List Building For Beginners – Start An Email List To Grow Your Audience

November 23, 2020
27 Comments

Last Updated on November 24, 2020 by NandiNN

Why build an email list?

You are here today because you are looking for the best tips for list building for beginners.

I am so glad you are here.

Be honest.

How many times does this happen?

You are browsing on the internet, and you come across an amazing blog post that you just love.

You decide that you out of time and that you will come back to the blog and read it regularly before moving on.

Two hours later and you have completely forgotten about this epic new blog you just discovered.

Chances are you will never make it back to it unless you happen to stumble upon this blog again in the future.

Can you believe that your readers go through this exact process as well?

Check your Google Analytic stats and how many of them are first-time visitors.

The vast majority of them will likely never make it back to your blog.

I am constantly looking at my repeat visitor count in the hopes it grows every month.

This is because I spend a lot of time trying to entice my visitors back to my site the best that I can.

The best way to do that is to convince them to join your email list.

But what is an email list?

Before you can consider building an email list as a beginner, you need to understand what it is and why it’s crucial to your success.

An email list consists of emails that readers give you when they sign up for something.

Ideally, you want to give them a little gift for taking the time to provide you with their email which you can then use to connect with them at a later stage.

A big email list doesn’t necessarily mean success.

A big email list that is nurtured and frequently gets high open rates means success.

Best tips on how to build an email list for free

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Why Should You Start An Email List?

Simply put list building for beginners is extremely important because those that sign up for your email list will one day become your future buyers and clients.

Once you have your readers’ email on your list of subscribers, you can keep bringing them back to your blog over and over again and build a deeper, stronger relationship with your readers.

Building an email list is much easier than you think.

But here are a few reasons I suggest any new blogger start an email list:

You have control of your email list – no control of social media
Email subscribers take action (such as purchasing from you, sharing your work, etc.)
You can build better relationships with your email subscribers
It can help grow your page views if you have a huge engaged list
Emails are the perfect way to communicate with your readers
Can help you build a consistent income revenue

The majority of my blog income comes from the communication I do with my email list.

Having consistent consistent income daily can really change your life!

When you take the time to nurture your list, you can get awesome results in the long run.

A lot of bloggers constantly worry about what to send their email list once they start building an audience.

Thankfully, Kate Doster is my go-to person for everything email.

For example, she has this epic blog post of 6 amazing things to send your email list so they stay engaged and buy from you.

I always encourage people to read that post has it has a lot of amazing ideas you can try out.

How to build an email list for your blog

Before you can even think about starting an email list, you need to know what the purpose of that email list will be.

Even though there email provider services that offer free accounts up to a certain number, you might have to pay for it once you start to grow.

I don’t know about you, but wasting money is not something I enjoy.

So if I am going to grow my email marketing efforts, I want to be able to make that money back to cover my monthly blogging costs.

List building for beginners – here is an example of a marketing plan you can have:

Sell your products
Promote affiliate programs you are part of
Send exclusive information that they won’t find elsewhere
Keep your exclusive readers in the know about behind the scenes

I find that anything I send to my list is guaranteed to get clicks or action taken on.

Another thing to consider as a blogger before starting an email list is the frequency of how often you will be sending these emails.

Unlike blogging, I find that emails have to consistent in terms of frequency.

I send all my emails weekly and I find this works best for me.

I have always done it this way and it is what works best for my online business.

Steps for building a profitable email list:

1. Find an email service provider that you like

Start by signing up for a dependable auto-responder Service like MailerLite.

You can also use ConvertKit as both of these do offer free options to start.

For those that are looking for ways to build an email list for free, these two might be your first bet.

I personally like Mailerlite because they do have an automation system you could use for free right from the start.

But I also love how easy ConvertKit is and it helps a lot when it comes to monetization.

With a free ConvertKit account, you can build unlimited landing pages to start growing an audience for your new blog right away.

Mailerlite is definitely more budget-friendly.

Anyways, pick one that you are more comfortable with and just go for it.

I use both of these email marketing tools for my blogging needs and they are both free up to 1000 email subscribers which is great for those on a budget.

With Convertkit or MailerLite you can:

Create unlimited landing pages
Create an email sign up form to capture emails
Send unlimited emails to your list
Create an email automation series which is crucial for making money

Whichever email provider you do go with, be sure to familiarize yourself with how to properly use the platform.

YouTube is your friend – for Mailerlite, find all the important videos here.

For ConvertKit, go here.

2. Create A Sign-Up Form

The next step you will want to focus on is your sign up forms or landing pages for capturing emails.

Don’t bother creating a form that says, “sign up here to receive emails!”

Who on earth wants that?

Instead, you want to entice your subscribers by giving them a real incentive to sign up.

Here is an example of an incentive I give my readers:

It’s an action-packed mini-course to help new bloggers increase traffic using strategic steps.

You can find my sign-up form here.

Here are examples of freebies and incentives you can create to increase email sign-ups:

FREE Printables
Worksheets
Mini-course like I have
Checklist
Mini ebooks
Webinars
Challenges

You can also grab yourselves these amazing lead magnet templates and build irresistible offers to grow your business today.

In my honest opinion, free Printables do the best and can attract hundreds of email subscribers really easily provided that this is what your readers want.

I always tell my list that the easiest way to passively grow your email list especially as a beginner is through printables.

I have personally used these three sources to learn everything I know about creating amazing printables:

People also enjoy checklists.

Grab any of these freebies right here.

3. Embed your email form on your blog

In order to grow your list, you need to promote your freebies.

Once you have created one or two freebies to start, you can now expand and start to learn more about list building.

Things you want to look into are a dedicated opt-in page, pop-up opt-in forms, etc.

Once you get your opt-in page set up, you can link to it from your social media profiles and when you guest blog in different places.

But you also want your blog to do the majority of work passively in collecting emails.

This requires you strategically placing your signup forms and landing pages to make it easy for people to sign up.

They need to stand out, it has to be an irresistible offer and it needs to be visible enough.

Here is an example of an embedded form on my blog.

Your forms need to stand out and attract the masses.

When you create boring looking forms, people tend to skip over them.

Pretty and attractive works and it works all the time. This could be the difference between growing at 100 emails per month to getting 1000 emails per month.

But where can you put your email capturing funnels so that they get the most traction?

These forms can be placed in a few different places around your site:

Above the fold on your main page or every page on your blog – Some blog themes have this feature like this one.
You can display a sticky top bar using Hello Bar
Within your blog content
The sidebar on your blog if it’s not too busy
Offer it as a content upgrade – for example, if you wrote a post on 5 ways to do XYZ, a content upgrade may have 15 tips.
Have a dedicated page that you can promote in Facebook groups or on Pinterest like this one (I build all my landing pages using these templates)

This alone should kick up your list building campaign.

There’s a lot more to learn about list building for beginners, but this should get you started in the right direction for sure.

4. Connecting with your list

The first thing you should ensure works is the delivery of your freebie.

Ensure that is automated and tested so that your readers instantly get the delivery of the FREEBIE.

Nothing worse than signup for something and not receiving the freebie that you promised.

It’s happened to me before.

I have signed up for a few things and not been able to get what I signed up for.

Another amazing way to connect with your list is to segment them into lists that interest them the most.

For example, I have a list on my site for people that are interested in making money from home outside of blogging tips.

I have bloggers that want to learn all about blogging and making money with a blog.

And I have some that interested in growing their money using saving tips.

Both Mailerlite and ConvertKit allow you to segment your list.

This will ensure that you have higher open rates based on what your readers are interested in and they will most like to take action.

The more segmented your list is, the more money you can make when you put them through sale funnels like these.

5. Send an intro email

When you set up your first list, ensure that you write a short little email to welcome new readers and offer a small introduction as well as what they can expect from you.

As I mentioned, don’t forget to send them their freebie from their opt-in form.

Once you get your first few subscribers, it’s time to start emailing them regularly from the get-go.

You can also send a quick email every time you publish a new blog post, or if you do a lot of posting, consider doing a weekly recap type mail instead.

The main idea is to keep bringing them back to your blog and turn them into loyal fans and regular readers.

Once that happens, chances are good that they start to share your blog and links to individual blog posts to their circle of influence.

Since everyone has social media profiles these days that could amount to quite a bit of new traffic for you.

Please do not only send them your latest post as they can also easily find that.

Go deeper and really offer exclusive tips, ideas, news that get them excited to open up your email.

If you are new to this, I will suggest starting an email list at least 2 months after starting your blog.

If you are struggling and not sure what to send your list, grab this today!

For a limited time, get 2 years worth of strategically planned weekly newsletter topics, your subscribers (and wallet) will love.

Get it here!

The more freebies and content upgrades you offer, the more your list will grow.

The key is to nurture your list as much as possible and ensure that they love and trust what you have to say.

Sometimes you will get unsubscribers, don’t worry or focus on that.

Keep pushing through and ensure you are growing a more engaged list every step of the way.

I would rather you have 100 engaged fans than 10, 000 people on your list that never open your emails. Now that would be a waste of money.

Every month or quarterly, I would go in and remove anyone that has not opened your emails in a while.

And don’t feel bad, they are just not your ideal client.

More list building tips for beginners

Automating your emails is key to your success.

Once you set up a workflow within your email provider, it will automatically send emails to a specific subscriber group of interest.

I have automation that lasts 5 days, 7 days, and some that are 30 days.

I created it once, tweaked it here and there to ensure better open rates, and left it to do the job.

Once someone subscribes, they get their freebie, introduction, and daily tips depending on what they signed up for.

Your freebies should also be automatically sent out so you do need to worry about this.

Resources for building your email list:

MailerLite or ConvertKit – My email providers
Freebies You Can Tweek and Make Your Own Or You Can Also Use These
Amazing Landing Pages That Attract Signs-up Effortlessly
Growing your email list to thousands – Free webinar
Selling to your list using Evergreen Sales Funnels
Selling to your list using Tripwires
How to sell products to your list and make $3K

All these list building tools are perfect for beginners.

They will also help you grow your email list to a thousand as well as monetize them.

I hope you enjoyed our “list building for beginners’ tips and tricks!

If you want more amazing ideas like these, including tips to grow your blog from zero to profit, be sure to sign up for our 30 Day Blogging Challenge to a better blog if you have not done so yet!