Building your email subscribers list

Digital products are having their day in the sun, and while everyone get’s googly-eyed over passive income, the thing that gets forgotten is you have to actually *market* the thing.

Beyond the topic of like, who is this for? Who is looking for it? Is it something so unique no one IS looking for it? If so, where do you have to be to get infront of the people who are like ‘omg I need this thing’….

I’m going to skip that for a minute and talk about the actual marketing strategy of using email.

This is like, a recurring hyperfocus of my 2024 (check this blog too), I basically think in email sequences now, so I want to walk you through building one that you can set-and-forget to market for you.

1. The Sign Up Form

If you are starting off your email marketing foray with an incentive (which you should be, because no one wants to sUbScRiBe FoR uPdAtEs), that’s going to start here.

To walk you through an example, let’s look at my Investment Guide download

Whether you’re starting with a link in bio, on my stories, came from my website, a Pinterest pin – the link for all of these will be to your flodesk sign up form.

WHEN YOU BUILD THE SIGN UP FORM, you’re going to assign those subscribers to an appropriate segment (aka: investment guide).

This is important for step two.

2. The Workflow

This is the * automatic * magical part.

Once you’ve set up your sign up form, and you have your segment set, you’re going to create a new workflow (or use one of Flodesk’s lead magnet delivery templates).

The trigger to your workflow is going to be someone being added to the segment you set in step one (investment guide).

And the first step of the workflow, is going to be the email sending your freebie or incentive.

Your incentive can be in the body of the email, ie a welcome discount code, or you can create a button that links directly to the file, or a URL if you have it on Dropbox, etc.

3. Adding More Value

Your workflow can be as long as you want it to be, and a good idea is to add some other emails in here, turning it into a bit of a nuture sequence.

After the initial delivery email, add a time delay of a day or two, then another email.

Introduce yourself, give them more relevant information like a link to a blog, to book a session with you for more 1:1 help, a book recommendation, etc. The key to adding more emails to the workflow is ensuring they give relevant value – things these subscribers would APPRECIATE, on top of potentially making a sale.

If the end goal is to have them book a service with you, maybe you have another freebie or resource that would help them along that path – like a workbook to do some strategy for themselves first (wink wink), or even just a post or blog you have.

Sales aside, there’s email lists I’ve been on for YEARS without ever making a purchase, because these people are valued in my community. They share great information, and they end up getting referrals from me – so it equals a sale in a roundabout way.

Struggling w/incentive ideas?

If you’re having trouble coming up with incentives to offer as freebies – that’s common, we’re usually too deep in our business to see things this simplified.

• What are things you commonly get asked?
• Problems your clients often have?
• Is there a guide you can create out of the same information you’re repeating over and over (ie. this post you’re reading and this freebie)
• Is there something clients can do as a prerequisite to working with you, ie a workbook on their ideal client, or outfit guides for family photos?
• Can you take a social post that really hit and turn it into an email? Because social posts get buried – and an IG follow is worth half as much as an email subscriber. If it’s consistently relevant information, make it a guide and put it in your link in bio. Make Reels about it, Pinterest pins, get it circulating.

There’s some ideas for different industries in this 5 Marketing Tips freebie, and these are actually great things to work on in a Brainstorm Session with me.

If you have 0 interest in doing this for yourself, I’d seriously LOVE to do it for you. These are the types of hyperfocus tasks that bring me pure joy, just go fill out my intake form here.