Your Email Subscriber List is a Pot of Gold

Staying in touch with the people you know is a great way to get clients and grow your business. In order to do that, you’ll need to have their email addresses organized, in one place, and ready to use. You’ll want your list to be as large as possible, to make the biggest impact when you contact them. In this episode of the RocketGirl Show, I'll share how to grow your list to grow your business

TRANSCRIPT 

My name is Belinda Wasser also known as RocketGirl.  And today we're going to talk about why your email newsletter list is like a pot of gold. 

When you are a virtual assistant, your e-mail newsletter list is one of your most valuable assets So today, we're going to talk about what you can use your email is for and how to grow it. All right. So let's first talk about what you can use it for you so you can see why you'd want to make the effort. All right. 

So let's talk about this. All right. So here you are, you're new virtual assistant. You want everybody to know about your business so you can have that steady stream of clients. And you want to send out an announcement. You need your e-mail newsletter or you need your subscribers all your people you know, all in one place in order to do that. Another reason is because to get a steady stream of clients, you want to stay in touch with them and a really great way and the way that I've grown my business is by sending out a regular email newsletter with valuable content. By doing that you're able to stay in touch with people that you know, stay in front of them and stay connected. Let's say you're having an event right? I can't tell you how many times I've had clients who want to have an event and I say well are all your contacts in one place and they say no we're just going to announce it on LinkedIn and while you could definitely announce it on LinkedIn, getting in someone's email inbox is the most valuable place, if by far outreaches what you can do on social media.

Stay in touch emails. Stay in touch email or something I talk about a lot when talking about getting clients. It's a way to send two emails a day to people you like, people you know, just checking in, staying top of mind, in order to do that, it's critical that you have all your email addresses all in one place and then also to promote events. 

So let's say, you know, you're speaking somewhere or like one of my clients today, she's promoting an event that she's having tomorrow. She's doing it on social media, but it would have been much more powerful and I believe would have had better results if she had her email list. You know, the other thing about social media is like let's talk about Facebook for a minute. So there was a time not that long ago where I had scheduled a Facebook live and something happened with one of my blog post. I've never really figured out what the issue was, but Facebook thought that I have broken the rule and they shut me down for about 36 hours. 

Now had I been thinking clearly at the time which I wasn't because I was upset I would have been able to take my email newsletter list and say hey everybody who signed up for this Facebook live meet me on Zoom, here's the link because I own my list and that's a critical piece too because social media platforms come and go and while it might seem that the ones we have now are really solid I was around when Yahoo was the biggest search engine so, you know, Alta Vista remember Alta Vista. So just keep in mind, that things change, rules change but change but your email list is something that really belongs to you. 

The other thing is to engage current and potential clients. So with that list you can stay in touch with them. You can send them, send them newsletter and you can also, you know, keep in touch just basically keep in touch is what when I guess I'm getting it right here. So let me just look at this list and make sure engage current and potential clients. Yes. Okay. Now let's talk about ways to grow your email list because it might not be screamingly obvious how to do this. All right. So the first thing is to connect with everybody that you know on LinkedIn, Facebook, all your social media platforms. And then what you're going to want to do is send them an individual message on that platform and say "Hey, you know, I'm starting a new business. I'd like you to send you the announcement, is it okay, can you send me your email address?"  

Another thing you could say is I'm starting my email newsletter. I love to add you to the list. Can I have your email address? And yes, that is a lot of work. I totally get that and I'm here to tell you it's exactly what I did and it's totally worth it because once you have that email address, there's so much you can do. Don't  miss, you know, miss out on this. It's valuable asset. When you meet new people, you know, you're in a networking Zoom event, online event, in-person event one at a time. You know, is it okay if I add you to my email newsletter list? And what I also say, as you know, you can unsubscribe at any time because I don't want them to feel like oh my gosh, I you know, I can't leave I want to just take all the pressure off.

Another way is a freebie, is to offer freebie. So I have a freebie for my RocketGirl business and it's called "Seven Biggest Mistakes Small Business Owners Make When Trying to Grow Their Business and so people can go to my website They can download that. I let them know. It's very clear that they're going to start getting my email newsletter at the same time. So opt-in is critical letting them know ahead of time what to expect. Also critical and asking their permission and that makes, it takes longer to grow a list like that. However, the list is valuable and rich and so you really want to keep that in mind.

And when you get this list you want to keep it warm, right? So think about I've had this happen to me. I get an email out of the blue. I have no idea who the person is. I don't even know if I opted in but I don't spend a lot of time to figure it out or read it. So you'll want to really keep your list warm by staying in touch with them, you know sending them your newsletter, sending them keep in touch emails, but really keep it warm, so that you're not, you know, if you're selling something or letting them know about a new service, that's not the only time you're in touch with them because people don't like that.

Before we go today I just want to take a second and tell you about my free online classroom. It's called The Virtual Assistant Connection. We're located on Facebook. And the reason I mentioned that is because even though we're live-streaming there now, we're also live streaming into other places on Facebook. We're live streaming in Periscope and in our YouTube channel. Click the Subscribe button if you're watching us on YouTube so you can be notified when we go live, and then it's going to be posted on LinkedIn. So if you have any questions about anything that I talked about here, please post them in the comments, tag me. I'll be sure to circle back around and check it out. But come over to The Virtual Assistant Connection on Facebook. Click the join button, and I love to have you, tons of valuable information, videos like this, articles, community. We have almost 12,000 members and I love for you to join us over there as well. So until next time I'm Belinda Wasser signing off.