"Where There Is No List, Businesses Perish." - Me
When it comes to building a successful business, an email list is one of the most important things to start building, even before you know what you’re selling.
Many people ask me why building a list is important, so we’ll cover that first, and then I’ll cover six different ways that you can actually build your list starting NOW.
And yes, as the title says, I'll show you how to do that without spending a dime.
You’ll like what you find. #5 is my personal favorite (you’ll see why).
Why Building An Email List Matters
John D. Rockefeller and John D. Rockefeller Jr. Posing for a portrait. Source: https://www.rockefeller.edu/about/history/
One night I watched a documentary about the Rockefellers on Youtube.
It was beautiful.
It covered everything about the life of John D. Rockefeller, from his days of screwing tons of people over to the days of him giving most of his time to giving back at the end of his life.
I don’t care about your opinion of the guy either, what I’m focused on is the money-making principles that this guy displayed.
One of the things that caught my eye in particular, was the obsession with “control” that John D. Rockefeller possessed.
He and his son, John D. Rockefeller Jr., made it a point to control everything in their business.
The big bahema was The Standard Oil Company, but they also owned real estate their factories sat on, the railroads and trains that transported his oil, newspapers that millions of people read, and even pharmaceutical companies.
Heck, this man even controlled the way we educated our children with his creation of the General Education Board, and poured over $200 million into education throughout his lifetime. He wanted to control it all. And oh boy, did he.
The world was in this man's filthy hands.
However, I didn’t write this to focus on the negative side of Rockefeller, nor am I ignoring his filth with my next statement.
This man was a genius.
If you simply study how he thinks you will find treasure.
He controlled his opportunity in every possible way.
And that is how you should think about your business.
You want control. As much of it as you can get. Fill your tank with it.
If you don’t, you’ll crash and burn.
For example, let’s say you have 100k+ followers on all your social media platforms Heck, imagine you had a podcast with hundreds of thousands of listeners a month to go with it.
Now let’s say something happened and your account gets removed for no reason on one or more of these accounts, or the social media platforms themselves shut down.
What happens then?
ALL of your deal flow….
ALL of your opportunities for new customers.
Just wiped out. You’re screwed.
Now, you’re back to square one…
OR you could have been smart and spent all of that time building an email list.
And guess what? Nobody can take it away from you. You OWN that data.
This is the power of building a list that you OWN, or like the Rockefellers would say, A list that you control.
So let me remind you…
If you’re not building an email list, you're renting your business.
Social media is rented land. You do not own that real estate. But an email list?
You own it. And when you have an email list of fans and buyers, you can sell them more stuff.
But if you’re one of those, “I need to see the numbers” kind of people, let me share some statistics with you.
Email marketing has a higher ROI than social media marketing. According to a study by DMA, for every $1 spent on email marketing, the average ROI is $42. Compare that to social media marketing where the average ROI is $17 per $1 spent. (Source: https://dma.org.uk/research/email-marketing-benchmark-report-2021)
Emails have a higher open rate than social media posts. The average email open rate across all industries is around 22%, while the average organic reach of a Facebook post is around 6%. (Source: https://optinmonster.com/email-marketing-vs-social-media-performance-2016-2019-statistics/)
Email marketing allows for targeted messaging. Email lists can be segmented based on user behavior and interests, which allows for highly targeted messaging. On the other hand, social media posts reach a broad audience, making it difficult to deliver targeted messaging. (Source: https://www.business2community.com/email-marketing/email-marketing-vs-social-media-marketing-pros-cons-01215564)
Email marketing is a more personalized form of communication. Emails can be personalized with the recipient's name, location, and past purchase behavior, making them feel more connected to the brand. Social media posts, on the other hand, are often seen as impersonal and generic. (Source: https://www.business2community.com/email-marketing/email-marketing-vs-social-media-marketing-pros-cons-01215564)
Emails are more likely to drive conversions than social media posts. According to a study by McKinsey, email marketing is 40 times more effective at acquiring new customers than Facebook and Twitter combined. (Source: https://www.mckinsey.com/business-functions/marketing-and-sales/our-insights/why-marketers-should-keep-sending-you-emails)
So, if that doesn’t convince you to focus on building your email list, I don’t know what will!
Now, with that said, let’s get into how to actually build your email list (without investing money to build it).
How To Build Your Email List (Without Ads Or Paid Promotions)
There are a few ways to build your email list, some of which are more powerful than others.
So, what I am going to do is list them from most effective to least effective, however, do not get it twisted, the “least effective” does not mean “not effective.”
The exact opposite. These are very powerful strategies, and all of them work. Yes, every single one of them will give you great results if executed properly.
But most importantly, these only work if they are done consistently, over and over again.
I’m talking about ruthless persistence.
The kind of shit that makes other people uncomfortable. You know? The kind of stuff nobody wants to do. The boring "Rocky cut scene" kind of persistance.
It took me 500 pitches to lock in 15 affiliate partnerships. And guess what? I’m going to send another 500.
That’s the kind of thinking that will get you somewhere with what I’m about to show you, without it, you’re a sinking ship, and even worse, you’re chained to the ship.
If you’re not sinking to the bottom of the ocean, or prefer not to, keep reading on.
1. Email Cross Promotions
One of my favorite ways to grow my lists, which is not difficult to do at all, is email cross-promotion campaigns with other list owners.
For example, as you may already know, I sell a course that shows coaches and experts how to get booked on podcasts.
One of my friends ran a Facebook group of fitness coaches and had over 3,000 of their emails.
Knowing fitness coaches were an ideal fit for my course, I approached him with an idea.
“Review my course. If you like it and think your audience will benefit from it, let’s promote it to them and split the money we make.”
He reviewed it, liked it, and saw the value for his audience, so he gave me the green light to promote it to his list.
However, instead of sending them directly to the course, I figured it’d be smarter if I went for the emails.
Sure, I could just promote the course and get a few sales. But I’d be better off by offering something for free, getting a lot of them on my email list and then establishing a relationship and converting way more on the back-end.
So I just wrote three emails using this email writing framework promoting the guide and sent it over for his approval.
Once he approved it, he scheduled it in and we blasted it out.
Over a three-day period (which was the last three days at the time of this writing) over 200 people joined my email list. And so far, 12 people have purchased my course for $497, and 30% of them got my upsells.
Now I have 188 more people to continue to follow up with.
This was only a list of 3100, so imagine a list of 100,000? This is possible.
Other than my immediate network, I use a platform called JV Directory to find partners. It works very well because these other list owners are looking for companies to cross-promote with, so it’s an awesome resource.
They have networking events twice a month, you can sign up for one here.
Once you find someone, send them a simple email promoting the idea.
“Hello Christine!
I came across your company on the JV Directory and I see that you're helping entrepreneurs grow their businesses by gaining more visibility and becoming the authority in their niche.
As an entrepreneur who is all about visibility, I really appreciate what you're doing.
And by the looks of the amount of testimonials on your site, I can tell that you are exceptional at what you do.
So, I'm writing to propose a collaboration idea with you.
I've created a full guide that shows founders and entrepreneurs how to build their personal brand and attract premium buyers by getting booked on top podcasts in their niche, without paying a PR agency a dime.
This process helped me generate just under $220k in my coaching business in 2022.
I wanted you to know about it because I feel this can support your audience’s branding and client acquisition efforts, while also positioning them as a thought leader in their industry.
If you're interested, I'd love for you or your team to review the guide and see if it’s a good fit.
If it is, can we discuss promoting it to your audience? I’d also be very happy to promote a free resource of yours with my audience as well since I see some crossover in our avatar.
Do you think this idea would be too lame to even consider? Or you think it's worth a chat?
Looking forward to your reply.
Best,
Adrian
Founder of The Power Pitch Company”
You can model that email to send your own and land email cross-promotion deals this way. Especially if you have real value to offer the audience of whoever it is that you’re pitching.
Just be sure to have a killer email sequence on the back end of that opt-in, this way you can follow up with those leads and convert them into paying customers.
If you need help writing sales emails, I wrote an article that will show you how to write emails that will leave your subscribers throwing money at you.
2. Performance Based Email Promotions
This one is not just similar to #1, it’s the same thing. The only difference is there is no cross-promotion, instead, you’re paying for the promotion.
You’re just doing it on the back end. With the right approach, list owners are open to this, especially if it’s genuinely relevant and valuable for the audience.
Like email cross promotions, you want to find companies and list owners that have your audience.
Then you want to build a free resource that is exceptionally valuable, more valuable than people’s paid stuff, and make a proposal to the list owner to send an email promoting it.
Instead of offering a cross-promotion to your list, tell them you have a follow-up sequence on the back end of the free resource, and you’d be happy to send them a certain percentage of the sale.
I like to offer a hard-to-refuse percentage, like 50%, but do what you wish, just keep in mind you’re asking for a favor.
If you want to spice it up, offer a cross-promotion as well, but there is no need to do so.
Send an email like the one I shared in #1, just adjust it based on what I shared here.
3. Joint Online Summits
Another great way to build your email list is to leverage other people’s audiences through online summits.
The key is to include other experts in your summits as guest speakers and have them promote the summit to their list as well.
You can even offer affiliate commissions of back-end sales to the experts, giving them more of an incentive to get people signed up for the summit.
Now, I am not by any means an expert on running these, I just know that the key is to be the one who facilitates the entire thing, brings people together and gets everyone to promote to their lists.
Make it a free entry, building up your email list much more and giving you more back-end, long-term opportunities.
Again, I have never put one of these together. I know that Russel Brunson goes into depth on how to execute an online summit like this in his book Traffic Secrets, which you can get for free here.
This book is easily one of my top books on generating traffic too, so it’s a great resource that I encourage you to grab if you haven’t.
4. Guest Posting
Guest posting, ah, something that takes a lot of work, like everything else on this list, but something that is very rewarding in the long run.
And like Neil Patel says, “If you don’t guest post, you won’t do as good as someone who does in the long run.”
Guest posting is just that. You find a blog that has a lot of quality traffic. Quality meaning your ideal audience.
For example, I approached Flippa.com, an online marketplace that focuses on the buying and selling of diverse digital assets, with a primary emphasis on websites, domain names, and online businesses.
Knowing they rank for my key-words, and they get a lot of traffic, I researched the company on Linked-in, then looked at their employees and found someone with “Content manager” or “Content editor” in their name.
Then I sent an opening message:
“Hey Tory. Came across the 'Get More Done By Doing Less: Work-Life Balance as an Entrepreneur' on the Flippa.com blog. Great content, and I'm actually a fan of Adam Enfroy myself.
I have a few ideas of articles that could be very beneficial for your audience.
Mind if I send them over?”
Short, easy and concise.
Now, I’m writing an article for them.
You can do the same thing.
Make a list of blogs that have your niche audience. Think of crossovers. Since I have a course for podcast guesting, I find blogs on marketing. Here is a great curated list of sites accepting blog posts.
If you can’t find a direct guest post submit form, find the company on Linkedin and then look at their employee list, then find the one with “content editor” or “content manager”
Send a direct message like the one I shared above, from my example.
How does this help with list building?
Well, these sites will let you link at least once or twice back to your site, which means you will then drive them to your site. Which is what I do.
Either somewhere in the article, or in the bio section, I send people to my site - and then I have pop-ups and opt-in areas on my site to get people to join my email list in exchange for a lead magnet.
It’s simple, and the more guest posts you do the better. If your site is linked by high authority domains then it will rank you higher in Google, which means your in-bound leads, and the number of people who find you will increase over time and drive even more subscribers.
It’s a strategy with many benefits.
5. Podcast Guesting
This is another one of my favorites, mainly because I have a ton of fun doing it. But podcast guesting is a great way to fill up an email list.
A single interview can bring you anywhere from 20, 40, 100, hundreds, or thousands of subscribers. Imagine if you did one to two interviews a week.
Like guest posting, guesting on podcasts is more powerful over time and has a big compounding effect.
Following the pattern of borrowing audiences, what I do is find shows in my niche using one of the four ways I share in this video here.
Then when I’m on the show I make sure to deliver real value, and I do that by sharing plenty of client examples, which simultaneously highlights me as an expert who can help the audience with their problems.
And at the end of the episode, the hosts always ask me how the audience can follow me, at which point I give them one link to go to, and this link is for them to download a resource that will help with something I shared in the show. So it’s relevant.
They just have to give me their email in exchange for it.
(This is where I send people if you want to see an example of the page: www.thepowerpitch.co/pdf)
This works wonderfully, and if you want to learn how to get booked on podcasts then I will shamelessly plug in my course The Power Pitch Program that will show you how to get booked on 5+ podcasts a month (without hiring a PR agent).
6. A Content Marketing Channel
Another way to build an email list is by developing a separate channel where you regularly produce content.
My list is built 100% off content marketing.
Either I make a Facebook post, or a blog post, or I do a podcast interview in which I tell people to give me their email in exchange for some valuable resource. Again, a lead magnet.
For example, you may be getting introduced to me for the very first time, and if it wasn’t for this content then it wouldn’t have happened.
And now, if I deliver enough value to you, you may find other ways to stay in contact with me, like by joining my Newsletter.
I blog a crap ton because I love it. But not only that, I do it because it makes me money.
People love the content, it drives traffic to my site and I then use my site pop ups and other opt-ins to join my email list.
Or maybe someone follows me on Facebook and reads a post of mine, where I regularly drop links to my resources and newsletter, which require an email to get access to.
Not only do I blog and post on Facebook, but I also have a podcast called My First 1000 where I ask other founders how they got their first 1000 customers.
At the start of each episode I give people a call to action to join my newsletter, and then halfway in and do a quick 20-second ad promoting a free resource, and then back to the show.
These small things drive people to sign up for my lists, and the content is the piece that allows this to happen.
So whether it’s blogging, podcasting, videos or whatever the hell, publish some damn content. And do it consistently. At least once a week for a whole year publish something.
The Key To Success: A Lead Magnet That Converts
And these are my six strategies for building an email list without paying for subscribers.
But as you can see, every one of them depends on some kind of free guide, or free value that people are willing to give their email for to get access to.
This is called a lead magnet. It’s a way to drive inbound leads, and then you can use email marketing to convert the leads.
It’s important to have a very high converting lead magnet in place, and one that connects with the audience emotionally.
Because if you know anything from following me, then you know connecting to prospects' emotions is the key to selling.
I won’t go into how to do that here, I’ve done that in other articles, but what I will do is share this video by Dan Henry where he breaks down how to create a high-converting lead magnet step-by-step.
It’s an awesome video and one of the best resources I’ve seen on building a lead magnet. Click here to watch it.
In Conclusion
Building an email list is one of the most crucial elements to not only building a successful business but building a sustainable business. One that lasts.
One that has consistent income and gives you peace of mind. Email lists make that possible.
So building one should always be one of the primary focuses of your marketing efforts, especially at the start.
Using these six strategies you will absolutely see list growth without the need to dump money into ads or pay for any kind of promotions.
Pick one, or three of these strategies and execute them consistently and the results will come. Do not give up before the fruit is ready to bear.
Now, if you want to learn how to write emails that turn these subscribers into raving fans and paying customers, then click here to read my article where you will discover just how to do that.
And if you want me to send you marketing ideas that require no capital to grow your business, then subscribe to my ‘No Capital Big Business Newsletter’ by clicking here. (You see what I did there? 😉)
Also, I’d like to know, do you have a list-building strategy that I didn’t share here?
Comment below or send me a DM on Twitter telling me about it @Adrian_markets
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