This week I am talking to you about the tools I use in my email list building, my email marketing strategy.
Email marketing has to be one of your top priorities in helping you grow your business, especially if you want to sell your online courses.
Hello and welcome to episode 61 Of the Kaz Johnson show, my name is Kaz Johnson and I am the blogger behind Kazjohnson.com and the Kaz Academy. The Kaz Academy is the place to be if you are planning, building or growing your online business with online courses and a membership programme. You can learn more about what I do at Kazjohnson.com
This week I am talking to you about the tools I use in my email list building.
Email marketing has to be one of your top priorities in helping you grow your business, especially if you want to sell your online courses. As you have heard before, people buy from people they know, like and trust. So you need to be thinking about how you can build that relationship and one way is by building a list of subscribers who are interested in creating and selling online courses. And by creating a well thought out email marketing strategy, you can do just that.
So here is a list of the tools I use in my email marketing strategy and the order I have set them up to help me build my list, so that I can nurture and create that know, like and trust and grow my business.
1. First things first, starting with the end in mind, I think about what I what to offer people as my call to action (CTA) So, if I am going to send out a cheatsheet or ebook, then I create an opt-in offer using Designerr. It is so easy to create an ebook from written content like Blogs and websites Social content from Facebook Pages. You can also create them Audio, Video and YouTube files (These get transcribed automatically in minutes, how cool is that?). I tend to keep it simple and just create an ebook from a Word document, then choose the same template to keep my brand looking constant, as I use the same artwork in my membership program, they have at the moment a huge amount of free templates to use, and the great thing about Designerr I find, is that it is so easy to edit and you can publish it to your website in a click of a button, however, you get to store all your work on your account so there is no problem of getting that one e-book you have just created lost in the many, many files you have on your computer. The other thing I like is that all the links are clickable… you can also do a huge amount of other things I am not doing at the moment, like make it a flip book, publish it on Kindle or have a blog published just by adding the blog post URL. I will put a link in the show notes as they also have a free 7-day trial, go check it out.. I have been using Designerr now for a couple of years.
2. Ok, next I need an option tool, somewhere people can opt-in to get my ‘ethical bribe’ my free opt-in offer in exchange for their contact details, and for that, I use Thrive Architect as it is so quick to set up in just a few clicks. It is great as there are several options that you can use to have members sign up for your offer. They offer something called Thrive light boxes or you can use a link in your blog, and what I particularly like about Thrive Architect is that you can set up landing pages really quick with their tried and tested templates. They integrate with most email providers, I use Getresponse, and you can create opt-in offers, that can be downloaded immediately, or you can send them in your email that they sign up to, or you can just redirect them to a particular website, so that they can download your offer, of like me, can be redirected to sign up for my free Kaz Academy Lite membership.
3. Another tool I use is, Convertbox. Convertbox makes it super easy to create high converting two-step offers so you can hook your visitor with a simple pre framing message before revealing your main call-to-action. I use it on both by the blog and my Academy to collect leads, and offer the free opt-in there and then. I offer a free Kaz Academy Membership called Kaz Academy Lite, where people can get access to free online course and resources. I tend then to keep all my ethical bribes in one place, plus, the Lite members can also see, but not get access to, the content in the paid members area. As I keep adding more free content to the membership, people who have signed up get access to all the free content and do not have to keep signing up, it also keeps all their resources neatly in one place.
4. With both of the opt-in tools I have just mentioned, you will need some way of collecting the leads, there are many options, and the main ones are:- Mailchimp, Aweber, Converkit, Getresponse, and this is the one that I use. In the past I have used, Mailchimp, Aweber and Constant Contact, and at the time moved because I felt I had outgrown them at the time. Things change, however, I now have settled with Getresponse and found that their live help chat amazing
5. Once you have people signed up to your list, it is a good idea to use social media to push out your content on a regular basis to engage people with your content and to have them sign up to your email list so that you can nurture them. For that I did use Meetedgar for that last couple of years, but I am currently using Blog2Social, as I think we can easily get locked into one tool, mind you, Meededgar is amazing at repurposing your evergreen content, and what I meed by evergreen, is that content that you have created never gets old, it just is current today as it was last year.
With all of these tools, and many offer a free trial, I will put a link into the show notes so you try them out for yourself.
Speak to you next week.
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Finally, why not join our Facebook Group https://www.facebook.com/groups/kazacademygroup/ to join like-minded people like yourself and chat with me and other members to get help and support with mini trainings too!
This show is sponsored by the Kaz Academy, a membership site that helps support people who are planning, building and growing their business with monthly master classes, mini training, tips, resources, an open office, and a community all there to help you plan, build and grow your online business. You can check it out at kazacademy.com, for a free Lite membership.
That’s all for this week, so I would like to say a massive thank you for taking time to listen to me, and I will speak to you next week.
