*This may have been autogenerated and may not be 100% accurate or grammatically correct.

00:00 Encourage email list growth for highest conversions.
05:51 Offer valuable lead magnet for free or low cost.
08:35 Follow-up with welcome sequence to onboard leads.
12:07 Email marketing: value, offer, transition, strategy.

*This may have been autogenerated and may not be 100% accurate or grammatically correct.

In a previous episode, I spoke about why it’s important to grow your email list as opposed to spending your time primarily on social media trying to build up followers, trying to get likes, and trying to get views. Because ultimately, you are on borrowed land or borrowed media and not actually on an owned platform, which is what I encourage people to do. You need to own your own platform and not be beholding to third-party platforms like Facebook, Instagram, and all of these other social media platforms. Social media platforms have their place, yes, and you can actually get some traction on there. But people’s default is to actually just post post post. And unfortunately, it is not where you get the best leads that actually turn actually turn into sales. Because, one is that most people don’t actually see your content nowadays, on the popular social media platforms. And, they’re not necessarily there to buy.

Marlon McPherson00:01:06 – 00:02:21

So it’s very difficult right now. So I encourage people all the time to grow their email list. If you wanna check out my thoughts, go to episode number 44 of the podcast and listen to that episode. But what I wanna do is today focus on actually 3 things that you need to do, or need to have in place to get started with email marketing, which is what I encourage you to do is to grow your email list and actually deliver your marketing via email because it has the highest possible conversions you could have ever imagined of all the other platforms, of all the other marketing channels that you could focus on including social media or even paid ads or anything like that. Email marketing is, one of the highest converting or the best converting at this point in time, and it has been for a long time, and it will be into the future based on how things are going. And that is the way that you own your own digital asset, and you have more control over your messaging and who sees your messaging and how you can actually form that narrative and and that experience to convert leads into sales coming up in this episode. We’ll dive into that. Hey.

Marlon McPherson00:02:21 – 00:03:22

If you’re new here to my content, my name is Marlon, and you can find me at marlonmcpherson.com. Audio content like this to help you build and grow your business around your knowledge and expertise, especially with your website, your online content, and your email marketing. So like I said, today’s episode is gonna focus on 3 things that you will need to do or need in place to actually get started with email marketing. Well, actually before I jump into this, I wanna talk to you about a free thing that I’m giving away, which is going to help you make your website more profitable, by converting more sales more leads and sales on your website and your online systems. And this is gonna be in the form of a checklist that you can download completely for free. You can grab that at marlon macpherson.com/checklist. You can actually, see bullet points with everything on there that I outline. And if you go through those steps, you’ll be able to, see better conversions on your website.

Marlon McPherson00:03:22 – 00:04:06

So go ahead and check that out. Now the first thing that you wanna do if you’re going to get started with email marketing is to have an email marketing platform or an email list platform or software in place. Now this is the thing that’s going to actually have your email list in place. You’re going to store the email contacts in this platform. Now there there there are many ways to do this. There are many platforms out there that you can sign up to with either free or paid accounts. And they allow you the facilities to, capture email addresses and store them in your email list. So then you can actually start communicating by sending out emails to these people.

Marlon McPherson00:04:06 – 00:04:50

So popular ones out there examples of, some popular ones are, Mailchimp, which a lot of people might have heard of because they have like a really generous free plan that you can start with. There’s active campaign. There’s MailerLite, which is one that I actually recommend. They’ve they’ve they’ve got a free tier as well that you can start with, and it’s pretty clean and simple and easy to use. I have a video or actually multiple videos out on that, and I’ve done a while back so you can actually search my YouTube channel for that. There’s ConvertKit, and there’s also fluent CRM, which is actually one that I use more now. It’s WordPress-based. So if you have a WordPress website, this is actually a plug in that you can dual on your WordPress website.

Marlon McPherson00:04:51 – 00:05:50

And it then gives you your own email marketing platform right there within your website, so you don’t have to rely on these third-party platforms, and it comes with all the benefits of giving you flexibility and all of that that when you build out your own things on your own platform, this is what you get to do. Now I do have a video that gives you some tips on how you can get started with FluentCRM. You can check that out on my YouTube channel as well. I’ll leave a link inside the description so you can actually go and check that one out. So that is the first thing you need to do. You need to sign up with a platform, and that then gives you the ability to start capturing email addresses and storing them in a database that you can then contact and follow up with, when you’re ready to do so. So the second thing that you need to have in place is a way for people to, get incentivized, to join your list. And this is in the form of a lead magnet.

Marlon McPherson00:05:51 – 00:06:53

So you need a lead magnet in place, and this is essentially going to be something you either give away for free or something you provide at a very, very low cost to the point where it becomes a no-brainer for someone to actually sign up for this thing, right, or to purchase or get it for free, whichever one you go with. Most people offer something for free, because that’s the lowest barrier to entry. So for example, I mentioned the checklist earlier that I’m giving away. This is something that is valuable to you because it’s going to help you, solve the problem that you have. And by signing up for it, you join my email list, and I get to send it to you. As well as I will be sending you additional tips, and resources once you sign up to my email list for that checklist. Okay? So this is essentially one way that you could do it. Another example of what you could do is, give away, like, a training or a free course or it could be, like I said, a low-cost offer as well.

Marlon McPherson00:06:53 – 00:07:46

Essentially, this is to get people in in the door, a foot-in-the-door offer type of thing. And once they’re in the door, you can actually start, upselling and, building that relationship to to basically, get them to, buy your product or service or your flagship product or service. Now what you wanna do is promote your lead magnet. If it’s a free lead magnet, you wanna, mention it in your content, on your website. You wanna also promote it on social media. So when you do post to social media, your goal should be to get people across to your lead magnet so they can sign up. So on, in a practical way that you could do this is you could use your LinkedIn bio to actually on say on Instagram, use your LinkedIn bio, to send people to your lead magnet. And that way you can start capturing email addresses and building your list.

Marlon McPherson00:07:47 – 00:08:34

Another way you could do it is by leaving links in your description on YouTube or on LinkedIn or wherever you can post links, inside your content. Or just mention it if you have a podcast or anything like that. You wanna mention your lead magnet. Obviously, this needs to be in line with your service or product that you’re going to eventually offer to your email subscriber. The third thing that you need in place is an email sequence. So this is going to be a set of strategic emails that will get sent out automatically once someone joins your email list. Now first of all, the email, automation needs to be in place for you to deliver the lead magnet the lead magnet. Right? So that’s, that’s the start of things.

Marlon McPherson00:08:35 – 00:09:50

However, once people get your lead magnet, you need to also follow-up with them, to get them to basically onboard into your brand or your business. So you need to get them to, you need is well, first of all, you need a welcome sequence. People call it that. People call it an onboarding sequence. I try to call it a welcome sequence these days because it is basically welcome them welcoming them into your ecosystem, into the inside, or the inner circle of what you’re doing. And they’re gonna get to know your brand and build a stronger connection because you’re going to use stories and, reassure them that they’ve made the right decision and set the expectations for what you’re going to do to help them by providing them with even more resources and guidance through your emails so they can actually feel like they’ve made the right decision to be, part of your inner circle joining your email list. So essentially what you’re doing is you’re nurturing them and preparing them to then purchase your product or service, which you’re going to eventually offer to them, throughout these emails that you’re going to send them. So it needs to be strategic that it builds up to your offer.

Marlon McPherson00:09:50 – 00:10:40

And this is essentially how you make more sales on autopilot because this is gonna do the work for you. You just need to write those emails once and set them up in your email marketing platform to then send these out strategically to your subscribers. So, in practical terms, how this would look is that you have 3 to 5 emails in place. So the 1st email, as I’ve mentioned, would send out the, the link for them to get the lead magnet. Once they’ve obviously confirmed that they wanna be on your email list, you don’t wanna sign people up. This is a big no-no. You don’t wanna have people, on your list that you that haven’t given you permission to send them emails. So, when you sign them up, you’ll have the option to give them a double opt-in, which you should be doing, where they say, they get an email to say, hey.

Marlon McPherson00:10:41 – 00:11:25

You know, please click this link to confirm that you wanna join our email list and obviously get the thing that you requested. This way, you’re covering yourself and you won’t get into any problems. If people people say, oh, why are you emailing me? Then you have that confirmation to say, yes. This is what you did. You confirmed. And, you’re protected essentially because of GDPR and other rules and and laws across the world. You wanna be safe and you don’t wanna get into trouble for sending p, unsolicited emails, marketing emails that is. Right? So once they join your email list and they get the lead magnet, you can include, an introductory, some introductory information inside that email to say, hey.

Marlon McPherson00:11:26 – 00:12:07

This is who we are. This is what we do, and this is how we’re gonna help you, and what you can expect from us. Right? And then you can send another email the following day, to say, hey. Here’s another, piece of value that I’m giving to you. So you wanna give them value upfront. So this could be something that you’ve already, another resource that you’ve already got that you wanna link them to that’s gonna actually help them more. Could be a piece of content, that’s related. And, then the next email that comes out is going to introduce your product or service that is going to actually help them get results faster or help them get results, in a much more, effective way.

Marlon McPherson00:12:07 – 00:13:12

And this is a natural segue and a natural transition. If you’re doing it across 3 emails, that’s how it could be value value and then your offer. Or you could go 5 emails and then, you know, you do value value value, and a transition in the middle to mentioning your offer, and then you do your offer in the last 2 emails, by just focusing on different angles of it or whatever the case might be to get people to sign up. So This is what you need to have in place at the bare minimum, to really get started with email marketing. Once you’ve got this in place, then you can always tack on additional email sequences. You can see how people how how things are, working for you, how people are reacting to your lead magnet, and what the conversions are. You can see how people are actually reacting to your emails, whether they actually are clicking your links and whether they are actually engaged, and, just test things out. But you need to have at minimum something in place strategically like this to get up and running.

Marlon McPherson00:13:12 – 00:14:11

Now I hope this makes sense to you. If you have any sort of like comments on this, leave me a comment inside the YouTube video or you can reach me on my website as usual. If you know someone that this could be helpful to, just share it with them, share this content with them, and, I’m pretty sure they’ll be appreciative of it. Now, of course, like I said, go ahead and grab my free checklist that helps you, with optimising your website and your online systems to get more conversions for your, leads and sales, by using all of these things that I’m talking about here and, first of all, getting them into your ecosystem on the website. Check that out at marlonmcpherson.com forward slash checklist. Now if you want to continue learning and consuming more of my content, check out any links that I’ve left for you to go on to another this inside the description or something that might be linked on screen right now inside the video. Speak to you soon.

Getting Started with Email Marketing ｜ 3 Things You Need – FSC Ep 81Future Steps Creative