List Building Challenge #5

So, in our last issue, we established that building a dedicated squeeze page for your lead magnet is going to help you build your list more efficiently. We’re talking 30%-50% opt-in rates versus single digits, typically.

But, of course, for this to work, we have to get traffic to our landing page to begin with. Otherwise, it’d be like suckin’ wind. 😉

A lead magnet squeeze page is like an island unto itself. It won’t have any top nav menu. No sidebar. No links to social media profiles. At most, it will have the typical boring links to your privacy policy and terms of service in the footer. At the top, it might have your logo. Also, most of the time, you would hide this squeeze page from your top blog navigation menu. You don’t HAVE to. You may want to try including it there. But, often these squeeze pages will just sit there and the only traffic it will get will be when you specifically link to it.

So, where might you use this thing?

Well, I could give you a bunch of ideas today. However, this whole list building challenge is about specificity. I don’t want to give you a ton to do all at once… otherwise it is more likely you won’t do it.

So, today, let’s just talk one simple strategy. We’ll get into others coming up in the following issues (so stay tuned).

Here’s the simplified version…

Email your lead magnet landing page to your general list.

Now, I think this may require a little bit of background.

See, a well setup email list is going to have multiple points of entry. Each point of entry will be another lead magnet. Regardless of where on your site they come in, all leads who want the same lead magnet will be put onto a special marketing campaign specific to that lead magnet. That campaign will include a pre-written series of emails on that particular topic.

Ya with me so far? (If we were on a live call right now, I’d be able to wait for your answer and help as needed, but we can’t here. So, just feel free to hit reply and ask if there’s a problem).

OK, so at the outset, you’ll have people coming into your email list, each one going through their own little series of emails depending on the lead magnet they subscribed for.

After they receive the last email of that sequence, they’re just a typical subscriber. They are now on your “general list”.

Your general list is simply the set of subscribers on your list which are not currently receiving any pre-written marketing campaign. In other words, they’re not currently receiving any kind of front-end sales sequence.

For these people on your general list, you would typically send them new stuff to keep them engaged. A lot of bloggers like to send newsletters or just new blog posts as they’re published.

But, something much more strategic?

Send them an invitation to download one of your free lead magnets which they haven’t already gotten.

It’s simple. You write up a teaser email to offer up your free download. Your call to action is to send them to the landing page for that lead magnet. Then, you send that email to your general list, EXEMPTING anybody who opted in via that lead magnet.

You might ask… why send them to the landing page to opt in again if they’re already on your list?

Because you want INTENTION. You want them to actually raise their hands and take an action to show they want that lead magnet. This can’t be an impulse click from their inbox. Trust me… have them opt-in again.

Then, when they do so, they’re now ENGAGED again. And they’ll receive whatever email series you have behind that lead magnet. And, depending on your setup, you might even make a sale. 🙂

The whole point here is to utilize this landing page for the purposes of RE-ENGAGING your existing email subscribers.

Will this strategy build your list? Perhaps not seeing as you’re emailing to existing subscribers. But, will it keep them engaged? Will it make sales? You bet.

Plus, it will help alleviate that question of “what do I send to my subscribers?” when you don’t know what to do with them after the automated stuff is over.

So, your mission for today…

1. Write up a teaser email to invite existing subscribers to opt-in for another one of your lead magnets.
2. Send it out to your general list, being sure to exempt subscribers who already got it.

Of course, this strategy will actually make you money if you have your campaigns set up accordingly. But, that’s beyond today’s scope. To get into how exactly to set up all your followup campaigns and what to say to your subscribers, I’ll refer you over to our training inside The LAB: The Email Marketing Engine.

You got this.

See ya next time, where we’ll talk about another way to build your list. And it works like gangbusters.

– David