10 ways to grow your email list in your online education business

Welcome to the Empowered Edupreneur Podcast. My name is Michelle Smit, and I am an ex-teacher turned online business coach for Edupreneurs, the owner of Digiteach and a six-figure entrepreneur. I am in love with empowering educators just like you to create freedom filled online businesses and lives they love.

If you are looking to up-level your skills, your finances, your mindset, and change the trajectory of your life as an educator and business, then you are in the right place. Think of this podcast as your weekly dose of business and mindset development to help unlock the infinite potential within. To play bigger with your life and go after your dreams.

We are going to have so much fun together. So thank you so much for pushing play today. Now let's dive in.

Hello, beautiful and welcome back to my podcast. I hope you are doing really, really well today. I hope you've had a great week, a productive week, and I'm coming to you pretty early this morning recording this episode for you. I had this weird feeling when I woke up that this podcast episode was going to be like a big task that I needed to do.

Like my brain was saying it's, you know, it's a big task for some reason. And so I was like, you know what? It's going to be the first thing I do in this day. So it's out of the way. Sometimes your brain just makes things a lot bigger than what it really is, because I actually love doing these episodes. But I just thought, you know what, how productive am I going to feel if it's like I wake up and it's the first thing I do?

And that's what I did. So I actually am still currently waking up. I've got my tea and I might sound a little bit sedated, but today I have a cool topic for this episode, and it's an important one. It's actually a really important one. I'm going to be talking to you about 10 ways to grow your email list in your online education business, okay?

Now, anyone who knows me, who's been in my internet world for a period of time knows that I'm a big fan of growing your email list and I kind of am a believer that your email list is probably your greatest asset in your business. And when I tell people that they're always quite, especially if you're new in business and stuff, people are often surprised.

And I often get a little bit of pushback around building an email list. And I get people saying, you know what? I don't really read emails. And I get so many emails that I just don't even read them. And I'm, I, I prefer just following people on social media and that's my kind of thing. And I, that's what I want to do in my business.

And like, I do understand to a certain extent that, and I'm not saying that social media isn't powerful, but. It is just proven time and time again, like in literal, if you research it online, that email marketing outperformed social media when it comes to generating revenue. And in my own experience in my business, that has been true forever for my entire business journey.

And I've been doing this for like five years now. Like if I look at a launch and I look at my revenue where, where people were buying from, like where the sales were coming in from, it's like 60 to 70% from my email list, okay? That's massive. That's like definitely most of the revenues coming from the email list.

And when I do launches and I do. You know, selling of products, I always look at my metrics through my email list. I don't really consider followers and things like that. I just look at my email list and I look at how many people bought, and I look at sales conversions like that, and I have UTM links that track where sales are coming from and it does just show email a lot of the time. 

So I'm not saying that people aren't going to buy your stuff from Instagram, that is for sure a possibility. But the other thing that I wanted to mention and why I'm such a big believer in building your email list is when, when you are just focusing on social media Facebook, Instagram, Tik-Tok, you actually don't own your followers, meaning you are very vulnerable. 

As a business you're very vulnerable because the company could go down for some unusual reason, something could happen and say, TikTok just tanks and you lose your profile, you lose all your followers, so that can happen. And also you are vulnerable to the algorithm changing, which happens like five times a day.

I feel like, you know, the algorithm of these things is always changing and so, you know, you could be creating content and then none of your content's showing to your people. New followers and then it really affects your business. Like if you're launching and something goes wrong with the algorithm and suddenly all this drama, it's just a lot of stress, okay? 

It's a lot of unnecessary stress and it's not, it's not a way to build a business. It's not a foundation for your business. You want to create security in your business, and for me, Building an email list is that security. It's, it's, it's very stable. It's a very slow burn. It's, it's like a very foundational thing of a business that improves the health of the business.

And you are you are in control of that whole thing, like your email list. You can just email them when you want. You, there's no like algorithm change of it. You can, and also it's, it's yours to own. So your email list isn't going to like disappear, nothing's going to happen to it. No algorithm's going to affect it.

And most of the revenue comes from the email list in my experience. So, I'm a big believer if you are not growing your email list in your online education business, I hope that this episode changes that for you and it inspires you to start list building and then you use your social media as tools in which to build your list.

Definitely create content on Instagram or wherever you're creating content and get in front of new humans, but then drive those humans to your list in some capacity. A follower is cool, but like a follower who goes to your website and opts into something on your website and becomes like a lead on your email list now that is cool.

That's a vibe and that's what I am really wanting you to start focusing on. So, if you are not building your list, let this be a reminder that I really urge you to start building your list. It's not that complicated. Yes, it's going to take you building out a very simple funnel upfront and building out some free piece of content. But, it's your business, right?

I feel like this is like the linchpin, this is like the crux of your business is your email list. So this is what this episode's about, and I'm going to be sharing 10 ways in which you can grow your list, okay? Some of these ways you might have heard other things might be new and may spark a bunch of ideas in your head for how you can go and grow your list.

And I do recommend finding ways in which work for you, because everyone's different. Everyone's got their different styles and you're going to have to test and you're going to have to see which style works for you. And also what's most effective. Maybe you do something and you realize it's not working, you have to do something else.

That's the way business works, right? You test, you see what happens, you adjust, you tweak, you refine, and you just do that over and over again until you start seeing results. Okay. So 10 ways to grow your email list. 

Now, the first way I'm going to be sharing with you is the most simple. Well, I wouldn't say it's the most simple, but it's the one that I would recommend doing at the beginning is creating a lead magnet, and that is otherwise known as an opt-in offer. And this is basically a valuable and relevant PDF of some sort. Or you can also do a workshop, like a pre-recorded training, but it's something that's valuable, that's relevant that you can give to your target customer or target audience. 

Rather, your ideal student avatar that you can give to them in exchange for their name and email address. Now, your lead magnet should be specific. It should solve a specific problem that your ideal avatar is dealing with. It should be something that they want. And I recommend creating something that's evergreen, so I don't recommend anything live for these kinds of things.

Do a pre-recorded training. You can do a guide, a blueprint, a cheat sheet, a checklist, something like that. And build out that piece of content. Make it valuable. Don't make it a million pages long, make it something that someone can consume relatively easily and get value from. Because even though they're not paying for it, they're still paying with their time.

And if it's too long, people aren't going to consume the offer and you don't want that. So that's a lead magnet. It's, it's really the first point of creating a piece of content in your, in your business that's with the entire goal of building your email list. That's the goal of the lead magnet.

It's not to make money, it's to build your list. And yeah, that is what you would need to do. And then you would just need to create a simple funnel where people can opt into that lead magnet, and that would include an opt-in page and a thank you page. And these pages don't need to be complicated. They need to be very clear.

They need to be focused on the desire and result or benefit of that lead magnet. And basically that's like the top of your funnel. You want to have a good headline on it to hook them in and show how this PDF and thing, whatever it is, is going to help your audience.

Okay? And then people opt in like that, and then you have a thank you page. And on that thank you page, you can do a bunch of various things. And then what you want to do is you want to put that that opt-in page, you know, in different areas of your website you want to create. Basically one of the main parts of your website is getting someone to opt-in to your list.

So make sure it's optimized for that, and you can put it on your link tree and Instagram or wherever. And your goal is to then create content and tell people to grab your guide. Okay? So that. Number one, that's what I recommend. Every business I believe should have at least one valuable lead magnet.

Maybe two, maybe three. Don't have too many because it gets confusing. But yeah, that's, that's step number one. And then I would say number two is maybe something that people miss, but it's optimizing your website for list building. So your website is really just, It should be a roadmap to build your list.

That's one of the most valuable things of having a website is it's basically just where you house your funnel that allows you to build your email list and eventually sell your products to those people on your email list. So you want to optimize your website, meaning that your website has very clear calls to action and opt-in forms in very prominent locations, and it's very user-friendly and it's.

For someone to land on your website and opt in, it must not be difficult. It must be like when they land on your website, there are calls to actions, there's buttons, there's things that they can opt into. Okay? Now another thing I want to mention is a lot of people are opt-ing into email lists and stuff on mobile.

So, when you are creating your website and your funnels and you're doing it on desktop, always remember to go and create, to go and mobile, optimize it. So it looks good on mobile. So that when someone's on their phone lying in bed and they land on your website or your opt-in page, if the design is all a mess and it's like just, you know, looks terrible, people aren't going to opt-in, it's going to put them off and they're going to leave.

So always check that your key pages that you want to be driving your traffic to are mobile optimized as well. So desktop optimized and mobile optimized. I've seen this happen a lot where someone's like, I don't know why no one's buying. No one's opt-ing into my freebie. And I'm like, cool. Send me your URL.

And then I open it up my phone and it's like a hot mess. Like it literally is like all the writings on top of each other. You can't even read what's going on. I'm like, well, that's why, because people are literally put off. So it's such a tiny thing to do that's so like that you can easily miss, and this is just something that I definitely recommend checking.

Number three is obviously using social media to grow your email list, whatever platform works for you. Instagram, TikTok, Facebook. Yeah, you get to decide what you prefer, and you can use social media. It can be very powerful in order to grow your email list. So this is like organic marketing.

This is where you are creating valuable content that is speaking to your ideal student avatar directly, very niche specific content where you're solving problems, you're adding value. And you start building like authority, followers, people start following you. People start connecting you to being like an expert in this area.

And then in that content, you want to be driving them, like having calls to action to drive them to your lead magnet, to your freebie of some sort. So, that's kind of how I view social media. I just view social media as a tool in which to grow my list. It's like the same as paid advertising in the sense that that's the tool to grow my list as well.

Except it's a free tool. You are, you can literally create content for free from. The only thing you're going to have to give is your time. So find some social media platform that works for you and really be structured in having calls to action. If you're creating content without calls to action, that's got to stop.

You want people to take some sort of action, whatever that looks like. Whether it's commenting on your stuff. Connecting with you via DM's. opt-ing into some freebie, whatever it may be. Okay. Whatever action you want them to take, make sure to tell them to take it on your social media and prioritize growing your list.

Okay? If you aren't having, if you've realized, oh, in the last month I haven't had a call to action promoting my lead magnet, this is your reminder to go and post your lead magnet on your stories and in your. Like on your grid and just, you know, tell people this is what you've got for them, this is how it can help them.

Like they can opt into it. You can also say I've got this free thing. If it is like I've got this free thing. It's super valuable. It's going to help you do X, Y, Z. Let me know if you want it. Drop a comment and I'll send you a. So, yeah, that's a, that's a very easy way to just promote. Your guide and build your list.

And then number four is hosting some type of webinar workshop type thing. Typically a free one, and it should be on a topic that is relevant to your, you know, ideal student avatar. Something that they want, something that you know they're interested in and something that's very connected to what you're trying to sell as well.

So if say you are, if you've got a course on like dog training, like you could host a webinar on like the three step method to train your dog. In X number of weeks, and then you want to promote your webinar workshop. You want to actively build hype around it, tell people that you're hosting this amazing thing, get people stoked, and have a opt-in page for it so that people can go and opt-in and sign up to your webinar.

And making sure that it's very attractive to your ideal avatar, the one that you'd like to offer something to later down the line. And that's a really good way to build your list as well as people opt into your live webinar workshop. You'll be list building and then at the end of that workshop you could potentially offer something or you can say, this is how you can work with me further.

You don't necessarily have to pitch at the end, but I do think that you should if you're going to do a live event, like a webinar and a workshop, you should consider offering something at the end of it. Or just giving them an opportunity to work with you further in some capacity. And yeah, because you've got these people, they're really interested in the topic. They're ready to learn from you.

And yeah, it's a good opportunity to just say, this is what I've got. This is how you can work with me further. Often doing a webinar or workshop is a launch method, and so if you've got a product to sell, Then I do recommend at the end of some live event that you do sell that product. Obviously in a non-sleazy way.

You can also say at the beginning of the webinar that you are going to offer something to them at the end. And this is going to be an opportunity for them to work with you further. You can just let them know that that's coming as well. Okay. So that's a good way to build a list. It's basically through launching. And your launches are actually really good times to build your list.

Some of the biggest list building bursts will happen in a launch. And even if they don't buy from you the first time, they're going to be on your list, they're going to consume your content. And over time you'll find that people who joined your list years ago will buy in the fourth launch, the fifth launch. So sometimes it takes time for people to make the purchase. But that's, that's the power of the compound effect of growing a list. Like over time it will produce revenue. It's a labour of love, but it's one that I definitely recommend. Okay, cool. 

So the other thing that you can do, if you're like into networking and like going to live events and stuff. You can attend live events where your avatar is hanging out. So for example, if you're a dog trainer in the area that you're living in, you can go to like dog training events where there's your kind of ideal avatar hanging out. And at that point you can network. 

You can potentially collaborate with the event owner to do some sort of promotion of some sort, allowing you to connect with potential people who are in your, you know, like in your audience, like your niche, people who you know that you can help if you love connecting live with people.

This is really cool if you're energized by events like this. Going and networking in person is actually very valuable. So if you've got the capacity for it and if something's happening around your area where you know there's going to be some people who are very much in your like your ideal avatar range and.

You've got capacity, you're keen, then definitely do that and have like some business cards. Something that you can hand out, driving them to some sort of thing. Maybe it's just to your website your opt-in page whatever it may be. Just getting them ideally on your email list in some capacity.

Okay. The next thing that you can do is run a contest or like a competition of some sort where you offer a prize. This can be done like on social media. You can do I think I did this for my podcast when I did my podcast launch. I did a podcast like competition in, as part of the launch. And part of the competition is saying that they need to take a certain action.

For example, they need to share your post or they need to tag. Three friends, or they need to opt into this list, or they need to grab this guide as part of an entry process. And the key thing is you want to make sure that it's still your ideal avatar. You don't want to be building your list of people who are not in your niche, right? 

So you keep it niche specific and have a cool prize, something that they want, and build up a bit of hype and excitement and yeah, you can do this in a launch as well as part of a training. Thing when you're, when you're hosting your training, you can have a competition as well.

So yeah, that's a way that you can also grow your list. You can get people to share your stuff and they have to maybe opt into something in order to enter, to win some cool thing. It could be even just winning a call with you, like a one-on-one call with you, or they can win money or a. So something that is relevant to them.

In my first business, I was helping teachers become online ESL teachers, and part of them doing that, they needed to get some equipment, like a webcam and a headset to be able to do the job. And so one of my competitions was that they could win a voucher for a webcam or a headset. So, so that's just an example.

So you can create some type of competition or contest and part of the entry is that they opt into something and they can win something at the end. Alrighty, then number seven is going and becoming a valuable. Contributor in Facebook groups, so going into Facebook groups where your ideal avatar is hanging out and contributing in those groups and becoming.

Someone who is an authority in those groups. This is something I did a lot in the beginning stages of my business. I was a part of a lot of online ESL teaching groups, and I would post valuable blog posts in those groups. And I would answer people's questions and I would just be valuable and helpful and things like that.

And people started to know me and, you know, connect me to being an authority in online ESL teaching, and they knew that I was helping people become online ESL teachers. And so I would, I would add value to those groups and connect with people. And then I would say I've got an amazing training coming up.

It's going to help you become an online teacher. If this is something you want, drop a drop a emoji in the comments and I will message you the link or I would say just message me directly on Facebook and I will send you the link. So this is a very manual kind of process of list building, but it's very effective.

And it worked really well for me in the beginning stages when I didn't have as much budget for like, for example, Facebook ads and I wasn't using Instagram in those days. I was just doing Facebook. Facebook groups are full, in many, many, many niches, there are many, many groups filled with your target customer or someone that you know you can help.

And so just the one thing is obviously you don't want to be spammy and promotional in those groups. You actually want to be valuable. And lead with service. And then don't post your like, links and stuff and promotion stuff in the group. Just connect with people and say, I'm hosting, like in the conversation you can say, I'm hosting this event.

You can message me if you want the link to it, or I've got this free guide. It helps you do X, Y, Z. You can message me if you want it, or you can drop a emoji and I'll send you the link. It is a manual process. You will be having to connect with people manually one-on-one, kind of in your comments.

You could potentially hire a VA to do that for you as well. If you find it effective, but you don't have the time for it, you could hire a virtual assistant to help you with that. And, and then you just send them in the comments in the DM's or whatever. You just send them to your opt-in page, whether it's your free workshop, webinar, or maybe it's a lead magnet.

And they will then opt in and then you'll, you'll have them on your list and you can nurture and add value, and then eventually sell something later down the line. So that's, that's a pretty powerful one. If you haven't considered doing it yet, maybe that's something you can try. It has been very, very effective in, from what I've seen in my students and clients, those who have done it with certain niches, it's very, very effective.

Okay, the eighth thing is guest blogging. So this is where you are writing guest blogs for other websites with a call to action to join something at the end. So maybe it's your lead magnet or your free training, whatever it may be. And that is a way for you to get in front of their audience. So obviously be intentional around who you are going to be writing a guest blog for.

They must have an audience that. Closely aligned with your niche that have your kind of avatar there, and you could write a guest blog for them and get in front of them, their audience and things like that. That's the same for guest. Podcasting and stuff. You know, it's the same concept. It's getting in front of other people's audiences and guest podcasting, guest blogging. 

So that is effective as well. Just make sure that when you are guesting on things, that you have a very intentional call to action where someone can opt into something and it's not like, oh, just follow me on Instagram, because you don't just want followers, right?

You want to be like, cool, you can follow me on Instagram here. But if you want help starting with X, Y, Z, I've got this awesome free guide, which you can grab here, and then you have the link directly to it. So, yeah that's a good one. Guesting and doing things like that. 

Number nine is a similar one. It's collaborations, which is a little bit the same. But it's basically like collaborating in any capacity with someone else with the similar niche, right? To have a similar target audience. So that could be like going live with someone on Instagram or Facebook in front of their audience.

So going live on their platform. It could be guesting on a podcast episode. That could be, you know, as I just mentioned, a very good one. It could be you having guests on your episodes. It could be you having lives on your profile. Like you inviting people to come do a live on your profile.

You could also do a collaborative kind of launch where you connect with someone who is. You know, aligned within your niche. You could collaborate with them to host some sort of event where then you are leveraging their audience and your audience and you've got more. Eyeballs on your event, because you're collaborating, you're joining forces you could host a live event and then at the event at the end of it, sell something.

So it's basically called a JV launch, which is a joint venture launch is when you come together with someone to launch something where yeah. You decide the deal, whether it's 50/50 and how it works. But that can be pretty powerful because by going and collaborating with people, you're basically joining forces in their audience and their email list.

So when they promote your stuff, Or you show up in front of the audience, then you're most likely to get new people who are very interested in what you're teaching to follow you as well. And they could potentially become clients later down the line. So collaborations are very cool if you haven't done it yet, even small things like just inviting someone to go live with you on your platform is valuable.

And just making sure that you have a very clear call to action. Where people can find opt-in to whatever it is that you have. So remember, always keeping in mind how to grow in my email list through all of these things. Don't, don't miss that opportunity, right? You always have to tell people, I've got this thing, this is how I can help you. You can grab it right here, and then you direct your traffic to those pages. Alrighty. So that's collaborations. 

And the 10th thing. It's something that I've used a lot and it's something that I love. It is Facebook ads. So one of the coolest things about Facebook ads is you can like turn it on and turn it off and you can put your lead magnet or your workshop or whatever thing that you wanting to drive traffic.

You can put an ad right in front of the exact target, you know, ideal avatar that you want to, you can really put detailed targeting in, and you can put an ad in front of them and that's going to be like, turning the tap on for traffic to your website. And then people are going to opt in. It's actually a really nice way to build your list.

Now, if you're really in the beginning Facebook ads isn't maybe the first option you go with. I recommend using a bunch of these other options as well, and doing some organic list building and then and then layering in Facebook ads later down the line.

Now Facebook ads is complex, so it's a learning curve. I don't recommend completely winging it and just watching one YouTube video and then trying to run some ads in a very stressed manner because you're not going to really see results. I recommend getting someone to help you with ads who is a specialist or an expert, or someone who's got experience in ads.

And we have someone who does that for our DBA students. And that's been very valuable. And so it's like a science, okay. And you don't want to just wing it because you're going to sink money down the drain, and then you're going to be bleak. And then it's all going to be like, oh, I'm a failure and blah, blah, blah.

So when you are running ads, just when you're starting that process, just, I recommend finding someone who can help you through it. I recommend learning about it, empowering yourself with that knowledge. And yes, it's, it's quite intense, but it's a skill in itself. And Ads can be quite expensive.

You also want to make sure that it's making financial sense for you, that you're selling a product that is going to be able to not only cover your ads, because you don't just want to break even. You want at least a three times return on investment. In my opinion, that's where you want to be with ads. So if you're spending $1 per lead, you want to get $3 out of that.

So say for launch. Yeah, so you just, you want to try get three times ROAS I think that's an amazing goal. And ROAS return on ad spend and yeah, that's, that's what I can recommend on that. In the first few times, say you're launching and list building. Just be open to experimenting and potentially losing some money.

But when you do get an ad that works and it's generating leads for you at a decent cost, that is very, very valuable. And then you can just have it go all the time while you sleep. And that's so nice. Like all you have to do is just spend money and then your list grows and it's so wonderful. So we've used ads a lot.

Currently the way to do. Like a cheap way to do ads is for list building, is using lead forms on Facebook. So this is where you actually normally with ads, you would drive people to your funnel and they would then opt in on your website. So they'll see a Facebook ad, they click the link, they then get sent into your website, and then they're opt in.

With lead forms, they are actually opt-ing into whatever it is you're offering on Facebook. So it's a very on-platform thing and it's Facebook's way of keeping people on their platform. And they do seem to be proving to be cheaper the leads. So if you want to try Facebook ads for lead generation, then I do recommend using lead forms on Facebook, learn about that get help in that.

And yeah, that's, that's a really good way to be building your list. Obviously have an intention around it. So if you're doing lead generation ads. Make sure that you're launching within the next three months so that you can recoup some of that ad spend. And also you can have mini products along the line to recoup some of the, that ad spend as well.

So that would be like a trip wire funnel where Yeah, where you can basically sell a low cost offer and that would sort of liquidate some of your ad spend as well. But yeah, there's a lot of different things you can do with ads. I definitely recommend lead forms at the moment. I don't know what that's going to look like in a year from now, but at this moment in time, lead forms is the way to be a list building.

Using Facebook ads and yeah I love it. I love the ease of it. I do have someone to do it for me. We don't play around with ads. We get this help we need and we run ads and we monitor the data and we monitor how much we're making per lead and all that stuff.

That's important to know, so don't be willy-nilly around it. Give it the attention it deserves and it can be incredibly valuable in your business because you can build leads all the time while you sleep. At a fast rate. So if you're launching in three months and you want to hit a list of like thousand leads, like doing it with ads can be very, very valuable or very a lot easier and quicker than organic.

Okay, so there you have it. 10 ways to grow your email list. Hopefully couple of these things you haven't heard of or they've given you some ideas. Remember, list building is something you want to focus your energy around consistently in your business, but that's not it. You don't just want to focus on list building.

You also want to focus on nurturing your list. So when you are building your list, you want to have an automated email sequence that delivers content or connects with your list so that you can nurture. Relationship further, you can build this all out. And then maybe send like a weekly newsletter or maybe every two weeks an email, whatever consistency vibe looks good for you.

But don't just build your list and then forget about your list. Build your list and then nurture your list. Like treat it like a relationship. You touch base with them once a week, once every two weeks. Be top of mind, add value. Don't let them. Like, don't just spend energy building your list and then forgetting about them, because a cold list does not buy your stuff.

Okay. That's just kind of how it goes. People who buy your things are warm and they're like, cool. This person's been valuable to me. I'm loving their content. I'm loving their teaching style, like I want to buy their stuff. That's the vibe you want. Okay, so find what way works for you. For me, it's podcasting at the moment.

I send a podcast like every week to my list, and it's an awesome way for me to connect and add value to people's lives. So find what works for you and just do it. So have a list building strategy in play and have a list nurturing strategy in play. Okay, cool. And then later when you want to sell something, you're going to put it in front of your email list.

You're going to say, I've got this thing, and people are going to buy it. And that's going to be awesome because it's going to be so much easier to make sales in your business. Alrighty, so go and implement some of these strategies. I hope you're inspired to start building your list. Keep it simple. Even just go on your social media and post. 

Hey, I've got this amazing guide. Drop a emoji if you want it, and, and just start small. It can be very simple. It doesn't have to be super complicated. Now, I hope you enjoyed this episode. I hope you're inspired to go build your list and yeah, I will connect with you again next week. Bye. 

Thank you so much for tuning into today's episode. If you love what you heard today, then be sure to share it with me by leaving a five-star review so I can continue delivering these goodies. If you aren't already following me on social media, then come tune into some daily inspiration on Instagram by following @_digiteach_ or visiting my website at digiteach.biz. 

I appreciate you so much, and I can't wait to connect with you in the next episode. In the meantime, go create a business and life you love.