Overcoming the Email List Growth Plateau

But what do you do when you’ve built a substantial list and start to experience “stalled” list growth? I think this is something every business owner will encounter. Things are going along swimmingly. Maybe you’ve let success lull you into a dream world where everything is just “easy” now… and then you realize you don’t have any prospects. Your email list is no bigger than the last time you made an offer.

So, how do you jump-start your email list growth? How do you attract new sales leads after a low-growth period? Here are four ways to get started:

1. Attract the right people.

   Consider the direction you’re taking your business. Are you moving from personalized to scaled offers? Are you looking to shift brand perceptions? Do you need to refocus on a product you’ve been working on? Are you honing in on a new market segment? Trust me, you don’t want anyone and everyone on your email list.

   Even if your goal is scale, it just doesn’t make sense. Having the “wrong” people on your list skews your data, undermines your understanding of what your customers need from your business, and misdirects your marketing. The “wrong” people will unsubscribe. But if you are too busy trying to please them, the “right” people will unsubscribe first.

2. Get focused.

   At this point, I hope you can see just how important list-building is to your small business. Even if your goal isn’t volume, if instead you’re aiming for a steady stream of leads, list-building ensures that you can spend less time and energy on sales. It takes surprisingly little effort to redirect the focus of your marketing activities into list-building. You just need to make the intention to do so.

   Start by creating a landing page for your opt-in form. The sole, and only, focus of this page is to get more people on your email list; it’s like a sales page where the only cost is an email address. A specific and proven framework for any sales letter can be taken into account when building this page. Your landing page should indicate the 4 P’s: Promise, Picture, Proof, Pitch. Check out my email list landing page and you’ll see this basic framework in action.

3. Pay for leads.

   Who pays for advertising in the age of social media? I do. I’m busy. I don’t like to work all day. I haven’t had the itch to do much in terms of guest posting, telesummits, or even networking lately. So I’ve been driving traffic to my email list landing page through paid advertising.

   In the past, I’ve advertised free incentives, never paid products, on blogs that fit the audience I aim to attract. But lately, I’ve been buying advertising on Facebook. First, to build up my new Facebook page (i.e., I’m late to the party). And second, to gain exposure for my email list incentive. A hearty portion of the 650 subscribers I’ve added in the last eight weeks have been attributed to a paid campaign.

   There’s little point in paying for leads if you don’t follow the first two steps. But once you do, paying for leads can free up your time, boost your email list growth, and bring in the kind of prospects you need to keep your revenue streams humming.

4. Stick to one thing.

   One of the best things you can do to keep your email list growing, get people to talk about it, and improve open and click rates that drive sales is to stick with one message per email. Often, marketers try to jam too much “stuff” into each email.

   Multiple messages decrease the frequency with which they’re willing to send emails, de-incentivizes them toward list-building, and reduces the relative value of each email to their readers. That’s a recipe for disaster, my friends. When my clients switch to one-thing-per-email, they are more excited about emailing their prospects, more focused on building their list, and their readers are happier with each email. And that’s a recipe for success.