Many experts focus intensely on creating their courses and programs, yet overlook the crucial need to build an audience who will actually buy from them.
In this episode of Influence by Design, Samantha chats with Ellen Finkelstein on how to build an engaged email list to help your business thrive.
Your “list” is a list of people you can legally reach out to, and Ellen emphasizes the value of building your email list.She shares how synergistic partnerships, “freebie swaps,” and consistency have significantly helped in growing her own list and how these have been instrumental in nurturing business relationships over time.
She also highlights the importance of being selective in ensuring that you only share valuable and relevant content with your audience. She shares how her “newsletter style” allows her to promote multiple partners in every email she sends, providing massive value to her audience. Ellen also tackles ideal email frequency, overcoming worries about “bothering” people, and effective ways to build trust and engagement.
Tune in as Samantha and Ellen discuss the necessity of consistently building your audience hand-in-hand while growing your business. Their insightful tips and strategies will lay the foundation for success and help you expand your reach.
IN THIS EPISODE YOU’LL DISCOVER:
- Understanding the monetary value of building your list (01:19)
- What it means to have a list of people you can legally email (07:19)
- How to grow your list through partnerships or freebie swaps (10:16)
- How to find people to partner with (15:21)
- Managing the balance between sending out other people’s promotions and your own content (18:47)
- Discover the secret to engaging your audience consistently without being overwhelming (24:00)
- The number one tip to create engaging emails that people actually want to read (26:33)
- Tips to effectively nurture your list (31:45)
QUOTES:
- “You develop this trust and relationship and then by the time your course is ready, they’re ready to buy because you’ve built up this trust with them.” – Ellen Finkelstein
- “As experts, we need to understand that our expertise and the actual business part are two separate things.” – Samantha Riley
- “Understanding that our solutions are welcomed by those with the problem can foster a significant mindset shift.” – Samantha Riley
- “You really cannot grow your list, and by extension, your business, without partnering.” – Ellen Finkelstein
- “A big mistake people make is they don’t email until they have an offer.” – Ellen Finkelstein
RESOURCES
10 Techniques For Better Results
WHERE TO FIND ELLEN FINKELSTEIN
- Website: https://www.ellenfinkelstein.com/
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ellenfinkelstein
- YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/c/EllenFinkelstein
- Facebook group: https://www.facebook.com/groups/ChangetheWorldMarketing
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ABOUT ELLEN FINKELSTEIN
Ellen Finkelstein teaches online entrepreneurs how to get their knowledge out to the world including how they can maximize their income with email marketing.
During her 20+ years online, Ellen has successfully created and sold dozens of online products and courses. She uses her experience to help others turn their knowledge into online products so they can transform others.
Ellen has become well-known for her contrarian and wildly successful email newsletter formula, which she uses to partner with other online entrepreneurs, rank highly on affiliate leaderboards, and gain clients for her coaching and training products.
TRANSCRIPTION
(This transcription is AI-generated and may contain inaccuracies.)
Ellen Finkelstein 0:00
I think that the value of the email list, when you have your course ready or your program ready, you have a group of people, you have an audience that you can email and say, Here, this is what I want, you could make an offer to them, they’re ready for it.
Samantha Riley 0:15
What are some techniques to grow that list, a lot of people in my audience are challenged right now and struggling to grow their list. So let’s dive into some of the things that you can do.
Samantha Riley 00:35
Welcome to the Influence By Design Podcast. I’m Samantha Riley, authority positioning strategist for coaches and experts. If you’re ready to build a business that gives you more than just a caffeine addiction, and you dream of making more money, having more time, and having the freedom to be living your best life, then you’re in the right place, it’s time to level up.
So welcome to the show, Ellen, I’m really looking forward to having this conversation with you today about email marketing, because one of the things that I see as being a problem with a lot of experts is that they’re really, really good at what they do. And they get really excited about building their courses, putting their programs together, and they spend a lot of time doing that, then it gets to the point of launch, and they don’t have an audience. Is that something that you see as well? Yes,
Ellen Finkelstein 1:19
I see that a lot. And it’s because they love it the knowledge they have, they want to get it out to the world, they want to help people. And they are focused on that knowledge. And very often they’re not business people, or they don’t like marketing, or they don’t know anything about marketing. And so when they had that there, then it’s like, well, what do I do now? I remember speaking to a client who did a course on creating an online course, you know, that was what it was about. And at the end that I said, well now send it to your list, and he went weightless. And he told me he paid $5,000 for this course. And it just was like, half the equation really?
Samantha Riley 1:59
Oh, ouch. So a lot of people when they think audience, I feel that they think social media audience, because for some reason, they don’t put sort of list and audience together in that same bucket. So where are people start in building their list, because, you know, a lot of people may know that they need a list, or they’ve got a small list. But when you’re going to launch, you know, launching to your you know, your mom, your five best friends isn’t kind of can’t get you very far. So what are some of the techniques or some of the things we need to think about when really building our list.
Ellen Finkelstein 2:44
So just to make it clear, if people don’t know that, what you are, and I are talking about lists, we’re talking about an email list, or a list of subscribers to subscribe that people who you can legally email. And you’re right that the email list is different from your social media list. I think that word audience sometimes people also think about people sitting in an audience, when you’re speaking, that’s another audience, right? You might speak on podcast or in your live and in some conference, or whatever it might be. So I think that the value of the list, the email list, there’s several things about it, but you wanted to know how tostart. And the way you start is by offering something for free and promoting that. So it’s called lead gen, I call it a freebie. I like that word better. But you promote this freebie, and you can promote it on social media. And, um, I hope gonna talk a little bit about partnering as well, you can have partners promoted for you. And you build up this list of people who are interested in what you have to offer, or else they wouldn’t have signed up to get your freebie. So the value of this is that when you hang out, if you’ve built this up, when you have your course ready, or your program ready, you have a group of people, you have an audience that you can email and say, Here it is, this is what I want, you can make an offer to them. And you can and should have warmed up about what you were creating all over this period of time, it shouldn’t be something that they you know, was all of a sudden, and so they’re ready for it. And the thing is, is that you might people very often think okay, I’m going to create my course and then I’m going to build my list but it really should be the other way around or at the same time. Because when your courses ready you want to already not only have that list, but you want to have developed a relationship with them and nurtured them you want to have given them tips on whatever your your course your expertise is about so that they already know like and trust you that you have a relationship with them and that they they know your expertise. They have seen that you’re an expert in this. And so you develop this trusted relationship. And then by the time your course is ready, they’re ready to buy, because you’ve built up this trust with them. And so they’re just all doing that at the same time. And it’s hard sometimes for experts like that, because they’re not necessarily business people, it’s like, they’re kind of going into an area that’s a little uncomfortable with them, they feel like they don’t want to promote and so on like that. And I just feel that with through email, you can be giving people knowledge, you can be educating people. And that when it’s time to make your offer, that becomes not promotion, it becomes something of value or resource that you’re giving them. And then, you know, not everyone’s going to buy, of course, but then people who were ready are going to say thank you for making this offer. The first time this happened to me, somebody said, thank you for offering this. And it’s like such an amazing experience. But that comes when you’ve developed that relationship, and you know, your audience, and there are some people who want it. And so they really appreciate that you do that. And this is something that you developed over time.
Samantha Riley 6:13
I love that you say that. Because really, as experts, we need to understand that our expertise and the actual business part are two separate things. And I think a lot of people kind of get them in mesh and confused. And some people can get really funny about offering. But when we realize that we’re really solving a problem. And the person who has the problem is very grateful for us to make the offer, it can help to really change that shift. But before we dive into that, I wanted to go back because there’s something you skipped on really, really quickly. And I want to go back and talk about and that you said our list is something that we can legally email. And I want to cover this because I’m sure we’ve all got emails before that are people that haven’t quite followed the rules, can you just cover off very quickly what you mean by people that we can legally email.
Ellen Finkelstein 7:19
So there are laws and and you’re an Australian, I’m in the United States. And I guess there might be slightly different there and in the in Europe and so on like that. But basically, in most places, there are laws that say you can’t spam people, you can’t email people who haven’t given you permission to email them. Now this that’s different when you’re doing a one on one. But for bulk email, when you have a list and you’re emailing the whole list at the same time, you have to have permission from them. And the way you get permission is by them filling out a form saying I want this really big. And making it really clear, often it’s underneath, sometimes in small print that may be a little too small. But it should also say, you know, by signing up for this, you’ll also get my newsletter or whatever you want to call it. And you know, I like to say because I email every day, including my daily hot tip. So they know that they’re getting a daily email. And, and that is what it’s about. And there’s some general little thing, but it’s just a sentence there. And it’s usually with the text that says you know, we won’t share your information, like that kind of thing. And the laws are different different places, some places more strict, but basically, you’re giving people permission to email them. And so besides getting spam, there are other little tricks that people are doing. I get, for example, sometimes these emails saying thank you for signing up for this webinar was like What? No, you say you should never buy a list. For example, you should only get people on your list by having this opt in forms called an opt in form on your website or some however you create web pages and having people fill out that opt in form to give you permission to send the email. Yeah,
Samantha Riley 8:57
I just wanted to cover that off really quickly. Because, you know, I have heard other people saying or even recommending, oh, we’ve already got this group of people that you know, just add them all to your CRM. And I wanted to cover off that we’re saying don’t do that, that people do need to give permission to be on that list. Right.
Ellen Finkelstein 9:18
And I have a client who has had a plan of counseling practice for a long time, and she had a lot of friends and so on like that. What she did was she put them on a list, added them and sent one email to them saying I would kind of like, can I put you on my list? Yeah. And then if they said no, she took them off, you know, so it was like a one time thing. And some people she just asked individually, she said individual emails out to them. So I’m like that. So yes, you need permission. And the other thing is the people you know, or not the people you might want them on your list, but you need to get people you don’t know on your list. You need to expand your audience past the people. Well, that you already know, ma’am,
Samantha Riley 10:01
and your five friends that are very excited for you. Yeah, absolutely. So you’ve talked a little bit about what our list is about how to create it legally. What are some techniques to grow that list because most of my audience know that they need a list, most of my audience have a list. But a lot of people in my audience are challenged right now and struggling to grow their list. So let’s dive into some of the things that you can do. You’ve talked about the freebie. But I know that partnerships are a huge way that you grow your list. I’ve seen a lot of people in different communities that you and I know each other, and all of them mention your name when we talk about partnerships. So can you talk a little bit about partnering to grow your list,
Ellen Finkelstein 10:50
I in fact, I just did a Facebook Live, I think, a week ago about getting over the hump of your first partnership, because it’s this is another sort of hump that people have difficulty with, especially promoting somebody else to their list. But you really cannot grow your list. And by extension, your business without partnering. And now there are certain kinds of businesses that can work that way. So like Coaches and Consultants might be able to grow their list through referrals and networking. But in the end, most people need to use email. And in order to grow your email list, there are there are ways you can post on social media and little ad for your through your freebie, whether it’s paid or not paid. But you don’t lead to enough people that way. So imagine if if you and I partner and we both have a freebie, and I tell my list, which is 10,000 people, you have to get Samantha Riley’s freebie, it’s wonderful. And I keep on promoting it until I feel like I’ve gotten you know, maybe I’ve gotten 200 clicks, and maybe half of them signed up. So you have another 100 people on your list. And imagine doing something like that once a week, let’s say. And so this, this regular partnering with people, we call this a freebie swap. And I’m actually starting a new venture of just about freebie swaps to help people grow their list because it’s just so powerful. And it’s so easy. So you never promote something that you don’t believe in that you don’t support, and you never promote anything that’s not relevant to your audience. Okay, so you find people who have the same target market, like you and I do, for example, but who offering something a little bit different. And you say here, I have this resource view. And again, it’s not promoting is again that the same thing, even for something free, there are people who are saying, No, I don’t want to promote anything. But your audience will say, thank you for giving us this resource, especially if they really liked that title. And it might lead you know, you might have an upsell, and you might eventually sell something. And I might use an affiliate link to get a commission. But just by offering that freebie, it could be a PDF, it could be a webinar, or it could be a video. And it can be different types of formats. But if if it’s relevant to my audience, and it’s good, my people are going to appreciate it. And so I don’t mind I do this, like every single day promoting other people. Because my audience finds it valuable and it is valuable. I know it’s valuable. I only promote people who I know who I white trust and that kind of thing. And so it’s just a really simple thing. All I have to do is send out an email recommending this. And then they send out an email recommending me. And the thing that’s so powerful about it is when you post on social media, for example, the Pete those people don’t know who you are. So what’s what we call cold leads, you know, it’s just they see it, and they don’t know who you are. And the conversion rate is very low because they don’t know who you are. But if instead, somebody recommends you, says Samantha Wiley is the cat’s meow, you know, she has this, I really recommend this, then the people who come to you, or what we call warm leads that it’s a recommendation or referral just like a coach or a consultant might get a referral or something like that. And so people come already feeling like this is trustworthy, you’re transferring the trust that I’ve built up trust with my list. And if I recommend you, I’m transferring that trust to you and so people are more likely to trust it to sign up. Yeah,
Samantha Riley 14:46
and that’s why it’s really important to make sure that you know that person very well. You mentioned earlier, only promote freebies from people that you know, or that are aligned with your values, that’s really important because you are transferring that trust. Now, I’d love to know how you got started, because I know what your emails look like now. And we’re going to touch on that a little bit in a minute. But how did you get started? How did you find these people to promote right at the beginning?
Ellen Finkelstein 15:21
So it wasn’t like at the beginning, I just found a whole bunch of people to promote. So what’s happened over time? Yeah. And as you mentioned, you and I are in a mastermind together. So that’s a community where I can find people, and then other people recommend other people, you know, somebody will will give me an introduction, say, This person might be a good fit, I did something like that. Today, I made an introduction between two people that I thought that they would be able to help each other. So I try to actively make partnerships, it’s sort of like somebody could go out on a date, you know, I recommend the scriptures to other
Samantha Riley 15:57
you’re a Matchmaker, matchmaker,
Ellen Finkelstein 15:58
thank you. And other people do the same thing. But there are other ways as well. So I participate in, let’s say, giveaways, or I promote launches. And so So giveaways and summits are a good place to find partners, because you see who’s there who’s participating in it. And you know, those people are trying to grow their business. That’s why they’re in the giveaway. That’s why they’re in the summit. So you can then approach them, and have a Zoom meeting with them and find out if it would be a good match. And finally, once you get to the point where you’re doing well, promoting other people, there’s this thing called a leaderboard. And when people are, are promoting a launch or a product, whatever it is, they sometimes publish the list of their affiliates, and they send it out to all the affiliates because they’re trying to like build the new competitive juices this so that we, you know, we want to do the best that we can. And so when people see that I do well on leaderboards, then they come to me and they say, Well, would you promote me? Because I see you did well, for somebody else. It’s just like a public statement. Well, not public, but from among those affiliates, people look for other partners there. So giveaways, Samad podcast, guests, if you have a podcast, you’re subscribed, you can see who the other guests might be if the topic is right. You know, these are places that you can find partners, and over time, it’s done worth by, by referrals, you know, we were talking about girls, and people just recommend me, you know, I recommend somebody else.
Samantha Riley 17:42
And and you did mention that we know each other from a mastermind. And I think I feel that masterminds are the very best place to start. You know, when you’re in a mastermind, most people are in that, they’ve got similar values, because they’ve been attracted to that mastermind, because they’ve got similar values. They’re normally in a similar place in their business. Generally, there’s not a mastermind that I’ve ever joined, where I haven’t trusted that other people in that group. Again, because we’re kind of attracted. And I find that that’s the easiest place to start. What I want to ask, though, next is a question that I get a lot. And I know, this is something that you have navigated really well. And I get a lot of people asking me, How do I still kind of send out my emails and promote other people? How do I balance sending out other people’s emails and my own emails? So
Ellen Finkelstein 18:47
it’s a really good question. And a lot of it depends on how often you’re emailing. So if you’re only emailing once a week, you don’t have that many opportunities to promote other people. And at some point, you want to promote something of yours. And you’re going to want to create like a campaign where you’re emailing more often than that, you know, you don’t want to do it. Let’s say, if you have a campaign of five emails, you don’t want to do it over five weeks. So during that time, you would promote more often. So what I do, I’ll tell you what I do, but it isn’t the only way to do it. And in fact, it’s not what most people do, but it’s been very successful for me. That is that I, I have many offers in every single email. It’s sometimes called a newsletter style, that would be a name. And a lot of the top people will only put one call to action, one topic in an email with the idea that you get higher conversion rate. And it’s true that if you focus on one thing, you get more people clicking on that thing, then you have to send more emails and you’re eventually your calendar gets booked up and you just don’t have time for for that many partnerships. And so what I’ve found is that by having I have a table of contents at the top of my email, and by so having more To put things to offer, because I do that every day, I can promote more often than other people. And so I promote, like, now I’m running a conference called Advanced Email Marketing Conference. And it’s at the top of my email, after my story, I have a story. So I’m like that, but, but it’s the first item. And so it’s been that way for weeks, you know, I just every day for weeks, it’s at the top, but then I have other items about other people. And sometimes I do put my stuff below, people ad promoting, if it’s an urgent thing, you know, whatever. And so that way, I have room to promote multiple people in every email and myself at the same time. So if and, again, when I first started doing this, and I didn’t make it up, you know, it’s, it’s not like I mitigate it up, I saw somebody else do it. I’ve seen a few people do it, even though it’s not typical. When I first started doing it, I thought felt a little strange, like I’m just, you know, offer after offer after offer after offer. And then people emailed me back and said, Thank you for making all of these resources available to us. And I that was when my you know, I kind of had this switch in my mind that offers, if they’re relevant to your audience, and they’re good offers or resources, you don’t have to think of them as being salesy. And it also depends on the tone that you use. So I use an educational, not that I don’t ever use an exclamation point, but But I tried to educate people about why something is valuable at the same time. And so they feel, even if they just read through the resources and don’t do anything, they’re going to learn something. And so they again, start to trust me and learn from me, and, and they’re willing to, eventually willing, hopefully, to click something. So that’s how I balance it, I have multiple things in each email. So if you don’t want to do that, then you’re just going to have to kind of alternate and probably email a little bit more often. Because if you’re building an online course, and let’s say it takes you three months to create your course, which is not that long of a time compared to you know what some people spend. So what are you going to be emailing your list about for the though that three months, you have to give them something now, you should be giving them tips and kind of educating them about what you’re writing your course about. So like, as I said, you know, when you’ve put it out there ready to buy, but you should also be offering them other things, you’re just keeping them engaged and keeping them learning and keeping them a building that trust and so on like that. So when your expertise, so you can you can just be doing offers pretty much all the time. And I don’t think it it really interferes with offering your own things. But if you want when you’re ready for your own thing, you can just focus on on that. But you still need to be email. So a big mistake people make is they don’t email until they have an offer.
Samantha Riley 22:57
And it’s a that was my very next
Ellen Finkelstein 23:00
question. It’s the worst sack leader. Oh, it’s the worst thing. Yeah. Because then all you’re doing is promoting that people see that it’s like nothing, nothing, nothing here by this. And so if instead, you’re promoting other people, you’re giving them tips, I have a tip. And every single one of my emails you’re doing, you’re just keeping on doing that all the time. Consistency is really important for people to trust you. So that regular email, even when you’re not promoting your own thing is really important.
Samantha Riley 23:31
100% Now, you mentioned that you were emailing your list daily. Have you always been emailing your list daily? Can you tell us how you came to the conclusion that daily was great for your list? And also how you got over the hump of I don’t want to bother my audience? Because I’m sure you hear people saying that all the time.
Ellen Finkelstein 24:00
Yeah, yeah. So I’ve just answered that last piece versus is that if what you offer is valuable, then you’re not bothering them. And so you have to make sure that every email has valuable information for it. And the offer that you’re let’s say you’re promoting somebody else, you know, if I’m promoting your freebie, that’s something of value. So So you just want to make sure that you’re giving people value all the time. Why started once a week, and I started blogging a lot. And so every week I would send out I would blog and I would send out a link to the blog. And then the affiliate marketing piece of it. The partnering piece of it happened very slowly over time, as I became more known and, you know, joined networking groups, whether it’s a mastermind or whatever it might be. And so then I had things I had relationships with people I had a reputation in the field. I do want to say that like I have another business around PowerPoint and it’s a corporate Listen, I would never email them every day because it’s just they don’t want to put up with it. So, you know, I’m helping people make money with their, you know, their online courses with our online businesses with email it, you know, that kind of online marketing because it’s about marketing, it works. But it doesn’t work for corporate trainers, they were just my main audience with my other list. So it depends on your audience. But if you can find, and this is your job to find, if you can find valuable things to take safe people, as often as you can do that, you should email them as you know, as long as they’ll put up with it, and some people won’t put up with it, you know, and that’s okay, you just lose them. It’s
Samantha Riley 25:44
totally, and, you know, going back on that a lot of people say, I don’t want to email, you know, don’t want to bother people, I could never email my list every day. There are multiple emails that I get in my inbox from other experts every day that I actually wait for and read every day because they have so much value. So I think that the the piece, the two really important pieces that you mentioned, is one know your audience and what it is that they like, but number two always come from the lens of how do I add value to my audience? What do they need? How can I help them. And
Ellen Finkelstein 26:33
there is a technique of being just engaging and interesting. So for me, a lot of that has to do with storytelling. And I have a technique that I call micro stories, where I start at the beginning with a little micro story, which is about usually about something I experienced in the last day, I joke that all my emails start with the word yesterday, because it’s about what I did yesterday or something, some little thing. And then I connected to business, it’s all I always make the connection to their online business and what little it’s like the moral of the story, that’s, that’s, you know, and then set the end of the story I’ll say, and in your business, you know, and then it’s related to that. And so people open it just for the little stories. They’re kind of cute or funny, or whatever silly kinds of things. I try to find some little interesting tidbit and even if you it’s funny, because I always thought I had such a boring life and, and then I discovered that anything can be interesting, you know. So like, yesterday, I wrote a story about, I was looking for the cover of a pot that I had made. And I couldn’t find it for days. And I asked my husband about it, he didn’t know where it was. And then like a few minutes later, I looked. And there it was in it right in front of my eyes at the top of the stove. And I had used it as like a saucer I had we had a freeze. No, we’re on the different hemisphere, we’re going into winter. So we had a freeze, and I took some tomatoes and from my garden, and I used it as a saucer to put like next on the window so that they could ripen. And because I was using it as a saucer I didn’t. It was in front of me all the time. I didn’t recognize it as the cover. I was like blinded and like totally blind. It was crazy. You know, it’s like not knowing where your glasses are in there on your face. And so and then I connected that to you know, sometimes we’re blind to, you know, what we’re doing, you know, maybe we’re working on something that’s, you know, we’re spending time on something that’s not working or, you know, we’re we’re not really seeing what our customers want or you know, that kind of thing, how we can be blind to things because there’s sort of so close to us. So it was so so is it really an interesting story that I couldn’t find the cover of my pot, even though it was in front of me. No, it’s not, you don’t need an interesting interesting out of this funny little thing and then connected to business.
Samantha Riley 28:57
Totally, I had a mentor years ago, you know, when you very first come into the space of creating content, it can be quite daunting. I find it really easy now. But right at the beginning, you know, I was in traditional business and moving into online space, there’s a lot of things you have to learn. And one of the challenges he gave us was exactly that every day, tell a story and then link it yes to your topic, but and it helped me so much. Yes, and doing exactly what you’re doing. Because it helps you to a be able to tell really good stories, but be always, you know, what’s the metaphor or what’s the learning helps you to start to think and see things in a different way. So, you know, I love that you do that. And people do also think that they have boring lives and like to find some fun through your stories.
Ellen Finkelstein 29:55
Yeah, absolutely. I actually teach this as a technique. In one of my courses that it takes, I find that it takes about two or three weeks of doing it every day for you to be able to pick up some little thing that happened in your life, and then connect it to whatever your topic is. And it’s a great as you said, it’s a really great skill to have, because then you always have something to write. So people often say, I don’t know what to say, in my emails. And once you have this skill, you always have something to write.
Samantha Riley 30:25
Yeah, yeah, just shines a light on it. So you talked a lot about bringing people into your audience so that when you do do a launch that you’ve got an audience of people to sell to, but not everyone that joins your list is always ready to buy. And in actual fact, it’s more people on your list are not ready to buy than are ready to buy unfortunately. Yeah, I think that, unfortunately, how do you how do you solve that? Or how do you use your list to keep those people in your world until they are ready to buy, there was I can’t remember who to attribute this to. But there is an email marketer that says you have to keep continue to market to your email list till they’re either ready to buy or they die. Which sounds terrible, right. But you know, I think the idea of it is really valuable to keep in mind. So can you tell us a little bit about you know, how to nurture our list? And, you know, I guess I’ve just given away why you would need to want want to do that. But what can you tell us about nurturing your list? Yeah,
Ellen Finkelstein 31:45
so I want to start with the why and why that’s so valuable. Exactly. So when people find out about you, they might hear about your course, maybe they see a post on social media, or maybe they come to your website, because they searched for something or a friend told them about whatever it is, but a lot of people are not, either they’re not ready to buy, or they don’t trust you enough, yet, they just are not going to make a major purchase on the first first time they see what you have to offer. So by getting them on an email list, by offering that freebie you have a chance to, to build a relationship with them until they’re ready to buy a zoom saying or maybe until maybe until they. So I mean, I you know, I think you can get rid of people on your list who are just really not engaged at all, you know, there’s a thing called calling your list of people who haven’t, you know, clicked or opened your email for a year or two, and you should probably take them off, because there are people who will never buy, I think, but the point is, is that it’s such an amazing ability to have this long term relationship with people that you can’t get anywhere else, you really can’t. I mean, you can come maybe close in on, let’s say, like a Facebook group or something like that, but it’s not the same. Because when people get your email, it’s like, you know, you’re emailing to them, and they read it in a, you know, at a when they’re alone. And it’s like a personal letter to that person that says, you know, dears, Samantha, and so on like that. So it’s much more personal. And it’s over a long period of time. And you can also offer them different levels of things. So, you know, maybe they’re not ready for your big course, or your big coaching prospect thing, but they might be ready for something else. And you can use those smaller courses to get them ready. So if you are teaching people how to create an online course, they might not be ready for that. But you can teach people how to organize their content, for example, and create a table of contents. So you can teach people what you know, whatever it might be, or teach people how to create an email list. So so whatever it is, that fact that you had them there over a long period of time is so incredibly valuable, because you have that long term relationship. And there’s really nothing else exactly like that.
Samantha Riley 34:03
i Great. Now, you’ve mentioned value, or we’ve mentioned value, a lot of giving value to our audience, and you’ve got a free resource around techniques to get better results in your emails. Can you tell us a little bit about why people would want to, you know, download this free resource, who’s it for and what will they learn?
Ellen Finkelstein 34:30
So it has kind of two purposes. One is that you just you want to get engagement from your from your subscribers, and there are things that you can do to get more engagement and more clicks and more people to open. And so some of those techniques are just for that. So that’s when you’re promoting your own things. You want to engage your audience to respond to what you have to offer. On the other side when you’re promoting other people. You really want to get more clicks as well because when you Doing well for that other person, that person will be hopefully motivated to do well for you and to promote you back. And again, that’s, that’s how you grow your list. That’s how you get these referrals. And so it’s important for you to get good results. And again, that’s basically you know, in people being engaged, opening and clicking not only through your own content, but for other people as well that you’re promoting.
Samantha Riley 35:26
You can get a copy of that free resource, the 10 techniques for better results from your emails, so that you get more engagements opens and clicks by just scrolling down and whatever app that you’re listening to now, or heading over to influence by design podcast.com, click on that, and definitely get a copy of Ellen’s free resource. Because really having a list, this is something I’ve learned from selling businesses before having a list is so valuable. It’s, you know, it’s great to have an audience on social media. But having an email list is just next level. You
Ellen Finkelstein 36:02
know, one thing that you met that we could talk about that I don’t know if you’ve heard, but a lot of people have had their Facebook accounts canceled on them. Because
Samantha Riley 36:11
it was, Oh, my goodness, yeah, Manny was hacked, and
Ellen Finkelstein 36:15
then somebody else misused it. And so then you get caught for violating the terms of service of Facebook, and then they take away your account from you. And so one nice thing about the email list is you own it. I do recommend that whichever service you use, you download that list and store it somewhere online so that you have it in case, you know, they go down or whatever. But it’s yours. You don’t you it’s an asset of your business that you own, unlike social media.
Samantha Riley 36:46
100%. And actually, it was it was really interesting, because I did hear the other day of someone having their their email list hacked. And it had reminded me Oh, my goodness, we do need to download that CSV file. And but yes, and back that up. It’s something that I had actually forgotten to do for a while. And you know,
Ellen Finkelstein 37:07
I heard the same thing a few days ago when I was doing it. I had my assistant do it once a month, and I went Nope. Now it’s once a week. Now it’s once a week because it changes every day.
Samantha Riley 37:17
Hmm, totally. Ellen, it’s been an absolute pleasure to chat with you. You’ve given us so much value and helped us to understand so much around, you know how to not just grow the list, but how to keep your list engaged. If there was one little theme that you want to leave our listeners with today? What would that be?
Ellen Finkelstein 37:49
I think it’s just this idea of building your audience while you’re building your products at the same time, that you can’t just focus on one thing. And then expect to build a business on that you have to have an audience and build an audience as you’re building the content, whatever content you’re creating. And once you start building that audience, you have to be consistent and stay in touch with them. Even if your content isn’t ready, you can ignore them for six months and then start promoting so just that’s part of your business. It’s part of building your businesses is emailing people whatever you choose, and once a week or once a day or twice a week or whatever you do, whatever it is, consistency of giving value to those people and giving value is not only the tips and the stories that you tell, but resources for other people who then will bring you new people onto your list.
Samantha Riley 38:33
That is absolute gold, you’ve dropped so much value but there was a huge value bomb that you dropped. Thanks so much Elon for joining me today.
Ellen Finkelstein 38:41
Thanks for having me. It was enjoyable. Thanks for joining me
Thanks for joining me for this episode of the Influence By Design podcast. If you want more head over to influencebydesignpodcast.com for the show notes and links to today’s gifts and sponsors. And if you’re looking to connect with other experts who are growing and scaling their business to join us in the coaches, thought leaders, and changemakers community on Facebook, the links are waiting for you over at influencebydesignpodcast.com
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