Despite being a massive, and very important subject, essentially email list building boils down and begins with just two essential things: An offer and an opt-in.

Building An Email List Begins With Just Two Essential Elements

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With regard to developing your online presence and sharing your worth online, one of the key components, and this has always been the case and always will be the case, is to build an email list. My wife loves lists. I find Post-it notes all over the house, little notes with various lists on them. She just loves to check things off. And she’s a very organised person. I’ve got to admit, I’m more of a kind of scribble on whatever scrap of paper is at hand type man, which is not always the best way to stay organised, admittedly.

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But I do have one list that I do my best really to take great care to cultivate. And that’s my email list of subscribers in the various kind of arenas that I operate in, in the online ecosystem. Email is remains the lion of the tribe. It’s where the most engagement and the most kind of sales are driven to and through is by email. And as social media can be very seductive because you can rack up large numbers potentially. But really building your base on social media is a bit like squatting on someone else’s property at any moment that landlord or landlady can just come and evict you without notice and without any explanation whatsoever.

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An email list, on the other hand, is something that you own. The people of who the people who have legitimately shared their permission and details with you have done so willingly and within the bounds of whatever honest agreement you’ve made when they chose to share their details. And you must be clear, you don’t want to sell someone on one thing and then spam them for the rest of their life. Be honest, be open, bring people into your world in a very authentic way.

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But really, this building is not a mystery. Generally it is. It begins with an exchange, you know, much like a purchase. But this time the currency that you are asking them to give you is permission. You know, you can offer an enticement and many people do an invitation to make a decision and progress the relationship through some kind of micro commitment, you know, some kind of offer, some kind of maybe free information or engagement in a webinar or something along those lines.

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It could even be a small investment, a small purchase that then leads them kind of deeper into the conversation that you want to open up. And like most realms of expertise. This building has its own language. Landing pages lead captures lead magnet’s or reader magnets, opt ins, pop ups, subscribers, auto responders, funnels. It can actually be like a little overwhelming if it’s the first time you’re stepping into it. But essentially, despite being an enormous subject and and a very important one and a key one, when it comes to online marketing and online communication, it boils down to just two things an offer and an opt in.

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That’s where it begins. That’s where the the step is taken for someone to choose to share their details with you. You know, and an offer can be anything from an invitation to receive updates from your blog, you know, very almost a passive offer to an entire online course or a coaching call or discovery call of some kind, you know, about the offer that you present really must be fitted to the market that you’re selling to and also lead them further down the road that you plan to take them on.

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You know, don’t don’t pivot so dramatically from that first interaction to something entirely unrelated or there’ll be a disconnect there, you know, and of course, all traffic and subscribers are not created equal. So it’s often worthwhile considering not just the quantity of people coming onto your list, but the quality of people. You know, for example, you could run a big competition for someone to win a free iPad, but it’s not necessarily that kind of offer is not necessarily going to bring you the people that you are looking to know and be known by.

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You know, it’ll certainly bring a lot of people who want free iPads, but most likely only a small percentage of them will be keen to continue the conversation beyond that initial transaction. So making your offer relevant, valuable and visible to your target audience is. Is really key here, relevant and valuable specifically to the people you want to bring through the front door and who will potentially be interested to continue the journey further inside your kingdom in a visible because an offer is never is not presented to an offer not presented to a prospect is really pointless.

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You can have the greatest offer on the table, but if no one sees it, you know, it’s going to be very difficult. So those are really the two elements, the offer that you make available and visible and then an opt in some kind of exchange that is a win win for you both. And and it’s here really that social media and other platforms can play a very important part. They act as this wide net that you can spread your net out and go fishing in to kind of channel people toward your people and channel the people who you want to engage with further into your world and to and to bring them to this kind of front doorstep, this offer, this opt in that you want to to give them, you know.

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But and so the aim here, even on social media, is not just a leak or a comment, but it’s that they would click through to the page where you ask for their name and email. And once the once that information, once that invitation is accepted and that information is given to you, that’s where the relationship begins. You know, in a noisy marketplace, it’s it’s so easy to be drowned out by the deluge that pours into someone’s inbox.

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So really carefully craft your message to speak directly to your prospects and let your let that unique voice and flavour of what you bring to the table. Let that really saturate every communication that you make and construct pathways that Lee a value and relevance and sincerely seek to share things of worth with your audience, you know, because once someone is on a on your list, you’ve got an opportunity to carry them from the threshold of your house all the way through to the sanctuary.

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You know, even but even here, I understand that, as I say, we’re talking in terms of relationship. It’s not just sell, sell, sell. You don’t you don’t propose marriage on the first date. You know, they they won’t care what you say, you know, until they know that you care, really. And so let that let that pathway open up in a very kind of. And what I’m not saying that never sell.

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I’m not saying never be forthright in your communication. I’m just saying be aware that you are actually you’re not contacting an email address. You are speaking to a person. And so, you know, what about you? Are you building an email list? Why do you want to build an email list? If you jump over to the blog, there’s a corresponding blog post. Building an email list begins with just two essential elements. Let me know in the comments what what you’re doing and what your plan is to begin building your list, because we all begin with zero subscribers.

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Sometimes that can be very intimidating. Sometimes that can be a client. Quite discouraging place to begin. But everyone’s list started there. And as you begin to add value and consider the different things that you could offer people to bring them into the conversation, you can start to build. And unlike those subscribe that you’ll begin to build those numbers. But even more important, not just the wide net, but the depth of the relationship and the connexion that you can begin to engage with, with the people that you kind of are seeking to touch, seeking to help, seeking to build, bless and benefit.

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Well, thanks for listening. Hopefully it’s been an encouragement to you today. If you want to connect any further, you can do so through my website at David Lee. Martin dot com. Have a great day.