Inspiring Women in Business Podcast - Episode 14 - Why You Need to Start Building Your List

podcast Sep 06, 2021

Have you been building your Email list? If this crossed your mind or you are starting to do it, this episode is for you.

In this episode, I give you nine compelling reasons why you need to start building your email list. Now. Listen up and enjoy!

Key takeaways from this episode:

Email marketing has been consistently something that is just always around, and it works.
Email and website are solid foundational parts of your strategy.
Your email list belongs to you.
Email is more popular than social media.
Email marketing is not a massive investment.
Email allows you to build and nurture relationships with a warm audience and build that trust and connection.
More people are looking at emails than social media accounts.
An email list is an integral part of your sales funnel.
The number of email subscribers is a good growth indicator for your business.

Episode Timeline:

00:04 Intro

01:08 Episode Intro

02:47 Your email list belongs to you

03:28 Email is more popular than social media

03:38 It’s not a massive investment

05:04 Email is personal

05:52 Easiest way to stay in touch

06:10 For the community

06:21 Sales funnel

06:28 Growth indicator

06:47 People who should not create an email list

07:10 Marketing strategy

07:54 Outro

More about Ruth:

Hi, I’m Ruth, a business coach specializing in helping freelancers and business owners adjust their mindset and their marketing so they can get fully booked with clients they LOVE to work with. I’ve helped hundreds of self-employed women achieve the time and money freedom they craved.

I’ve started this podcast because when I first went all in and left the corporate world to be a freelancer, I was grateful for any work that came my way. After over 20 years of freelancing and working for other people, I started to realize I’d created a glass ceiling for myself.

In 2017, I finally started listening to that voice that had been telling me for a long time that I wasn’t doing what I loved and fulfilling my true potential. It took a critical illness to give me that wake-up call. I don’t want the same to happen to you.

You can expect practical advice, inspiring stories, and a lot of aha moments as we uncover and kick to the curb all the obstacles you have been putting in your way.

I’m on a mission to inspire women to start and play bigger in business.

Connect and know more about Ruth here:

Coaching: https://www.ruthgilbey.com/coaching

Free stuff: https://www.ruthgilbey.com/next-client

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/ruthgilbeymarketingandcoaching/

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/ruth_gilbey/

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ruthgilbey/

Transcription:

Ruth Gilbey 00:04

Hello and welcome to the inspiring women in business podcast. My name is Ruth Gilbey, and I'm a business and marketing coach. I'm on a mission to inspire women to start and play bigger in business. Now I started this podcast because when I first went all in and left the corporate world to be a freelancer, I was just grateful for any work that came my way. After over 20 years of freelancing and working for other people, I started to realize I'd created a glass ceiling myself. It was in 2017 when I finally started listening to that voice that had been telling me for a long time that I wasn't doing what I loved, and I wasn't fulfilling my true potential. It took a critical illness to give me that wake-up call. And I don't want the same thing to happen to you. You can expect practical advice, interviews, inspiring stories, and a lot of aha moments as we uncover and kick to the curb all the obstacles you've been putting in your way.

Ruth Gilbey 01:08

Hello, and welcome to today's episode, where I just want to chat with you about email marketing. And I want to give you nine reasons why I think you should prioritize list building. Now, if you are at the beginning stages of your business, and you are thinking of starting a business, or you're a freelancer, and you're thinking about growing your business, it's really overwhelming when you think to get all this different advice from various people about what you shouldn't do in your business. But I believe one of the things that are really going to help your business move forward. And a solid, a really solid marketing strategy is email marketing because there are so many things that come and go, you know, there is one minute there's this newfound thing that people are saying, this is the thing that you need to be doing on social media, or you need to add this strategy or that strategy. But email marketing has been consistently something that is just always around, and it works. And it's something that we're on every single day, so many people are on it. So all these different fads will come and go. But email marketing hasn't gone anywhere. It's not dead. Some people have liked to say all the new thing is this, or the new thing is that, and some of these new things are amazing. But often, you'll find that these new things work well with email marketing. So it's a solid foundational part of your strategy, as is having a really, really good website. And I'm going to give you nine reasons why I think you should prioritize list building as part of your marketing strategy.

Ruth Gilbey 02:47

Number one is you own your list, your email list belongs to you, and you're not at the mercy of an algorithm change. You don't own your followers or fans on social media platforms, but you do own your email list. Besides your website, your email list is the only platform that you own. The other thing is when it comes to your email list, depending on and this is probably a podcast for another time, depending on how you build that list, you can actually build a list of customers and buyers. You're building a list of your ideal customers if you give them something if you give them a reason to sign up for that list, if your messaging is on point.

Ruth Gilbey 03:28

Number two is email is more popular than social media. A whopping 85% of web users are checking their email daily.

Ruth Gilbey 03:38

Number three is it's not a massive investment. There are actually email marketing tools, free email marketing tools with fantastic free functionality. Now when you're picking your email marketing tool, give yourself a deadline, don't spend ages procrastinating over what tool to use. Just pick something start using it. It's not the end of the world; if you need to swap tools, there are some. There are just so many tools out there. And the reason why you could post in a group and say which email marketing platform I should use, and what will happen is lots, and lots of people will just say, Oh, I love this or I love that because that's the one that they're actually using. So pick one start using it. The best email marketing tool is the one that you're going to use. It's a bit like a website platform as well. It's best just to get going with something and not use it as an obstacle to taking action.

Ruth Gilbey 04:31

What my advice is a couple of the ones that I really like. A really good free one that a lot of my members use is Mailerlight, it's free for the first 1000 subscribers, and it has some really good you can actually do some automation with it as well. So it's got really good functionality for a free tool. The one that I'm using at the moment is Active Campaign because it's got some really smarter ways of creating automation, but I haven't actually personally used mailer light. Still, loads and loads of my members use it and absolutely love it. So it's a great one to start out with.

Ruth Gilbey 05:04

Number four is, email is personal. It allows you to build and nurture relationships with a warm audience and build that trust and connection. And this is the mistake that a lot of people make that they actually start building their email lists, but they don't know what to say to them. They leave them hanging and don't email them regularly. They think once a month is enough, and it's not people who want to hear from you. People want help from you. People want value from you. So I think a lot of people get hung up and think I'm going to start bothering people by being in their inbox. And actually, I think the reverse I think if someone signs up for something, and they sign up from your to your email list, they want to hear from you. And if they don't hear from you, when they do hear from you sporadically, they will feel disconnected and strange with them, and they're more likely to unsubscribe.

Ruth Gilbey 05:52

The next thing is number five is the easiest way to stay in touch. And more people are actually looking at emails than social media accounts. Not everyone, unless they're massive massive fans, is going to be regularly checking your Instagram account or your blog, but they will be checking their emails every day. So that's number five.

Ruth Gilbey 06:10

Number six is you've got this instant and direct line of communication with your community. By building a list of ideal clients, you can connect with them via your email.

Ruth Gilbey 06:21

Number seven is your email list is an important part of your sales funnel. Really, really important.

Ruth Gilbey 06:28

Number eight is the number of subscribers you have tells you if your online business is growing or not, this is a really good indicator, and number nine is increasing your subscribers will result in an increase in sales there is there are benchmarks for how many people will buy from you depending on the size of your list if you've built it correctly.

Ruth Gilbey 06:47

So who shouldn't create an email list? Personally, I don't know many businesses that shouldn't have an email list. I think most bloggers and business owners should be trying to grow their email lists. But there is one exception. If you don't ever intend to sell a product or service of any kind, then you probably don't need an email list. But that isn't going to be many of you!

Ruth Gilbey 07:10

So those are my nine reasons why I believe you should prioritize list building. I understand that when you're growing your business when you're starting your business, it can feel like there's this pull to be on social media. Social media has the ability to make us feel like it's a complete marketing strategy. Social media is a brilliant way of building connections and relationships. And it is an important part of your sales funnel, your marketing strategy, but it's not a complete marketing strategy. I really believe that prioritizing your website and building your list. It's going to be a very powerful part of your marketing strategy.

Ruth Gilbey 07:54

Thanks for listening to the inspiring women in business podcast. I hope you found this episode helpful. If you did, I would love it if you would leave me a review. Also, I would love to connect with you on Instagram. That's where I hang out most of the time. I'm @Ruth_Gilbey. I'll put a link in the show notes for you as well come and connect with me. Tell me about your business. And also tell me what you'd like to hear next on the podcast. And lastly, go and check out the business building hub on my website. There you can find more amazing free resources to help you take the next step in your business. And you can also find out other ways that you can work with me. I'll see you soon.