#127: Why You Need an Email List (And How To Get One Started Quickly)

Hey there, health coaches. Thank you so much for joining me today. Welcome. We have so much to talk about, and I'm so glad that you're here. If by the way, you're here with me live. As we go through the topic today, I'll talking about why you need an email list and how to get one quickly. I want you to ask questions. I want you to talk to me. That's why I do these live. It would be so much easier for me to record these in the privacy of, of not being live, where I could start and stop and edit. And when I mess up and things don't work, we could start over. But no, we just kind of shoot these out to you exactly as they occur. And the reason that I do that, by the way, I'm going on a tangent right now, I'm going to go here I go.

I'm going on a tangent, um, to tell you the reason we do these just live and unedited, really. We don't even edit it at all. My assistant will tack on some music to the beginning and the end of each of these podcast episodes. But that's it because I want you to see that it can be this easy and that you can do this and it doesn't have to be perfect. You can go live, you can make mistakes, you can fumble over your words. You can forget stuff. You can hit the wrong button. You know what I mean? And you can still grow a business. So I figure if I let you see me do it in perfectly week after week, hopefully you'll be motivated to do the same and the way as you know, every week, you're on the show. I'm answering questions that come in directly from our health coach power community Facebook group.

And today I want to highlight not just a post, but it was actually a whole thread. I don't know if you saw it, that popped up the other day. And it was on the topic of mailing lists, which is one of my favorite things to talk about. My goal for this episode is to give you a crystal clear idea as to the role that your mailing list plays in your business. And I want to give you lots of ideas on how to use it and also share a resource or two, um, specifically a step-by-step tutorial on how to get your email lists that up for free in about 10 minutes or less. Isn't that amazing? Are you ready?

Before we jump in, I need to give a shout out to Rebecca74. She left this five-star review on iTunes. She said addicted and obsessed. Whoa, Whoa, Rebecca. She wrote, I love Michelle's content as a new grad. I'm just starting. My coaching business. Michelle's podcast has helped me mentally toss the extras that I don't need right now, like a website and a blog and focus on the basics, like starting an email list with my warm market and creating a simple intake application. Michelle is no nonsense and she shares the mistakes she made. So we don't have to. It's my new favorite podcast I listened during my early morning workout. I always leave with a simple takeaway or new idea. Thank you for this amazing content it's helping me focus. Awesome. You are so welcome, Rebecca, and it seems like you really have walked away with some important lessons based on what you wrote. Please send your mailing address to support@healthcoachpower.com and just mentioned episode number one 27. We have a little thank you gift to send your way.

And for everybody listening, if you head over to iTunes, leave a written review about what sort of value you get from the show every week. I may very well read yours on a future episode. So thank you very much in advance. Honestly, this is how we reach more coaches and more successful coaches in the world means more healthy people in the world. And I think that's really, that's really the big goal for all of us. Forget business, forget profits, forget everything. Most of us got into this because we want to see the world be a healthier, happier place. So that's one way that you can help make that happen. Awesome. So today's topic started with this post by Jenny and here's what Jenny wrote. She said, hi everyone. I'm very new to online coaching. And I'm torn between knowing whether to have a website for my business, a private Facebook group, or both, what have you had the best success with?

So what I said to Jenny, what I'm going to say to all of you who are having this sort of conversation in your head, you know, should I do an Instagram page? Should I have a Facebook page? Should I do this? Should I do that before you do any of those things? What you really want is a mailing list that is like first priority. And it continues to be first priority, even as your business move along, even after you have all those other properties, it's all about the mailing list. So, uh, I wanted to let you know that I can really vouch for how well this works, because even though I started my business ages and ages ago now, and yes, I started with the mailing list a couple of years ago, maybe about two years ago now, um, my website was so old, it needed to be redone so badly.

And it was just a project that was sitting on the back burner. I literally stopped using it. Like I didn't touch it for months and months and months. It was probably a year that I essentially did not have a website. I had changed everything about my business. I mean, my website wasn't reflecting what I was doing at all. So for all intents and purposes, I did not have a website. And that was the year that I made a huge jump in my profits. Like I hit some big salary goals that year. So, what I want you to know is you do not need the website. You don't need the Facebook page. Forget all of that. If you have a mailing list and you have a way for people to book a consultation with you, that's how you earn money. Hear me again. That is how you earn money.

So when you think about, I want to make a profit in my business. Think first about your mailing list, the size of your mailing list and the health of your mailing list. And talk a little bit more about that. If you like, by the way Rebecca is here with us live, Rebecca is the one who wrote the awesome review on iTunes. Thank you for being here, Rebecca, you better email us so we can send you your gift. And Jenny's here too. Jenny's the one who asked that question that I just read. Okay, good. Everybody's in the house today. So happy. So anyway, when Jenny said, should I have a website? Should I have a Facebook page? My response back was, well first, do you have an email list? And what Jenny, what you said was that you did not, and then you had more questions, right?

It's very overwhelming. Like, do you need some sort of content management system, some sort of database, you know, how do you collect that information? How do you even go about creating a mailing list? So yes, to start your email and official email list, the first thing that you need to do is get signed up with an email service provider, or sometimes you'll hear it called an E S P. What that's going to do is it's going to allow you to mail your list. I mean, you can email a bunch of people from like your Gmail account or your Yahoo account, right? But if they want to unsubscribe, there's no way to do that. So that's very unprofessional. If you're sending out an email to lots of people, I'm not talking about an email to like your clients, I'm talking about a marketing type email, um, then it needs to come from an email service provider that will help you manage your contacts.

And probably the most important part of that is allowing people to sign up for your list on their own and also unsubscribe from your list when they want to. So that's when ESP is going to allow you to do it also. And this is so cool. It allows you to see who is opening your emails, how many people are opening your emails, who's clicking on what, what got the most clicks. And in this way, you can start to see patterns and trends and you can see, Oh, this is working, Oh, this isn't working so well just with these basic metrics. So I think it's a really cool tool and you can get up completely free. Most of the time when you're starting out, you're going to have like 20 people on your list. Maybe like a hundred people on your list. Maybe you're awesome. Maybe have like 500 people on your list.

Cause you've been doing this for a while already. In any case, you can use an email service provider for free that's that's tip number one, you can get started with no service charge every month. And I created a free tutorial to walk you through the process of getting set up, takes about 10 minutes, right? You're going to sign up for an account. The tutorial is going to show you now click here. Now, click there. Now enter this information here so that you are all set to go and even shows you how to set up your first email and how to actually use the tool once you're in there. So if need to get your email list set up for the very first time, head over to healthcoachpower.com/mailinglist. And you'll be able to get set up like in a Jiffy. I'd love to hear what happens.

Like if you go through the process, how long it took you, how you found the whole thing to be, because I just think that it's one of these things that health coaches get stuck at. And, and they're like, I can't, or I don't understand, or it's too much to figure out. And if you go through this tutorial, my hope is that it's going to just be brainless because you're just going to follow along with me. And before you know it, it's going to be all done and you're going to be good to go. So that is available for you guys and I hope you take advantage of it. Okay. So as this thread that Jenny started went along, um, there was a really interesting comment from Jeff. I don't know if Jeff's here. Everybody else seems to be here today. But what Jeff said was I've thought about a mailing list as well, but I thought it was less important than these other marketing and social media avenues it's been on the back burner, but maybe it shouldn't be.

Correct, Jeff. You are correct in that last sentence. It really shouldn't be on the back burner. In fact, it's not less important than your social media and other marketing avenues. It is more important. It is the most important, most valuable asset in your business. How can I describe this to you? So if tomorrow, somebody took away my website, Somebody scratched me off all my social media accounts. They just disappeared. Uh, what else? Uh, they, my, my, my laptop crashed, Um, you know, everything that could go wrong did go wrong. As long as I had a mailing list, I could still make money.

That's... That's huge. That's huge. Okay. So that's number one. Secondly, and this kind of goes to that point because you own your mailing list. It can't be taken away from you, right? Like you can get kicked off of Facebook. Absolutely. And even if you don't get kicked off, there's the algorithm to worry about is your stuff even being seen by those who you want to see it there's censorship happening. Um, and who knows, right? Like Facebook at some point could disappear or for whatever reason, it's just not there for you anymore. So, if you had even like a million followers or fans on Facebook, , they're just gone.

Your mailing list, it's not like that. Once somebody gives you an email address, you have them on your list and then you own that property. So like I said, you can make money. Even if everything else were to disappear, you'd be able to communicate with your audience with a mailing list and a mailing list.

Um, what else do I want to talk about? It has been my experience and the experience of many entrepreneurs, you know, in businesses like ours, who I've spoken to, that sales tend to come from those who are on your mailing list, much more so than somebody who is just following you on Instagram. So of course there's people who are going to do both. There'll be on your mailing list. They're also going to follow you on social media, but it tends to be the audience that's willing to give you an email address. They're your most loyal fans and followers. They're the ones that want to hear from you. They're the ones that you're most likely going to earn from. So that's the other reason that your list is your most important asset? If I had a choice between my mailing list or like my Instagram following, even if my Instagram following was two times, three times, 10 times larger, I would choose my mailing list any day of the week. So Jeff, no more back-burner mailing list needs to be front and center. It is an essential piece of how you market yourself online and frankly, even offline these days because every business is online.

Okay. Let's see any questions about what I have gone over so far. If you're here with me live, just go ahead and throw those into the comment area. Sedika. I see that you're here, live at this too, and a bunch others. Thanks so much for joining. It's always more fun when we do this together, right? So I'm going to answer a question. Now that came in from Bindia. Bindia said very simply, how do you work on getting a mailing list? Okay. So your first step, if you don't already have a mailing list set up, is that you're going to create a spreadsheet of your current close friends, family members, those interested in your business, like any clients that you've already worked with or someone I know I had like friends telling me from the get-go I want to work with you. Like I'm so interested in what you're doing.
So if you have friends like that, put them onto a spreadsheet. It's just two columns. First column, first name, second column, email address. That's it. You don't need any other information in the spreadsheet. So it's super easy, even if you've never created a spreadsheet before. And then that is the spreadsheet that you're going to upload to your email service provider. And I show you exactly how to do that. Upload inside the free tutorial, free tutorial. And again, that's available at healthcoachpower.com/mailinglist.

Now, as for the idea of how to add more names to your list, I have a special event coming up on that exact topic because once you create the list, the next thing is going to be like, okay, how do I get more people on here? So I'm going to tell you more about that next week. And I know so much suspense, but if you already know that you need this, if you already have a mailing list set up and you're just having trouble growing it, go ahead and sign up. Now you can do that at healthcoachpower.com/listbuild. We are just in like mailing lists list, building mode here for the entire month of December. Okay. So if this has been a sticking point for you, you are in the right place.

I've got a question here. I've got a couple of questions here. Uh, one is sort of Kelly. I think I'm going to answer these two together. Kelly said was more of a comment. She said, I'm working on growing my email list, but it's a difficult process. Kelly sign up for the event happening later this month. Okay. And Sandy said, I'd like to know the best way to get people to my mailing list. I have a lead magnet, but getting traffic is the problem. And Facebook ads are too expensive. So what do you suggest for anyone who did not understand that question? I want to break it down. Sandy's saying she has a lead magnet, one of the best ways, and we're going to go into this. In-depth one of the best ways to get people onto your mailing list is to incentivize them. And you can do that so many different ways.

But what Sandy's talking about is a lead magnet. It's usually a downloadable PDF of some kind, but it's a gift, right? It's a free gift that people can sign up for. And when they do their name goes on your mailing list and they receive the free gift in their inbox. So she has one of these. But if you have, let's say, I have a present for you right here in my hands and going around. I'm trying to give these, you know, my present away. If I don't have anyone to give it to, it's like a moot point. So first, yes, you need an incentive, but secondly, you need to get it in front of people. So that's what Sandy's saying here about getting traffic is the problem that is very, very common. And we are going to tackle that so hard. I can't wait to get into all of those techniques with you, Sandy, because you're right. Facebook ads are too expensive and not only are they expensive, but Facebook is very, very particular around health topics. They have a lot of rules because they're trying to protect the Facebook community and they don't want people selling snake oil out there, making all these crazy health claims because of that. They tend to crack down even on people like you and I, who might be saying something could help you lose weight or something can help you have more energy or anything like that. You run a lot of risk of getting thrown off of Facebook. Having your ad account closed down. It has happened to me. It is not fun. So I never recommend that you guys are using Facebook ads. I use them only when I'm paying somebody to do like a Facebook ad expert to do it for me for this very reason, because I know how easy it is to get booted right off of Facebook.

And I've seen it happen to a lot of other health coaches too. So, um, when I'm going to give you a little bit of an answer now, Sandy, but my hope is that you'll join us for the free event happening at the end of the month. When you think about adding names to your mailing list, it's almost like it's almost like signing new clients and I know it's totally different, but hear me out on this, it's sort of like if I can't get someone interested enough and willing to give me an email address for free, you know, to give, to give them something for free, how am I ever going to convince them to sign up and pay me like thousands of dollars for my health coaching services, right? If I can't give away something for free, how am I ever going to find people willing to pay me?

So it's, it's more than just a mailing list issue. If you're having trouble building your list, it usually points to a strategic issue. And that's great. It's great to find it out now, find out. Now when you're starting to build your list that maybe your messaging is not connecting with the people that you want to connect it with, maybe it's just not resonating for them. So like I said, it usually goes back to having a problem with the strategy around either who you're targeting or what big problem they want to solve, and then helping them, helping them solve that problem. Like communicating your value that I know who you are. I understand your problem. I know your biggest concern and I can help you overcome that problem. We do that with freebies. We do that with lead magnets. We do that with free events, et cetera, et cetera, to earn somebody's trust.

We get them on our mailing list. And then we continue to communicate with them, you know, over time, this is how we sign clients. It's how we build relationships with people, especially in the online space. So if it's not happening, I could give you all the lead magnet ideas in the world, all the promotional ideas in the world. But if those things are not working for you, it often comes back to a strategy problem. So I just want to put that out there for you. Um, I am going to talk more about this and give you all my tips and tactics and promotional ideas that costs no money, no paid advertising, because I want to help you multiply your mailing list for free and build up your audience, um, with all the things that I've done through the years, past 11 years with great success.

So again, you can sign up for that free list building event it's happening ate the end of December at healthcoachpower.com/listbuild. Rebecca's asking, do you recommend starting with an evergreen lead magnet to start? Rebecca, I recommend that you start anywhere with anything to start and whatever feels like you can actually get it done. So yes, sometimes starting with an evergreen lead magnet is the way to go for sure, because it's not terribly complicated. It's something most people can handle creating on their own. And so it's a good starting point and evergreen lead magnet. However, usually doesn't perform quite as well as some sort of free event that you can hold. You know, it would sort of be like giving away an out like a CD. Remember when we used to listen to CDs, a CD of your favorite band? I don't know, maybe it's Aerosmith. It'd be like me going, Oh, okay.

Would you like this free Aerosmith CD people will be like, Oh yeah, maybe, maybe I'll listen to that. But if I was like, hi, do you want these tickets to this free Aerosmith concert? People are gonna be like, heck yeah, I love that. That's awesome. So I have noticed that evergreen freebies, they're great because they're evergreen and you can use them year round, but they tend to not catch on fire as quickly as a live event will. Right? Just that difference between the CD and concert tickets, which one is more exciting. So start with whatever you feel you were able to accomplish, get it done, get it out there. So you have something and then move on to the next. I don't think there's a right or wrong. I will tell you this, um, inside Healthy Profit University's fast-track semester, this time around this fall for the first time ever, we started with an event and it was great.

It has been awesome. In fact, next week, right here, same time, same place. I'm going to be sharing how one health coach added 100 new names to her mailing list in just a couple of weeks. And we're going to talk about how you can learn to do the same. Rebecca's saying I created a weekly meal prep game plan for my friend and I thought about using that my people struggle with meal prep, ideas, big time, but then I second guessed myself. I'll be creating a new one each week, a new one each week. That's a lot of work. The beauty of an evergreen lead magnet would be that you create it once and it's done and you can keep reusing it over and over again. But any idea that you have can usually be created, or what am I trying to say? And I, a topic idea, like whatever, whatever you want to talk about.

So in this case meal planning, um, a meal prep that could be done is some sort of downloadable PDF, for sure. It can also be done in the form of a workshop, right? So you could hold a live workshop that you invite people to and you teach them how to meal prep, or maybe you're even doing it right there on your kitchen counter or whatever you would do. Um, you could record it. You could then use it as an evergreen lead magnet later, right? If you, if you plan to do that ahead of time and, and recorded it in such a way that you could then reuse it, it could become a reusable lead magnet. Um, and then you could also turn it into a five day challenge. I mean, you can do so many different formats of the same idea. So if you know, people are really hot on a topic, um, and you create a lead magnet around it, don't be afraid to reuse that idea and turn it into other formats.

Sadika says, Michelle, can you also please help me and my friend, who's also a coach, how to really create a program. Of course I can, but that's a totally different episode. If you go back in the archives, you will find podcast episodes about creating a signature program. And that is something else that we do inside Healthy Profit University. Awesome.

Thank you guys so much for joining me today and joining me live and talking about mailing lists. Like I said, this is going to be sort of our push for the month is making sure what did I say? Like the whole no child left behind thing, no health coach left without a mailing list. That's my slogan for December and I'm sticking to it because if we can go into 2021 and everyone in this group has a mailing list collectively, everyone's going to do so much better. Business is going to grow. You're going to make more money in the new year and that's what we want to happen. Thank you for being here. Um, we are going to be back next week. Like I said, talking about how Abby added 100 new names to her mailing list and how you can do the same. So make sure to subscribe on iTunes or Spotify, because you're not going to want to miss this. I'll see you then take care, everybody.