5 Ways to Organically Grow Your Email List

BY MICHELLE KNIGHT

PREFER TO WATCH, INSTEAD OF READ? I’VE GOT YOU BOO.
SCROLL DOWN TO WATCH A QUICK VIDEO!

You absolutely need an email list if you are an online business owner, marketer and/or course creator.

However, the question always comes up on HOW to actually grow your email list. If you have no idea what I’m talking about, be sure to check out this blog post where I talk more about the list building process.

Let’s break down our options for list building.

Option #1 - Paid traffic. This looks like paid Facebook, Pinterest, Youtube, LinkedIn and Instagram ads. You can also through in Google Advertising if you’re feeling ambitious.

Option #2 - Purely Organic. Relying on social media (primarily) to drive free traffic to your email list.

Option #3 - A combination of both!

Personally, I love using paid ads to grow my list, but not all the time. In fact, 6 months out of the year I turn off my ads and test organic (free) strategies. Organic list building STILL WORKS and if you’re just starting out it might be your only option.

I’m sharing 5 of my favorite ways to organically grow your list (+ 2 additional tips in the video below). Skip straight to the video to watch all seven right now!

1. USING INSTAGRAM STORIES TO GROW YOUR EMAIL LIST

500 million people a day are hanging out on IG Stories. I get it if you don’t love Instagram, I also have a love/hate relationship with the platform, but you can’t deny that it is an effective marketing tool for almost every single audience. The key is finding the right way to use Instagram and for me it’s all about Stories.

Make sure your consistently showing up for your community and work your freebie promotion into your content at least 2-3 times a week. I create specific images in Canva that I can post or sometimes I’ll make a video talking about the free give. To expand your reach outside of your existing community be sure to use hashtags and tagging specific locations. This allows your content to be seen by people not in your network.

P.S. Don’t allow the lack of the swipe up feature to keep you stuck. I don’t have the swipe up feature and my promotion still works like a charm. Just be super clear that you want them to grab their freebie with the link in your bio.

2. USING YOUR WEBSITE TO GROW YOUR EMAIL LIST

Using your website and more specifically a pop up on your website is an amazing strategy. As your social media game expands and you harness resources like SEO and Pinterest you’re going to notice your traffic is increasing - the last thing you want to do is lose those possible leads. A pop is an immediate way to give a free gift to your community and in return get their name and email address to add to your list.

You can play with both a pop up that triggers when someone lands on your website (blog) or an exit-intent pop up which will trigger as they are about to leave. See which performs best for your audience and watch the subscribers come in.

3. CONTENT UPGRADES AND SEO TO GROW YOUR EMAIL LIST

Yes, I know we just chatted about websites, but we’re not done yet. I’m a big fan of using SEO, we started using it in the beginning of my business and as a result Google is our number one traffic provider to my website today. You’ll want to embrace blogging for this one and really focus on titles that are specific to your audience and what they are searching for. This will help drive more traffic to your website organically.

Then obviously, you followed step 2 above and have a pop up, but now we can increase your conversions with content upgrades. Content upgrades can be existing free offers or specific “next steps” you make for that blog post. I like to share my content upgrades as a banner, footer or even within the blog itself..

Example: If I’m writing a blog post on The Three Fundamentals of Creating a Strong Brand, within the blog I might have a call to action for them to watch my free masterclass where I’m sharing three must-know branding secrets.

4. USING GUEST FEATURES TO GROW YOUR EMAIL LIST

Getting featured on someone else’s platform is one of the coolest things you can do for your business because ultimately you’re increasing brand awareness. Let’s say I’m going on my friend Suzy’s podcast, well Suzy’s audience already trusts her and they will trust me by default.

Now how do you use it to grow your email list? Always have a link to your freebie ready to rock and roll. Often times they will ask you what you want to promote and rather than promote a paid service, to people who kind of know you, I suggest offering your freebie. The goal is to build a relationship with them and your email list is a great place to do just that.

5. COLLABORATIONS TO GROW YOUR EMAIL LIST

In the beginning, I did this all the time and it worked like a charm. You can either choose to be part of someone else’s collaboration or get a group of friends together to start your own. These can look like Summits, Interview Series, Bundled Giveaways, etc…

What happens with collaborations is that everyone participating shares the opportunity with their community, so it expands your reach a lot quicker than just relying on social media. You can either share all email addresses as a group, or have each member give a freebie that requires an opt in and it works the same way!

Ready for 2 more tips? I’m sharing the bonus tips in the video below. Just skip to minute 8:10 in the video!

Don’t forget to sign up for my branding masterclass where I’m sharing The Build a Better Brand Method. Get signed up at brandmerry.com/brandmasterclass.

Please share your biggest takeaways from this blog post and how you’re going to implement this information in your own business!

P.S. Are we connected on Instagram? No? Well lady what’s happening here we’ve got to fix that. Come hang out with me on my favorite social media platform. Follow for inspiration and send me a DM to know we’re connected.