Dishing on all things opt-ins, lead magnets, and why they’re important for list building for small businesses.
Grow that list, grow that list!
If you’ve done any sort of marketing classes, webinars, or research on the world wide web on how to build your business, you will have come across this piece of advice: grow your email list to grow your business.
Your email list is the group of people who want to be a part of your biz. They choose to learn from you, grow with you, and hear from you via their email inbox.
So, in order to take advantage of these people who are interested in your business, an opt-in is a necessary component to your website.
Synced with your email provider (like MailChimp, ConvertKit, what have you), an opt-in integration on your website allows people to subscribe to your email list by listing their name and email address, automatically putting them on a list in your email provider service that you can then communicate via your newsletter or other email communication.
To make opting in to your email list even more attractive to your audience, you can offer a lead magnet, a piece of added value related to your industry or services. If you’re a small shop, you could offer a percentage or dollar amount off their first purchase from you when they subscribe to your email list, or if you’re a service-provider you could offer a high-value, digital, downloadable product as it relates to services you provide.
Other examples of lead magnets include checklists, worksheets, email courses or challenges, access to a private Facebook group, and the list goes on. If it is of value and you can deliver it either via an email, link, or otherwise honor it online, it could be made into a lead magnet.
How is all of this beneficial to list building?
A growing list of email subscribers is made of your people. They know you enough to like you and enough to trust you with their precious email address (because, let’s be real: we’re all busy and our inboxes are cluttered spaces as it is). They want to hear from you,
If you haven’t already added an opt in to your website to start growing that list, you could add one in an announcement bar at the top of your site, as a popup, in the sidebar of your blog or bottom of individual blog posts, in the footer, designed into the midst of the content of your homepage, or any combination of these locations. It’s okay for it to be obvious, but not obnoxious (definitely think of user experience and preference when you’re setting these up!).
