Business and email list: two things that take an immense time to grow. 

So what can you do to grow your email list faster and, at the same time, acquire more clients and grow your online business?

In this article, I’ll show you what I do to speed up this process.

Since I started building my online business, I’ve been hearing from online gurus the same thing: focus on your email list! “Get at least 10 subscribers per day!”

So I followed their advice. I spent time creating articles and videos for my Youtube Channel, and in almost each one of them, I added a content upgrade to grow my email list.

If you don’t know what a content upgrade is, it’s a secondary piece of content related to the main topic that people can access, leaving their email address.

If you read my blog, you know what I’m talking about, and spoiler alert, this article has a content upgrade too.

Anyway, the method works to grow an email list.

The only problem in this strategy is that especially when you start, you won’t get too much traffic to your content, and so you’ll get a couple of email leads per day.

So how can we make our content reach a bigger audience in order to collect more subscribers and clients in the future?

Automations are overrated

We live in an automated online scenario: evergreen webinars, predefined welcome email series, chatbots…

The concept of passive income made us detach completely from our audience.

And I get it: if you’re an authority on the web, you’d probably receive dozens and dozens of messages per day, most of them from weirdos.

It’s humanly impossible to get back to all these calls for help.

If you’re starting right now, and your business is reasonably small, you paradoxically have an advantage.

You can ask any of your new subscribers to help you grow.

The Power of genuine connections

Let’s picture the situation: you periodically create content, and you offer a lead magnet in each article/video/podcast episode.

How can you make these couple subscribers you get per day grow to 10, 20, or more?

You simply ask them to help you.

This technique is so simple, and at the same time, so ignored by the majority of online content creators.

If a person consumed your content and even gave away the email contact to access your content upgrade, this means you really struck a chord.

What about reaching this person, thanking her for getting our lead magnet, and ask for help?

If you helped her first with your content, she’d probably be up to help you back. 

This is what I did to skyrocket my email list when I started my YouTube Channel: I got back to each of my new subscribers, thanking them for consuming my content, and asking if they could share my content.

The reason why this method works so well is that, first of all, no one does it. How many times an online expert reached out to you personally to thank you?

These genuine personal messages will build a strong bond with your followers, and they will help you.

In the second instance, you helped this person for free, and asking a favor back isn’t that huge request. If these subscribers spent time reading your article or watching your videos, they’d take another 2 minutes to share your content.

Power up your messages

There are a few rules you need to follow to make your requests to help perform even better.

#1. Use videos to reach out to these people. 

I use a tool called Bonjoro that allows me to record a quick video through my phone, wherever I am, and send it straight away to the people who joined my email list.

Receiving a personal email is powerful, but receiving a video message done just for me is another level.

I learned this from the founder of Bonjoro, Matt Barnett.
When I joined the software, I received a personal message from Matt. He was walking in the street, drinking a Starbucks coffee. In the video, he thanked me for joining, and he offered his help for any questions I may have.

#2. Mention your subscribers’ names. 

In his message, Matt mentioned my name immediately so that I could understand that that wasn’t an automated message. He took 1 minute of his time making a video just for me, and that blew me away.

#3. And this is my secret technique, use a whiteboard to write your subscriber name. 

Bonjoro sends an email to the subscriber with a screenshot from the 1st second of the video.

I start all my videos holding the whiteboard with the name of my subscriber, so she knows that the message is addressed to her.

If you want to start testing this technique, I have a surprise for you. You can watch 3 example videos I sent to subscribers, where I ask them to like my video, share it, and join my Facebook group.

These videos will give you a precise idea of what you should say on the video, length, vibe, etc…

You can download the 3 videos here, or clicking on the banner below.

Be natural

The important thing you need to remember when you create a video is that the more it looks natural, the better it will work.

As I said, Matt Barnett sent me a video while he was walking in the street, with a coffee in his hand.

Pretend the subscriber is an old friend. In that case you wouldn’t make your hair, put on makeup, find the perfect light… 

You would just grab the phone, regarding where you are and what you put on, and send a video.

Well, I’d avoid taking a video in the bathroom, but you got the point. Make it natural and drop any script before pressing record.