Tired of your marketing getting little results?
Get the 5 steps to get more subscribers, engagement, and SALES this week! (And make it EASY!)

I NEED THIS!

Ep. 124 Three Keys to Grow Your Email List

by Torie Mathis | Digital Marketing, Email Marketing, Smart AF Show

Three Keys to Grow Your Email List

One of the greatest assets to your business is your email list. The ability to connect with your audience at any time, having 100% control of your communication, and not having to worry about any pesky algorithm to stifle your reach is powerful.

In this episode, Torie Mathis and her cohost Sean talk about 3 key strategies your business can use to grow your email list with ease and how YOU have the same power and opportunities as big business. It’s time to take action and take this power.

Listen or watch the full episode below:

SUBSCRIBE + LISTEN TO SMART AF ON:

EPISODE TRANSCRIPTION –
(transcription is auto-generated)

SAF 124

[00:00:00] Torie: As a patron of that business. Like I, and as a business owner, like I want to support him. I want to make sure he doesn’t go under. If he would’ve sent an email out the week, they opened back up, like we would have been there. And I’m sure a lot of other people would have been there. But he didn’t collect the email and he didn’t set up these systems.

And all this says is just a little bit of pre-planning and setting this up, up, and using tools that are available to anybody. These tools aren’t expensive. They’re not hard to set up. They’re not only available for Pizza Hut or Kroger or, you know, Barnes and Noble or whatever. Like anybody can set this stuff up.

Hey, what’s up. It’s Torie Mathis, your host, and I am here with the one and only Sean Mathis, founder of Miles Through Time Automotive Museum.

[00:00:54] Sean: That’s true.

[00:00:55] Torie: Yeah. We see a lot of businesses spending money, promoting their business, whether it be online or offline, maybe they have a sale, they get people in the door, but there is one thing that they are missing.

That drives me crazy because if you’re going to be spending any money on promotion, there is one thing you need to be getting from everybody that you come in contact. What’s that that is their email address. If you aren’t doing any type of like ads online, like we see people running Facebook ads and you know what?

I am so happy that they are running Facebook ads, because like I’ve said a bazillion times, it is a fantastic opportunity to get in front of more people than you ever have before. But we see people sending Facebook ads to some weird places. Maybe to a copy of their newsletter without even a way to sign up for it, maybe to a picture maybe just to their home website, but they have no way on that website to collect an email address.

[00:01:55] Sean: Right yeah. Not to mention they might be spending money, marketing a car to somebody in Georgia for a dealership that is located in Hawaii.

[00:02:05] Torie: Well, yeah, we, we can’t start talking about well, okay. Yes. Yeah. There are some, some audience issues that we see. We’re talking about email addresses, Sean Mathis, you have to collect an email address from all of these people.

And we talked about the dog groomer a lot because I went and took the dog to the dog groomer to get his nails cut. And then couldn’t remember the name of the dog groomer place. The people at the dog grooming place, never got my email address and never invited me back in. And when it’s a service like, you know, cutting or dog grooming things that you go to often a massage, all of these things, if they would have gotten my email address and emailed me periodically to say, Hey, Torie you should come back in like the chance of me coming back in.

Would have been super high because I already went to them. I liked them. I trusted them. They didn’t kill the dog, that if they would have got my email address, they would have been able to invite me back in. But they did not. They did nothing.

[00:03:08] Sean: Oh, it would’ve made it easier for you as a customer to go back in as well. If they would have taken the time to get your email address, then you wouldn’t even have to think about it. They could just send you a reminder, Hey, it’s been six months or whatever, and, you know, bring the dog back in and get the nails taken care of. Oh, and here’s this upsell that you can do.

[00:03:28] Torie: Absolutely. So if you have people walking in the door or if you’re advertising to people, if you grab that email address to them, that is probably one of the most valuable things that you can get from them. Because by having that email address, that gives you a direct contact to them that you could always email them, which.

Is very, very inexpensive. Like it’s so much more expensive to try to reach back out to them in some other way. But if you just have an email address and if you’re building that email list, then you have the ability to contact people that already know you to invite them to come back in.

[00:04:03] Sean: Yeah. If you can sell something to a customer and you can sell them and you have something else to sell them again. You need their email address.

[00:04:13] Torie: You know what, to some of the people that do email all the time are like people that like, it’s the, it’s not going to work. Car dealerships, we buy a car and then they keep emailing. You. It’s like, dude, I buy a car once every however many years. Like those people are doing such a great job at emailing get, they don’t have the repeatable business yet.

They realize that if they can keep you knowing who they are and try to keep that relationship until you’re ready, you know, there’s something there. But most businesses probably like your business, probably like our businesses. You could probably sell somebody something tomorrow, even if they already bought from you last week.

Like it’s definitely possible, especially if your business is one that has cycles in it, seasons in it where people have to come back again and again, and that email address is one of the most valuable things that you can buy. Some people, I think maybe aren’t exactly sure how to build an email list. If they’ve done some pretty good jobs, both for clients and for ourselves.

And so we have some tips today on how you can build an email list. Sean Mathis has built a pretty great email list for Miles Through Time and for Automotive Museum Guide. And your number one email building tool is Kartra. Sean has a pop-up powered by Kartra that anytime anybody comes to the website, it pops up and people feel that bad boy.

[00:05:33] Sean: Yeah. I mean, the, was it, I think it was Automotive Museum Guide. We did not put the pop-up on there initially, but we did have a sign up form just on the footer. And again, that was like, we had talked about in a different episode of just doing it before you’re completely ready and this exactly what we did here.

And I wish I’d thought about it when we did that episode cause that was one of the things like we created it initially and then just, you know, we put the form on there cause we know the importance of collecting an email, but there was no plan.

[00:06:08] Torie: What we’re going to do, but you can start to build. And like, like Sean said, mistake that we made there, you can start to build an email list, even if you’re not sure what you’re going to do to it yet.

Once you do start to email your list, like people may be like, who the heck are you? But at least you started, like, I think that’s definitely a step that you need to take. And you’d be surprised at how many people will actually sign up for your email list. Like once Sean put that pop-up on there, like it’s our biggest one. Like every single week.

[00:06:36] Sean: We get before the pop-up form was on there is I find like the email list just grew super fast for not having the pop-up form on there, not having an offer at all. Really other than sign up for updates random ass car museums, you know, it wasn’t something specific and yet people were super willing to give their email.

And I think we had, I think the list got almost two. It was over 600 by the time then finally put the pop-up form on there and then that really expedited the whole thing. And then even after doing that, there still, wasn’t a plan of like, what we do with this. We just know we should add a pop-up so we can collect even more emails.

And then it, I think a couple of it was only a couple months ago. We were like, okay, we should probably. Doing something with this list and you know, everything kind of just lined up where we have more time to do stuff with it and everything like that. But just putting it out there, enabled it to grow from nothing to something substantial. Within a relatively short amount of time.

[00:07:41] Torie: So you would be surprised at the amount of people that would probably sign up for your email list, even if you just offered it to them. Now, offering it through them with a pop-up I think is a fantastic idea. There are popups that are not as aggressive as pop-ups used to be.

So there’s different ways that you can set up a pop-up we happen to use Kartra for ours because that’s the system that we use to collect our emails. We email out of, we have memberships and they’re like, it’s an all in one email platform. It’s like one of our favorites that we use. So that is what we use for our pop-up.

So you definitely want to have that kind of ability on your website so that you can collect emails. We were watching some TV not that long ago. And there was an artist on there that I found that I really liked. And so I was like remembering her name. And I went the next day and looked her up and I found her, she was on Instagram, but she doesn’t post on there.

And I’m like, I’m not going to follow somebody on Instagram that doesn’t post went to her website. She had a website, but there was no way for me to sign up for anything. And I was super bummed because I’m sure eventually she’s going to do stuff, but she actually went on a TV show, put herself in front of all of these tens of thousands of people. I mean, the show is on Netflix, but was that, do you remember what I’m talking about?

[00:08:51] Sean: I remember just talking about, but I don’t remember who she is. It was one of those content shows, right?

[00:08:57] Torie: It’s one of those art contest shows. Like, I can’t remember what it is. From reality show.

Right. But, you know, I just, I thought her art was so neat and I really wanted to be able to see if she was doing something, just to be able to remember who it is, because you see so many things that you can’t remember, all of this stuff. So being on somebody’s email list is a way that they can, they can remember who you are.

So if that. You know, putting herself out on this TV show have had an email list. Is that what it was?

[00:09:23] Sean: Yeah.

[00:09:23] Torie: Okay. If they would have had an email list that’s right, because it was one that they took all these different artists and it had different type of art. And then they took them into body painting, but none of them had body painted before. So it was trying to see like what kind of artistic abilities they brought into it. And her stuff was awesome. And so, you know, she had this opportunity to get in front of all of these people, but then had no way to make that relationship and keep that connection with them. So if you’re out there at an event grab, people’s email address, if you have a website, which I know you do, like grab their email address. If you do ads, if you have social, like whatever it is, like the email address is like so important and people will sign up for it. Yes. Go ahead.

[00:10:05] Sean: It’s like back in the day. Businesses that were like sales companies. They wanted somebody phone number so they can get them on the phone and call them. They want your address so they can mail you stuff nowadays email is gold like that, that is the way to do it.

[00:10:23] Torie: Not to go buy a bullshitty email list, because those are people who don’t know you when somebody actually gives you their email. Like they are saying, please contact me again because I like you.

[00:10:34] Sean: Pay attention to a business. I don’t remember who it was. It was some smaller place retail shop at, during checkout. You know, they’re doing the whole thing. They’ve asked for an email, you know, places, even like Old Navy or something like some of the larger chains there, they’re making it part of their sales process at during checkout while you’re physically there, they want to know your email.

[00:10:59] Torie: And it’s kind of. At trick and you know, that’s my next thing is like, what can you offer them for them to give you the email? A lot of times there’s an exchange happening there. So in a lot of those places, they’re like, can I email you? You receipt why? Yes. Well then you’re on their email list. Like they’re going to email you promotional thing. After that can, do you want 10% off your next you know, time? Do you want to join our club and get 10% off, the grocery store does it, the grocery store, everybody, like they have everybody’s phone number and email because that’s how you get their little club card. And that’s how you get the percentage off when you get to the register. Like they’ve thought this stuff out. And so you’re so used to already giving your email address out with two businesses for different reasons that if you asked for people’s email address, especially offer them something, something, it doesn’t even have to be crazy. Like it can be something simple. They’ll give it to you.

[00:11:49] Sean: And the ones that don’t, don’t worry about it.

[00:11:52] Torie: But I guarantee that there are probably, if you’re not collecting email addresses, I guarantee there’s probably somebody out there that was like PM. I wish I could have gave them them my email address. So another way that you can get people’s email addresses, if you have like a time-sensitive offer and you only have it for a certain amount of time. And I think this can really work for people who are doing Facebook ads. If you’re going to be spending money on ads, whether it be Facebook or YouTube or Google ads, like if you have a way to offer them something and have it time sensitive, like we’re only doing it today, then that’s a way that you can definitely collect a lot more email addresses because people have that phone.

[00:12:31] Sean: Okay, thank you. A lot of places they might offer their goods online, you know, and maybe it’s not a strictly online business, where they only sell stuff online, but maybe they, they sell stuff online. Like for example, my Miles Through Time we have a gift shop t-shirts all that kind of stuff available there, but we also have all that stuff and more available online.

Now, the thing is, is if anybody orders something online, I’m going to collect their email address in the system that sells the goods. But unless I actually take that email and do something with it. It’s not really doing me any good, but it’s there, you know, so. Chances are, if you, you have some sort of system set up where you’re selling stuff online, that you’re, you are collecting the email, you just need to direct it towards, you know, whatever service here, whether it’s Kartra or something like that, that you can then add to your list because they had purchased something from you.

And they are a customer at that point. Same with like old school somebody comes in and. Writes their email address on the guest registry book. That thing, heck yeah, I’m copying that down. I’m adding it to the list myself. You’d be surprised. Like people put it out there, like it’s nothing and, you know, utilize it.

[00:13:51] Torie: And we’ve talked about it before a really good example to look at. Is the dentist. I love using the dentist as an example because the dentist services you don’t really want to go to yet, they get you to come back at least twice a year. All the time, because they tell you that they have to, they either call you or text you or email you and let you know it’s time for you to come back.

Now, any business that collects emails, especially service-based businesses could totally do this exact same thing. And have it set up as an automatic sequence because some of this stuff I think that people think it’s too hard to like get the stuff started and to be able to email these people all the time.

But the nice thing about. Stuff like Kartra, which we use is that you can set up automatic sequences. So you only write the email once and then you schedule it out for anybody when they join. So once they come in, you would put them on the sequence and then in six weeks or whatever they say you need to come back.

Hey, you haven’t been here for awhile. Maybe you should come back in and it, any business can set this type of thing up. It is not something difficult. You know, you go to Riley and I went to this little bread place, Atlanta Bread Company, and we went and had lunch and they had, I don’t remember how they got my address.

Oh, I know what it was to sign up for their wifi. You had to give them your email. And then they were like, yep. And within like an hour or two, they said, we want you to come back. Here’s 10. Oh, here’s and get a free bakery item the next time you come back even left yet? I don’t think so. You know, but they already, and now they’re sending me like, here’s our, you know, fall is coming.

Here’s what we have for fall. You know, you should come back in for lunch. And so, because I use their wifi, which they could have just given me the wifi, because so many places do, they got the email and now they’re marketing to me. And because it’s not too much. And because it’s stuff that has to do with what I came in there for, you know To eat lunch.

So they’re going to give me stuff about lunch. You know, they’re not all of a sudden going to start emailing me about something totally different. What they’re emailing me about has to do with what I came in for. So I want the emails, I’m fine with that. Cool. Riley’s like, I didn’t get a free bakery item.

I’m like, maybe you need to sign up for wifi when we come in and make sure that you get one to see, he wanted to be added to the list. He wanted the email and that gives them one more customer for them to market.

[00:16:14] Sean: Yeah. And I mean, even if they send that email and at the time that that Tori receives it, she’s not ready to go back in yet or anything like that. So they don’t, they don’t turn that into an immediate sale. What they have still done is keeping their themselves top of mind, you know, it’s, she’s not ready to go back just yet, but maybe by the next email you send out and, you know X amount of time. A lot, lot better than never sending anything. And then you’re like where was that place we had to add again?

[00:16:46] Torie: Right. Well, where’s that place? I had the good grilled cheese Riley knows the place, their email him now. And he asked to go back and he wants his free bakery item.

[00:16:56] Sean: The whole reason, these places you want to know when your birthday is, you know, that’s another excuse to then send you an email and tell you to come in for their free. Cupcake or whatever, because that’s not all you’re going to get, you’re going to buy more stuff.

[00:17:08] Torie: Right. And you probably gonna bring somebody with you. And I think any business that is that type of business, like if it’s a food type thing, I guess even if it was a retail, like do the birthday thing, like it’s a super easy way.

You can set it up on your website. You can use something like Kartra to set it up and have one of the fields be birthday. Then that gives you once a year. Right now you have a sequence, so you can have it set up there. When this person’s birthday month is, or however you want to set it up a month before you send out this one email and that’s something that any business can set up.

It’s not that difficult. It’s not very hard. All you have to do is just have it set up and collect that data. No. And even if you, you don’t have the birthday club thing set up yet collect the data anyway, cause then you could be like Sean and have, you know, a list already built and you’re like, shit, I need to set my birthday club up.

You know, if you can set it up earlier, like, that’s great. But like you need to start building your list today. Like right now, like you need to start building it right. Because then when you have a slow day, when you have a slow week, when you have something like fucking coronavirus happen, you can contact your customers, let them know what’s going on, let them know how you can help them.

Like, think of all of these restaurants in this past year, I think about this all the time. And I’m like, man, some of these people just missed out. Like if all of these restaurants were collecting email addresses, they could have been like, I have delivery. If you live in this area, We will deliver or we have pickup or whatever it would have been.

And there are so many that never had anything. And so I think some of these big businesses, Pizza Hut, you know, that kind of thing, like those people won because they had these systems set up, but anyone, anybody can set these systems up. Like, I wish that our Indian buffet had the system set up because I would have loved to have known when they were opening.

Yeah. We drove by there every once in a while. And it’s like looking and we’re like, Nope, I think they’re closed when that had been so nice that he would have sent an email.

[00:19:02] Sean: Yeah. Just let us know. You’re still open under the, you know, the last year that we’ve been in. There’s a lot of places you have no idea if they’re even open anymore.

[00:19:11] Torie: Yeah. That Indian restaurant, we went in there. Like I don’t like eating like the buffet in the summer. It’s a little bit too heavy, but in the winter, oh, they have some good tomato soup in there. We would go in there and have. Couple of times a month, three times a month, I guess. Pretty good. And then this all happened.

And so we weren’t there, but as a patron of that business, like and as a business owner, like I want to support him. I want to make sure he doesn’t go under, if he would have sent an email out the week, they opened back up, like we would have been there. And I’m sure a lot of other people would have been there.

But he didn’t collect the email and he didn’t set up these systems. And all this says is just a little bit of pre-planning and setting this up, up and using tools that are available to anybody. These tools aren’t expensive. They’re not hard to set up. They’re not only available for Pizza Hut or Kroger or, you know, Barnes and Noble, or would it.

Anybody can set the stuff up. And the cool thing is, is that a lot of these things are, there’s a way in the system. Like we used MailChimp for some of our stuff. And the thing about MailChimp is like, when you get in there, you have to set every little thing up. Kartra I could actually set up a whole email sequence and I could share it with you, and then you would just have it in your account.

And so some of these nicer that actually aren’t even more expensive. They’re just a little more, I don’t know if you want to call it sophisticated. There’s ways that you can share these things and set these up ahead of time. It makes it so easy. So easy sean Mathis, do you agree.

[00:20:38] Sean: So easy? I can do it.

[00:20:39] Torie: Sean is not a tech guy. Sean is not you know, the marketing degree, Sean hasn’t done this a whole bunch of stuff, but Sean gets in there and he does the stuff himself. You’re amazing sean Mathis.

[00:20:52] Sean: It is known.

[00:20:53] Torie: I think you need to be the one that’s preaching to people. Preach Sean Mathis, tell them that they need to set up some processes.

[00:21:03] Sean: Yeah. I mean, even. I could see how a lot of the other smaller car museums would never even think of this kind of thing. Cause they’re, they’re looking at just seeing, you know, visitors come through their door and not realizing those visitors might come through again or tell their friends or, you know, whatever the case may be and they should be collecting those visitors emails, every single one of them.

[00:21:32] Torie: Or they could be emailing their entire list and say, Hey, we have a great opportunity to get this display, this magical vehicle that we’ve always wished we want, but we don’t have the funds. We’re looking for a donation. You would you help us out like the opportunity? That the email presents because I really think people want to help out businesses. But if you don’t know that these businesses need help, if the Indian guy that the restaurant didn’t say, Hey, we’re open now. Come support. Like we didn’t know, like we drive by, it looks empty. Like if the museum doesn’t send out an email, like nobody knows, but I think people want to support you.

They want to support your business, but they have to. Be able to know, and you can say, well, I’m on social media. And I post on social media with like every other person’s posts on social media too. Like there’s a lot of competition there, how the algorithm works these days is that if you don’t put money behind it, there’s a big chance that like one, 2% of your people might see it and people might miss it. They’re not going to miss an email that you send to them though. Not as likely.

[00:22:35] Sean: But even that, like, you’re only still going to reach so many people. So your email, so you, you do need to have, you know, grow the email list, have the social media and, and, and do all these different things you can do, knowing that you’re still not gonna reach everybody.

I mean, we, we do events and you know, you can put ads in paper and beyond the, the biggest local television show there is and do all these different things. And you’re still going to miss people, you know? So you might as well try to do everything you can. And one of the easiest, best things you can do is collect the email.

Yeah, it

[00:23:12] Torie: definitely covers your bases. And it definitely at least get a hold of some of the people that wanted to support you. Cause you’re right. You have, Sean has events and there’s people like in the town that the museum is, and they’re like, well, we didn’t even know you were there like crazy like yeah, people still may not know, but at least it gives you a foot in the door.

At least it gives you a community of people that want to support you. And this isn’t something that’s only available to like big businesses. Like everybody can do this should do this. Yeah.

[00:23:43] Sean: It’s worth itself or what it would cost to pay for something like Kartra, which still isn’t much. But you sending an email to your existing customers and collecting emails and creating new customers.

Like it, it more than pays for itself. So you can’t even, you can’t even use like, well, it costs money to have software like that E everything costs money, but that will make you money.

[00:24:08] Torie: You just need to take this as it’s just another one of those, you know, cost of businesses, things like having electricity, you wouldn’t like say we’re only going to be open when we can it’s light outside and we can open the windows, you know?

It’s just one of those things that you it’s part of running business is part of running business, especially today, where there’s so many people and your business is probably in touch with so many people that you have a way to build this relationship with people and build a community of customers that will support you that want to support you.

And that you can continue to build this relationship with. It’s not just for these big companies. We have new shows every Tuesday and Thursday. Sean, do you have anything else to add?

[00:24:48] Sean: Tuesday and Thursday?

[00:24:50] Torie: I wasn’t sure if I was interrupting you, we have new shows every Tuesday and Thursday, and we would love it. If you would come and check us out and say, we’ll see you on the next one. Thanks.