Jason: (00:04)
Coming to you from a small mountain town high in the Colorado Rockies, my name is Jason Owens and this is The Renewable Confidence Podcast — a show that gives you confidence in yourself and in your business every day.

In this episode we’re going to talk about one simple thing, and that is if you don’t have an email list. Yeah, one great Scott, this is one of the most powerful marketing tools that you can ever have is a good opt in email list and please note that I said an opt in email list and by that I mean people who want to be on your list. I do not mean that you just start grabbing every email that you can find at every chamber business function, something that you sent know to somebody three years ago in your outbox grabbing that email address and throwing them on a, into an email marketing program.

Jason: (00:59)
I do not mean that. No, no, no, no, no. I mean people who want what you have, people who are interested in what you do. People who clearly have raised their hand and said, Hey, I want you to send me marketing. Isn’t that just the coolest thing? I want you to think about that for a minute. If somebody has subscribed to an email list that you have or if somebody has agreed to be on your email list, they are essentially asking you to send them enticements to buy stuff. That’s just the coolest thing in the world and it just makes me excited. All right, so if you have been tracking with me for any amount of time, you know that I absolutely categorically 100% love email marketing and I’ll tell you what it is still in this day and age, one of the most powerful ways to generate sales at scale and by scale of course, I mean you can sit down at a table and you can have a one on one conversation with a business owner or with a husband, wife, right?

Jason: (01:59)
So you can do that and, but I hope you’re making a lot of money in that transaction because you couldn’t have had 102 hundred 500 conversations by email. I mean at scale and those people would end up doing just as much if not more business at scale. Okay? So that same amount of time that you can have one conversation with a husband, wife, couple or one conversation with a business owner and you could be literally asking 500 people to do business with you. So with regards to an email list, people are always asking, Hey, how in the world do I even get started? How do I do this? Well, okay, so say that you are a retailer and you will set up a booth at a show. All right, so you’ve got your booth there and maybe this is going to be like a weekend event, you know, so it’s a holiday thing or it’s a some kind of a conference.

Jason: (02:51)
So you have your booths set up and you know there’s going to be a ton of people there. Holy cow, come up with any and every creative way that you can to get people to sign up for your email list at your booth. And that doesn’t need to be something super high tech. It can literally be a clipboard with a pen attached to it, right? So what I do recommend, however, is that you don’t just have a column on that that says name and address. You should probably have a description up at the top that says something along these lines. Sign up for our email list, sign up for our advertisements, a sign up for our list. You may even want to give them some kind of a bonus and we’ll send you a 15% off coupon, right? But what you need to have in there is you need to have the wording so that people realize they are signing up specifically for your email list and that they will see, receive periodic communication from you.

Jason: (03:47)
Okay, so if you really need the specifics on that, go ahead and Google like MailChimp, a permission form or something like that. Or one of the other tools that you might be using. Say maybe you’re using constant contact, they’re going to have some wording that they want to see up at the top of that form. Now why is that really super important? You might be thinking, Jason, isn’t that a little overkill? It’s total overkill until your account gets shut down. And somebody from one of those compliance departments calls you and says, or send you an email saying, Hey, the only way we can turn your account back on is if you start proving to us that these people, uh, truly opted into your list. Okay? In that case, what you end up doing, you take a picture of that address or have that sheet that you used at the, at the show, and that sheet clearly is going to say, Hey, you are signing up to get my periodic, uh, email advertisements in your inbox, right?

Jason: (04:37)
And that’s going to be what bails you out. That will be what gets your account turned back on. So if you’re going to use a paper, at least, at least have some kind of disclaimer up on the top of it. All right? Second way that you can do it, say that you have a retail store at a minimum. Great. Scott, this is so easy to do. Uh, iPads are so prevalent right now. You can probably find a secondhand one somewhere. You don’t want to get one that’s too, too old. Um, and here’s a reason why. What you want to do is you want to go ahead and use a, a, an app in the app store. It’s called, the app is called M C, that’s M as in Mary, C as in champion, subscribe, and really that emcee that stands for MailChimp subscribe. This app is not created by MailChimp, but what it allows you to do, it allows you to take your iPad and turn it into a constant, always on signup form.

Jason: (05:32)
So if the a iPad goes to sleep, the moment you wake it up, this signup form is what they see. You don’t have to turn on the app, you don’t have to go find the form. The form is just going to be there, right? So you can set your wake time on your iPad to never go to sleep or always stay awake whenever it’s plugged in. You know, however you wanna do that. Um, there’s a store just right down the away from us. Uh, they collect emails every day, all day long because they have the blasts, that iPad right there, I have to register and it’s always on. And people walk by, they see the screen, they’re looking at that nice pretty nature background. Oh yeah, I’ll sign up for your email list and they just build an email list like crazy. So it’s really awesome.

Jason: (06:15)
Awesome stuff. Next idea. Um, if you happen to use Eventbrite for any kind of, any kind of event that you do, say maybe you’re an author and you’re gonna have a book signing or you do talks, right? So you might travel around, you’re an expert in some area and you do talks. If you use Eventbrite heavens to Betsy link that Eventbrite to your email account, that is brain dead easy to go do, right? So you linked that thing together. You don’t even have to worry about people signing up for your email list at your event because if they’ve registered for your event, they’re automatically going to be in there and be subscribed. So that is absolutely, absolutely dynamite. So you have that. Um, if you are more of the face to face person, right? So you’re at a a chamber event, you’re at a networking function.

Jason: (07:03)
When you are exchanging business cards with people, just use some verbiage like, Hey, listen, do you mind if I put you on my list? I don’t, I won’t blow up your inbox and you can unsubscribe at any time. And usually something along that lines. We’ll get people to go ahead and say, yeah, yeah, sure, go ahead. In fact, every time that I’ve used that face to face, I can’t tell you that I’ve ever had anyone say, Oh no, I don’t want to be on your list. Now these guys may go back and unsubscribe two days later, which is totally fine, but they are face to face, man. I’ve not had it happen where someone’s like, Oh golly, jeepers, no, don’t put me on your list. So just ask right a next thing here in the last one major point that I’ll have is run a reconnect campaign.

Jason: (07:48)
Okay? And just use some kind of a one off email. This is something that, that I teach people in my program you use, just use some real simple text that says something like, Hey, listen, we, we were connected two years ago, three years ago, or at some point we bumped into each other. Gosh, is it okay if I put you on my list? I’m doing some really cool things these days. I just want to make sure you’re included, right? Something along those lines and send that email out to people that you used to work with two years ago, three years ago, uh, people that haven’t heard from you in a while, right? Send that out. And what’s going to happen is they’ll just end up replying, right? So you obviously have to give them that direction. Just reply. Yes. So let me know that you want to be on the list, that email, save that email for the same compliance reason that I mentioned earlier when you’re using paper.

Jason: (08:34)
So you truly have proof that someone said, yeah, add me to your list. Okay? So anyway with that, you can end up building a pretty sizeable list and fairly short period of time using those five techniques that I just mentioned to you. All right, so, so that’s it. And again, email is such a powerful tool. Oh my word. If you are, if you are not using email, you are leaving all kinds of money on the table. So by all means, dive in there and go for it.

That’s one of the many things that we do in the Signature Program is we get people really, really versed on doing good email campaigns.

So we’d love to help you.

All right everyone, you guys take care and I’ll talk with you soon in the next episode. See you later. Bye. Bye.