9 Things Not To Do When Building An Email List From Scratch


Youtube video transcript

So building an email list in today’s internet age is probably a waste of your time. So the other day I was having a conversation with my colleague and the idea of a newsletter came up and I was very pro newsletter. Whereas he thought, is it really worth our time? So if you watch today’s video, we’re gonna be talking about that.

And I’m hoping to convince you to start your email list today. Before it’s too late. Hi, my name’s Phil. And welcome to my channel. As you can see, I’m in slightly different surroundings today. So I’m actually on location with my colleague. We’re actually batch filming a lot of content for our new YouTube channel that went up last month.

And so this is basically my channel where I document my journey building on online income and showing you all. Mistakes I make. And also some of the successes, if that’s something you’re interested in, don’t forget to subscribe. And also if you have any questions, always leave me a comment, cuz I have lots of time to get back to you.

Okay guys, let’s get into it. Okay. First of all, I just wanna say that my first ever foray into an email list, I managed to make about $15,000 in my first year. And it was purely through this email list. The old saying is the money’s in the list. And now I really think that’s true. However, I think a lot of people make mistakes when it comes to building a list.

And I just wanna talk about some of those mistakes. So the first mistake that a lot of people make is they get their lovely little lead magnet. They give that to their subscribers. They get their email and they start selling them emails. But in fact, this can be illegal. You need to make sure that when you get your email from your user.

Even though you’ve given them the lead Magda or some sort of service, you need to make sure that you have the permission to then send them emails, because it’s not as simple as that. So this is where things like double opt-ins on your email lists, come in. If you get yourself a good email provider for sending emails, this is all taken care of for you, but it’s really something that I’ve seen.

A lot of people make mistakes. So don’t assume just because someone’s given your, given you, them, their email, that you can automatically send them as many emails as you want. There are some pretty strict rules about spamming and you want to make sure you are on the right side of them. The other big mistake that I think a lot of people make is that they have a lead magnet, they collect their email and then nothing.

And then suddenly when you have a product about a month later, you send an email to that subscriber, hoping that they’re gonna buy your product, but after a month they’re like, who is this guy? Why are they even sending me an email? That’s really cold traffic. So the point I’m trying to make is. When you have a subscriber, you’ve gotta keep them warm.

You’ve got to be sending them information relevant content. That’s gonna keep them involved and basically to know who you are, because if you just get an email from giving someone a lead magnet and months, or even weeks later, you suddenly send them an email out of the. They’re not going to convert.

And it’s pretty much a waste of your time. I was talking to a guy recently who said, basically he’d paid for a lot of these leads through some sort of service and then never followed up. So he wasted all that money for nothing. Another big mistake that a lot of people make is once they have, even if they’ve done double opt in, once they’ve got the new subscriber, they send them an email just to you.

Double check. They want to be on the list. It’s like an automatic email and then nothing. What you should really do is that first contact with them. The first email, even if it’s just for them to say yes, I would like to be on the list. That’s where you’ve gotta introduce who you are. You’ve got to make an impact straight away.

So this is what I used to do. I used to, in that first email, introduce who I was and tell them a little bit about my website or if it’s your YouTube channel or whatever it might be. And then you’ve got that. You haven’t wasted that opportu. That first contact. You’ve got to come out, run out of those gates and really make a connection with that person because 99% of your competition isn’t doing that.

They’re just sending out these automated emails that people just delete. The other mistake that a lot of people make, and I would put myself in this group as well for some of my websites at the moment, is just waiting too. Now you need to have an email list to send emails about your product.

But if you wait until your product is ready, then you have to collect all your emails. So you should be doing it now, as they say, the best time to collect emails was yesterday. If you are in that CA in that boat where you haven’t got an email list at the moment, then make sure you start now.

Even if you don’t even have a product planned. It’s better to have the email list, ready to go, and keep it warm. And then when you do have something to recommend or something to sell, you are ready to go. When I was talking to Michael about this idea for our newsletter for our YouTube channel, the iOS grind, which is all about teaching an English exam.

I said to him that I want the newsletter to be the most valuable thing. I don’t want people just to sign up. To it. And, they don’t really get any useful, content out of it. I wanted the newsletter to be the best possible thing. I wanted it to almost be a product in itself. So you don’t sign up to the newsletter in order to be notified about other things, the newsletter is where the value is, and this is what I recommend to you.

If you produce really useful content, whatever your niche might be, then people are going to want to open up those emails. And that means that later down the road, you’re gonna get conversions that are just crazy. So make sure that you are not just sending out a newsletter, which is your latest post or your latest YouTube videos.

Think about what. The user might want, think about your own journey. If it’s a niche like a hobby niche, if it’s a service, think about the needs of the user and just really provide excellent value. And that means that people will keep opening your emails. They keep subscribing to your newsletter, your email list, and you’re not going to lose.

The other thing I would say is that it’s okay to delete people. Some depend on the provider that you have for your emails, but many of them actually charge you by how many people are subscribed. Even some of them will. They charge you if that person’s unsubscribed. So what you’ve got to do from time to time is go through your email list.

And call them. You’ve got to delete people. If someone hasn’t opened your last two emails, then they’re not gonna open anymore emails. So from time to time, go through your email list and delete people that are not opening your emails. It’s better to have a hundred people that are big fans and really dedicated to your brand.

Then a hundred thousand people that never open an. So the other thing I think that we’re gonna do with our newsletter is to try and keep it evergreen. So we were talking about this idea in our niche, probably people don’t subscribe to the YouTube channel or the newsletter for more than three to six months.

So we were planning to come up with about a year’s worth of content for the email list and. Make sure that it’s evergreen, that it’s always relevant, that it doesn’t depend on, when they receive it. That means that if someone joins our email list today, they’re gonna get exactly the same content.

Although it’s very useful as a person that joins in six months. So this is what I would recommend. If you can do it for your niche, try and make it as evergreen as possible and come up with a drip campaign. So everyone receives the same email, no matter when they join the email list. And as long as you are confident in how valuable your content is.

You know how useful the newsletter is or whatever, then you can do that with no problem. So there are lots and lots of different email providers out there for doing this for building a list and also for sending out emails. So if you’re starting out and you want a free service, I’ve used a MailChimp, which As far as I remember, they allow you to have about a thousand or 2000 contacts without having to pay any money.

I can double check that I haven’t used them in about six months, but they were pretty good. Although they’re not very good with internet marketers and affiliate marketers, I should say. So if you are sending a lot of affiliate links, MailChimp is probably not the right way to go. So at the moment for our newsletter, for the arts grind, we’re using send in blue.

So the only thing with Isonce you get set up, you have to have at least 11 contacts before they will validate your account. So just be aware of that. So if you already have a list of 11 people, you can just import those, or you might have to wait for 11 people to sign up to the list. I think sendin blue is pretty good.

They have a lot of the functionality that you might get with other providers, but they’re a lot cheaper, so you can check out It’s sending blue.com. So there’ll be a link in the description, but you just go over and have a look at them. Don’t worry. It’s not an affiliate link or anything. I don’t think they have an affiliate program if they do.

Yeah. It’s just a normal link. So to go check that out. So the other thing is how often should you emails? I think it really depends. You don’t want to be sending emails every day. I think that’s a little bit too much. What I plan to do is we’re gonna send an email about once a week and we’re gonna make sure that the content is in our niche.

It’s more lessons and practice. So that should be valuable for about a week. Give the user enough information to be working with for about a week. You probably could get away with once a month, but the thing is you don’t want the people to forget about you. So you’ve got to find a way to provide value, but also.

In a way that people want to, when they see your email coming in the Ebo inbox, they’re like, wow. Yeah. Okay. I gotta open this. If you don’t know anything about building email lists or how to do email marketing, then I can really recommend the Income School Project 24 membership, cuz they have a course all about email marketing.

I had a look through it. I’m a little bit more familiar. With email marketing, then other types of internet marketing. But I had to look through it and I thought it was very useful. And I think for a beginner it’s gonna tell you everything you need to know. So if you are a member of Project 24, just like me, go check out that course, it’s really useful, and it will help you get all this set up.

If you’re not a member of Project 24, and you want to know a little bit more about it, you can look at someone. My other videos, where I talk about. Progress with this course. And you can also check out the link in the description, which will take you to a webinar that explains everything about Project 24.

I’ve been a member for about 11 months now, and I could not recommend it more. Okay guys thanks for watching. And I will see everyone next week. If this was the first time watching me and you like what, don’t forget to subscribe.

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