How to Start and Grow Your Email List

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Kim DeGracia, owner of Copy with Kim, is a launch copywriter for functional medicine providers. She helps launch courses and programs through research-driven copy. As a copywriter, she writes sales pages, sales email sequences and other content. In this episode, Kim talks about how to write copy that converts, tips for growing your email list and combating the blinking-cursor syndrome.

Why Functional Medicine?

There are so many different industries copywriters have the opportunity to write about. But functional medicine is something Kim has been passionate about since she was young. As a teenager, Kim was constantly getting sick, and relying on medicine. But thankfully, a functional medicine provider coupled with lifestyle changes inevitably are what helped her most. So she wanted to give back to the functional medicine community by providing her writing talents to this industry.

How to Start and Grow Your Email List

How Do You Start an Email List?

When you’re starting an email list, you first want to think about why you want to create an email list in the first place. What’s the overall goal? Is it to launch a course? Share a service that you provide? Or provide value through a monthly newsletter? Once you have that big-picture goal in mind, your next step is to create a welcome sequence.

When you’re first starting out, Kim suggests starting with your immediate circle of family and friends. Tell them about what your doing and why you’re creating an email list.

Five steps to create a welcome series email sequence:

1. Create a lead magnet: this is opt-in or freebie that you provide to a potential subscriber. Some examples of this can include: 25+ ways to style mom jeans, 5 recipes with 5 ingredients etc. The freebie should be in relation to your niche. The potential subscriber would give you their name and email to get that freebie, which then adds their email to your email list.
2. Welcome email: once the subscriber has downloaded your lead magnet, you want to introduce yourself to your new subscriber. So you can provide five facts about yourself, include pictures/videos or any other information you want to show your new friend. Then include a call-to-action, such as follow you on social media or check out your podcast. The purpose of this email is to give the subscriber another way to connect with you outside email.
3. Connection email: the third email Kim suggests sending to your new subscriber is a connection email. This is where you show empathy towards him or her like share a personal story about how you started your business or a podcast episode where you share a personal story.
4. Reminder email: this email is to remind your subscriber about your lead magnet. That’s what got the subscriber into your email list in the first place. Ask them if they were able to check it out? Were they able to get any quick wins from it? Or do they have any feedback about the opt-in?
5. Share offer: this can be a paid offer like a course that you provide or a free service like a podcast or other valuable content you provide to your audience.

How to Grow Your Subscriber List?

Now that you have your welcome sequence setup, how do you then start to steadily grow your email list?

You don’t want to just share your lead magnet at the launch of your email list, and then never share it again. Ideally you want to share it at least weekly with your audience. There are several ways you can do this:

1. Social media stories
2. At the end of your blog posts
3. Include on your landing page or website

Another tactic to grow you email list is to expand your visibility. So this may include:

1. Speaking at summits or conferences related to your industry
2. Being a guest on podcasts
3. Doing a freebie swap – share your freebie with another creator who will then share your freebie with their audience and then you share that creator’s freebie with your audience.
4. Paid ads – Kim doesn’t normally recommend this when you’re first starting your email list. However, if you feel like you’ve capped out your audience and you’re wanting to get new people, that’s a great way to do that as well.

Tips for Crafting Emails that Resonate with Your Audience

After you send your welcome sequence to your audience, it can be a struggle to come up with compelling content to send. You want to continually send emails that convert and nurture your audience with helpful information. Even Kim says she has blinking-cursor syndrome from time to time.

Here are Kim’s tips to keep those emails coming to your audience:

1. Each email you send should have one goal. We talked about how you have to have one big goal in mind when you’re starting your email list and strategy. However, each email should have a small goal you want the email to do. Some examples can include: promote a podcast episode, share good news about yourself or business or to sell your course.
2. Write down that goal first before you write the email. Then, come up with the call-to-action of the email. Once you have those two things written down, it gives you some context with what to write next.
3. Think about how you want your audience to feel when they read your email. Do you want them to feel motivated, inspired or simply to reflect? Then, with that emotion in mind, your writing should pull that emotion.
4. Write down when you felt that same emotion during your life. Then, you can include a story from your life when you specifically felt that emotion. Why did you feel that? Storytelling is a great way to build a connection with your audience.

Kim says you don’t need to write a long email with lots of words. You just need to provide value to your audience. For her email list, she typically sends out a monthly newsletter, rounding up helpful blog posts she’s read or podcasts she’s listened to during that month. She keeps all these in a her notes on her phone and includes them in an email to her audience.

To follow along with Kim, head to her website or Instagram for more copywriting tips and email marketing strategy.

What’s a helpful tip to help grow an email list that you have? Let us know in the comments below!