Our email list is the lifeblood of our business because that’s who we get to sell to. But how do you grow your list? In this episode, I’m going to share with you three quick ideas that you can use right now to begin building and growing your list.

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Big Ideas

Create a Q&A document [2:29]

The first list building idea is a Q&A doc. Regardless of what market you’re in, I’m willing to bet that you have people who ask you questions about what it is that you do all the time. Am I right? For example, my area of expertise is helping business owners generate more recurring revenue with memberships. So, I get questions about membership sites all the time. I get questions from people who are just starting out and growing their memberships, or want to launch a membership.

I get questions from people who have audiences, and they are trying to think how does a membership fit with their course, or how do they differentiate it from the free content they’re putting out there? And I’ll have people who already have established membership sites, and they ask about retention and scaling. Inevitably, a lot of those questions are the same. So, our team took the top 10 questions that I get asked, answered them and compiled those answers into a PDF document with some examples and stories. This simple list builder has helped us welcome tens of thousands of people into our audience. And the key thing is that it didn’t take a lot of time, energy, and effort to put it together.

Create the Compilation of Ideas [5:32]

Number two, the compilation. I got this idea when I partnered with New York Times bestselling author, Michael Hyatt, years ago. He was coming out with a new program called 5 Days to Your Best Year Ever, and we were trying to think of ways to have and create a list builder that we could use ahead of time to build an audience of people that would be perfectly suited for the offer.

One of the things Michael did is, he asked about 30 different people one question, “What’s one thing that you do at the end of the year to prepare for the new year?” He asked them to respond via text, a voice message, a video, whatever is easiest. When all of those responses came back, he compiled them, and he found that there were essentially eight common themes. So he just put them into a PDF document, and that became the list builder that we used to generate over 40,000 plus the first year that we rolled that out.

We replicated the same thing when we created the list builder that you can find at MembershipTips.com. I asked successful membership site owners, “What’s the one strategy that has proven this year to be the most effective in helping you grow your membership?” I got a whole bunch of different answers from people in all kinds of markets, compiled them, and put them together in the list builder.

Hold a Live Event, and Utilize the Recording [08:10]

The third list building idea came from my good friend, Thembi Bheka. Thembi was gracious enough to deliver a presentation for a membership site that we started with our charity called the Audience Builder Academy. And the whole purpose of the Audience Builder Academy is to help people grow their audience. One of the things that Thembi talked about was how she has used a live one-day event to become a massive list builder for her.

Essentially, you gather five to six people who are all going to be talking on a particular topic, and then you have one day where you are delivering that live. So, it’s like a free live event, and it’s a way for you to build your list from that live event. But it gets better! After that live event is finished, you compile the information from the event, and you can continue to use it as a list builder by giving people access to the recordings.

Again, notice how this is something that you can put together pretty quickly. We have to grow our list all the time but we have to be intentional about how we grow that list. I’ve just given you three great ideas that you can use to hit the ground running to be able to quickly create high-value list builders that your audience wants and which allows you to begin developing that relationship with them.

Memorable Quote

“The most important thing you can do before the launch is to continuously build your list and nurture that list.” – Stu McLaren

Resources

GetTribeGuide.com
MembershipTips.com
5 Days to Your Best Year Ever
Audience Builder Academy

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