When you own an email list, you have the simplest high-margin business known to man.
This week I’m walking you through a series of emails I’m calling the "Beginner’s Guide to Growing An Email List".
- If you’ve been wanting to get started building your own online business as a solopreneur, but haven’t been quite sure exactly what your first steps should be – an email list is the best option and you won’t want to miss this.
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If you’ve already started building an email list – you’ll learn how to scale up and grow more quickly.
Now whenever I write about starting an email list I invariably get some variation of this very valid question:
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"I was wondering if these emails will cover how to build an email list even if you don’t ‘feel’ like an expert in the domains of your own life?"
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The answer is very simple – yet many people refuse to believe it – you absolutely do NOT need to be an expert to start an email list.
Being an expert is a bonus, cherry-on-top type of experience that most entrepreneurs will NEVER, EVER enjoy and that should give you comfort.
In fact, being a true expert can actually hold you back in some ways. (Example: If you’re so good at what you do, it can be hard to shift gears into selling yourself with your copywriting, but this is a topic for a different time).
Now, what I wrote above probably doesn’t help you much – beliefs are difficult are change.
Here’s what I’d like to do instead of explaining all the reasons why there’s really no good reason you have to be an expert at anything to start an email list…
I’m going to show you an example of a Landing Page that’s live right now, growing an email list for a friend of mine.
I’ll explain why this Landing Page works to gather email addresses and explore one very easy way to alter this page if you still feel like it screams "expert" (which in my opinion, it doesn’t).
Before I do that, I can’t resist sharing one little lesson.
I will be going over picking topics that will help you start an email list in this series – but first and foremost – an email list should never be about YOU and your credentials.
When you start an email list you should be solving other people’s problems (OPP’s).
(You can use credentials if you have them as a form of "proof" which I’ll discuss in a moment – but it’s 100% not required.)
If you’re thinking something like, "But I’m not an expert on this topic" before you’ve even started writing the copy for your Landing Page or getting people on the email list, you have chosen the wrong topic.
Actually, more accurately – you need to read the rest of this email series to understand how you’ll be getting people onto an email list.
Note: You might work in an industry or niche or have an idea for email list that makes all of this "expert" talk nonsense. Hang with me for a moment because we’re about to look at an example of a Landing Page and I think you’ll find it inspiring (you can start using pages like these to grow your list faster – not just from scratch).
Here’s An Example Of A Landing Page That’s Building An Email List And Doesn’t Require An Expert
This Landing Page was built by Ian Stanley and I’ve chosen it for a few reasons.
- It’s dead simple and Ian is using it to add about 50 small business owners (it might be more now) per day to his email list.
- Ian is an email copywriter – which I know is a title a lot of people on my email list have had or would like to have. How do you start an email list as a copywriter? Here’s an example to look at.
- As I mentioned yesterday, I’m promoting a list building system this week – it’s Ian’s product and it’s called the List Snowball. Ian has helped build 4 different 7 figure businesses (in non-marketing niches like water filters, gardening, and credit repair) using the List Snowball system, with Landing Pages that look just like this page.
Now, I want you to study this Landing Page and tell me if you think the person writing it (Ian) *has to be* an expert based on the copy.
My answer would be: "No".
But maybe you think that these two lines point to an expert being involved:
"People who use this email report higher open rates, extra sales, and (maybe most importantly) better deliverability for their entire list."
"There’s one thing that increases deliverability above all else *in my experience* and this email ensures you do it."
These 2 lines are what I’d call "proof" elements.
There’s a "claim" in the headline that the 6 hour template will increase sales and deliverability.
You support a claim with proof – the proof here is the reports people are making and the simple "in my experience" line.
If you didn’t feel like you were expert enough to use proof like this, here’s what I’d recommend:
(I’m typing all of this assuming that you’re a good entrepreneur – which means that you figure out what problems people have, and you ACTUALLY learn how to solve them. In other words, you’re not just making things up – you’re telling the truth but you just lack the credentials or feelings of being an expert.)
So if you wanted to add proof you can add what’s called 3rd party proof.
You can use stats, claims, headlines, data, etc that another "expert" or authority figure has reported.
So you’d write something like, "Hubspot reports that people who use this email have higher open rates…"
You can and should lean on other people’s proof (like Hubspot in my example) if you feel like it’s necessary.
But what I’m really saying is, all this talk of having to be an expert to start an email list is completely blown out of proportion in many people’s minds.
Again, I know you’ll probably need more examples of email list topics to put your mind at ease.
So what I’ve arranged to do for you is a webinar presentation with Ian Stanley himself.
On Thursday at 12noon Pacific – Ian and I are going to discuss How to Grow Your Email List with the "List Snowball" Method.
If you’re even slightly curious about email lists work and especially if you’d like to know how Ian scales them up quickly, you won’t want to miss this.
>>> Register for the webinar here
You know me – and many of you know Ian. Our webinars are non-traditional and very light on "sales" of any kind. I try to extract as much knowledge out of Ian’s brain as I possibly can. And Ian delivers on that while he makes us all laugh (he’s a standup comedian as well as one of the world’s best email copywriters).
These calls are always fun and informative so you should register and join us right now.
Tomorrow I’m going to continue this series and discuss how to get traffic – how to get people to signup to your email list if you’re starting from absolute zero (no social media or real business contacts to lean on).
Interestingly, tomorrow’s email will show you another subtle reason why "being an expert" is unnecessary too.
Talk to you tomorrow!
– Derek
P.S. Like I said yesterday, all this week I’m going to do my absolute best to give away as much free advice on growing email lists as possible. However if you do want to go deeper, I’ll be promoting Ian’s list building system called the List Snowball.
For those interested, I’ll be giving away 2 bonus mini courses that add-on to the List Snowball method and I’ll probably explain those tomorrow.