LOCAL MARKET MONOPOLY EPISODE 80
8 Creative Ways for Small Businesses to Grow Their Email List
Podcast by Clarence Fisher
grow your email list

About This Episode

We're all aware of the fundamental role email marketing plays in the success of businesses, whether they're flourishing enterprises or budding start-ups.

But the question is, are you fully exploiting its capabilities to enhance your business growth?

Are you actively pursuing out-of-the-box strategies to extend your email list, reach out to a broader audience, and create more meaningful connections?

In this episode, we will reveal strategies that are highly effective in increasing the number of subscribers on your email list.

These strategies are guaranteed to take your email list to new heights.

We're exploring a variety of subjects, starting with the magic of lead magnets – understanding what makes a lead magnet compelling and irresistible. We delve into the strategy of offering discounts and incentives, discussing how these can act as powerful motivators for customers to join your email list but are not necessary.

Next, we turn our focus toward the utilization of social media platforms. We dissect how to leverage these channels to expand your reach, engage your audience, and encourage them to subscribe to your email list.

And, of course, we cannot overlook the potential of QR codes. We will discuss their growing popularity and how to use them creatively to get people to sign up for your emails.

A crucial part of our conversation revolves around the importance of providing value to your audience. This isn't just about amassing email addresses; it's about building relationships and trust with your audience.

We'll share tips on creating content that resonates with your target audience, ultimately encouraging them to join your list.

So, if you're ready to elevate your email list growth strategy, listen now away, and let's hit the ground running!

Disclaimer: The transcription below is provided for your convenience. Please excuse any mistakes that the automated service made in translation.

Clarence Fisher: Have you subscribed to the Local Market Monopoly newsletter yet? Each week you get one actionable digital marketing tip delivered straight to your inbox. Designed specifically for small businesses like you who want to increase their market share and grow their online presence. Each tip focuses on strategies for growing your online reputation, increasing your company's reach, and improving sales and referrals without wasting money on ineffective tactics. Sign up now at localmarketmonopoly.com and start receiving our best of the best strategies immediately.
Hey, welcome back to Local Market Monopoly. It's Clarence Fisher, your host, and today it's episode 80, and I'm going to give you eight creative ways. Can we do eight creative ways for you to grow your email list. Don't go anywhere. We'll be right back.

Intro: You're listening to Local Market Monopoly with Clarence Fisher, uncovering the tools, tactics and strategies the most successful small businesses use to die their local market and own the block.

Clarence Fisher: And we're back. Hey, it's Clarence and I should have to tell you that you do need to grow your email list unless you know this, right before I get into it, I got to tell you though, it's been a crazy, crazy morning. This morning. I woke up and had some coffee, let the dog out, kind of walked, let the dog go, do the dog thing in the morning as I'm sipping my coffee and I'm thinking, I'm, I'm so grateful. Thank you. So grateful for it today. Thank you both. The dog and I walked back into the house and after my cup of coffee, I'm like, Hey, let's do this. Let's, let's get into it. I'm jumping. I'm going to record this podcast super early today. This is what it's is happening. Going to get my research done. Open the laptop, tumbleweeds, crickets, nothing. Internet down, man down, man down. It's an emergency. I hit the button, AK and running the bedroom. My wife is the techie, she's, she's the tech person when it comes to all of this. And I'm like, Hey, look, need you to get up. I can't sit here for an hour before you wake up. What do we need to do? There's no internet. And she does what it people do. What tech people do. They say, did you reboot your computer?
Oh, please tell me that. That's not it. So rebooted the computer and steal cricket. So we're going back and forth. She props up and we're going back and forth on whatever, whatever. And she's got a meeting to get to finally, and nothing's happening. I call, we do how they do the test over the, well, actually, what was really cool is they had a bot that when I went to their website, they knew where I was at, who I was. I don't know if this was creepy. The bot was like, how was your coffee? And I was like, fine. Can we test my modem? And Sure, sure, no problem. So tested my modem, tested my modem. The bot said, Hey, your modem's good. I don't know what else it is, bro. You may. It may be your router. So I'm thinking, okay, very cool.
I'll take that. So then I call and I get a person. The person runs the test. The person says, your modem's healthy. It's your router. Okay. Long story short, I'm like, send somebody out here. We pay for people to be able to come out here, real people whenever we need it. I'm calling that card, send that person out. They're not going to be able to get out here for two hours. So I jump in the car, I'm running to Best Buy. I'm like, I'm going to replace this router, get to Best Buy. They don't open till 10:00 AM. What the heck? Best Buy. I guess I could have just looked and checked, but I'm running and I probably should have slowed down cause it's like this could turn into a couple of hundred more dollars. I didn't think about that. As I'm going down the street, all I can think about is my wife has a meeting.
I need to get this podcast done. We have things to do. So I'm going down the street and I'm also thinking, I know you're thinking this too. It's like, why is my whole life upended? Because there's no internet. We kid about the kids freaking out because there's no internet. I am a grown man freaking out because there's no internet. Anyway, Best Buy didn't get a call from the tech. The tech's like, Hey, I'm headed to your house an hour early. I'm like, what? Okay, let's both, you're going to beat me there by a few minutes. So he gets here, I get here and he says, you know what? It's the modem. I'm like, what do you mean? It's the modem? We tested that three or four times by your people. And he said, well, they can ping things, but they can't. I checked this ethernet cable.
I physically checked this and there's no internet. So he replaced the modem. And now we have, now here I am recording this for you. Long, long, long story short, I'm so sorry. We still need real people because AI tell me what was wrong. The bot didn't tell me what's wrong. Actually, a real person answered the phone, but I'm sure all that person did was said, Hey, AI, ping their stuff and tell me if it's real. And AI said it's real. I'd be like, it's still working. And she said, everything's still working, sir. It took a man to come out and actually look at it and physically make the change. I love AI, but if you have, you're on a plan, hopefully you're on a plan, you have a business, I'm sure you're on a plan. Have people come out okay, off my soap box that had nothing to do with email list.
You know what? You can't grow an email list without internet. So here are eight creative ways for you to grow your email list. You got to make it easy for people to sign up, number one. Number one, decide that you're going to grow your email list and make it easy for people to sign up. And when I say easy, you need places all over your website as if you have a blog for sure. On the sidebar, you want to have a graphic that is offering something for them to sign up for. Hopefully you have some type of report or something of value, not just any report, something of value, something that is going to push them along the timeline, along their path to using your service. What does a person need in order? If they're going to sign up for your service or hire you, what's something that they're going to have to do anyway?
Some information they're going to have to have, give that to them and help them. Give them something that's actually going to help them before they hire you and let them sign up for that. Now, once you have that, it needs to be on the sidebar on that blog post. It should be at the end of the blog post, an invitation, a call to action in the middle of the blog post call to action. It should be on your homepage. It should be when I walk into your office is, is that on the stall? Is it in the waiting room? All of these, you have to make it super, super easy for them to sign up. And also along this path of making it easy. You don't need 30 fields. You don't need them to fill out every single thing. If you don't need the social security number, don't ask for the social security number.
Ask for only what you need to get them to the next step. And a lot of people say, I need the phone number. I need the size of the business. I need, I need, I need, I'll put it like this. Every single field, additional field that you add beyond the email address reduces the conversion rate. Now, used to be years ago, people only asked for the email address. Well, now people really like to have some type of personal personalization, so it's becoming really common to at least ask for the name, the name and email address. But I promise you, anything after that you need to absolutely need before you ask for it. If you have to have the phone number, ask for it, but just make sure you need it and understand that fewer people are going to fill it out.
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All right, so another way is, of course, on social media that report or that valuable thing promoted on social media. Ask people and return for their email address. You will give that to them.
Now, this would require setting up a page. You could do it another way, but I would say set up a dedicated page on your website that is dedicated to giving away that report and send people to that from social media. And then of course, you want to put this in all of your, this could actually be a PS on your posts. If you're posting on LinkedIn, it could be, Hey, if you like this information, you're going to love this. Just go here. And then you can have dedicated posts and dedicated ads. Of course, on social media, pitch your newsletter, which is what we're doing right now, our newsletter. It is just like localmarketmonopoly.com. Our newsletter is saying Sign up. And then every single week, we're going to send you one actionable hyper-local marketing, digital marketing tip straight to your inbox. And that's really it on that particular newsletter, Tulsa Internet Marketing.
We're giving away a report. So you could just pitch your newsletter. If your newsletter is giving them, you're promising to kind of walk them down the path in your newsletter each week, you can do that. Another way is QR codes. It's so crazy. QR codes have been out for so long. I remember when they first came out, man, how many years ago this? We were doing zany bands, and I was like, Hey, this new thing, QR codes, we can put this into what they call bounce back. So when you ship something out, you typically put some type of offer in the package to bounce them back to your website to buy more or buy something else. So I'm like, Hey, let's use these QR codes. And hardly anybody was using them except for techy people like me. But it's come a long way. Now, more and more people are using QR codes.
So you can definitely put QR codes on your brochures so that people can sign up on your business card. We talked about birthday. What episode was that? Where we talking about the birthdays? It was episode 74 where we talked about simple birthday marketing ideas. In that I shared a simple business card that you can have to get people to sign up for your e-newsletter so that they can get something on their birthday, which can be some type of offer on their birthday. And on that little card is a QR code that you can use to get people to sign up. So that's one way. And you can offer an incentive. We've been talking about some type of incentive in order to gather their emails. You can give a discount code. When I've, I've kind of just gotten into shopping. I'm not a shopper as far as clothes and all that stuff.
I will sign up for a conference in a minute, but consumer type stuff, I'm not really a shopper, but the time came where my wife's like, bro, you need to start using some of your blow money to your clothes, money and all that stuff to get actual, get some clothes. I wear the same. I have the uniform. I wear the uniform every single day. It doesn't matter. But anyway, back to the discount code. I am realizing that a lot of these stores will give you a discount if you join their mailing list. Like I'm looking at this suit jacket or this pair of jeans, and if I sign up, I get an immediate 20%. Awesome. You can do that. Okay, so offer some type of incentive when you're speaking at places, you're speaking at an event, maybe it's a lunch and learn, ask for people's email address.
Put the slide up there asking for their email address so that you can send them a guide that you've shown throughout your presentation or something further that could help them further. Or even just the slides. I mean, that's something that I do a lot is, Hey, do you want the slides? No need to take all these notes. I'll send you the slides and I'll actually send you a walkthrough video along with those slides that can go in a little bit more in depth. With this, all you have to do is email this and I'll put the email up there. You can even put the QR code up there, but don't think you have to add any other value. You can just say, Hey, do you want the slides? Email us and say, presentation in the subject line and we'll send you the slides. No matter what you do, you want to thank your people right away.
As soon as they give you their information, you want an email that goes out that says, Hey, here's the information. Or you want an email to go out that says, Hey, thank you. You want to say thank you. And on a lot of email providers, now you can actually control the content that you want. So to reduce, unsubscribe and increase the chances that people are getting the content that they want, you want to make sure that you're number one, always offering high quality, relevant content. But when they click the unsubscribe button, it can also pull up to say, Hey, this may be too many emails from me. I would like to sign, jump on your monthly newsletter list, or just send me emails pertaining to the service that I have with you. I mean, now I know the system we use. You can opt out, you can opt out of email, but you'll still probably get texts or voice drops unless you opt, then you know, can reply stop on text.
But my point is, everything is separate. So now there's so many modes of communication that you need to opt out at every level, which I know can be irritating to some people. But some people, some people really like text. You can text me, but don't email me. And for me, I'm like, email me all you want, but don't text me. And then some people are like, pick up the phone, which are becoming fewer and fewer and fewer and fewer people. So if you think of some ways that you're using, are there any ways that you're using that we didn't cover today and you're making it easy for people to jump on your email list, shoot us an email at [email protected] or go to the website, hit the ask Clarence button, which is localmarketingmonopoly.com/ask, and let us know, know what you're using so that we can help other people who are in the audience listening. All righty, if this helps you or you know somebody, this can help, definitely pass it along. And I am going to see you on the next episode when we're going to share with you some tips on how to create actual emails. The emails that you're sending out. Create those to where they convert people from your list to new customers, clients, or patients. Okay, that's it today. I'll see you next episode where I'm going to keep helping you own your block.

Closing: We appreciate you to Local Market Monopoly. Be sure to rate, review and subscribe to the show and visit localmarketmonopoly.com for more resources that will help you dominate your local market and own the block.

Resources

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Episode 81: How to Write an Email That Converts – From the Subject Line to the CTA