails you send to them. I strongly recommend this one.

Why do you need this service? If you are going to grow your list into thousands, you can’t possibly run it from your home computer. Once you reach even 50 subscribes you will find manually running an email list a major headache. Besides, spam laws now require subscribe and unsubscribe practices that you will never be able to comply with unless you use such a service.

The service I use is here. I find them by far the best one out there, will great tech support and an abundance of features to run multiple mailings lists and campaigns. Their price is better than that of the competitors, plus they have white list agreements with many isps, which means your email is less likely to be marked as spam.

Step 4: Set up your list on the email campaign management service from the last step.

Be sure to create a thank you email that people will get once they subscribe to your list, where you explain to them what they will be getting.

Create a thank you page on your site where people will go once they subscribe to your newsletter. Get the url of this page and put it into the thank you page field when you are creating the subscribe box.

Create and get the code for your subscribe box. Don’t forget to include your offer you wrote in step 2 into the text of the subscribe box.

Step 5. Put the subscribe box on your site or blog.

If you have a one page site, post an interesting article on it or a description of your business that intrigues the prospects and find a prominent place for the subscribe box.

If you have a website, find a place to put a link for people to subscribe to your newsletter, or better yet, a prominent, above the fold location for your subscribe box on your home page and perhaps all your pages.

Put the subscribe box code into your webpage/website/blog.

Step 6: Test the subscribe box to be sure it works

Do you end up on your thank you page once you subscribe to your newsletter? Check your initial email and your thank you email to make sure they will all make your newsletter subscribers want to read your information. These are the initial moments of contact with your customers and are critical to quality of your subscribers and email list.

Step 7: Drive traffic to the subscribe box page or your site.

Tell everyone you know about your site. Talk about it on facebook, ask your friends to subscribe, tell them to tell their friends. Talk about it on Twitter, Linkedin, your blog.

Write articles and in the author box tout your newsletter. Promote your newsletter with as much vigor as you would promote a product that was going to make you a million dollars – because it sure could do that for you.

Step 8: Write valuable content for the emails you send out to your list.

Promotion only emails will get spam complaint and lots of unsubscribes. Make sure that you are sending out something people will want to take time to read. You want your content to be so great that your subscribers will look forward to your email.

Step 9: Have patience and don’t give up.

You need to only amass about 500 subscribes to start seeing results. This could take you a fairly short time – somewhere between a few months and a year, depending on how well you promote your site/page/blog. If you can reach 500 subscribes, your list will keep growing organically, although you will always need to keep an eye on promoting your newsletter effectively.

I hope this nine step process helps you grow a wonderful and responsive email list!

Would you like step by step coaching and hand holding in building your email list? I offer online business relationship building and social media coaching to select few businesses. If you are interested in my help, please contact me.

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