Starting Your Email List

Building an email list is important if you truly want to build a sustainable, profitable online business.

You may have heard the saying – the money is in the list.

Whilst it can be a slightly crass saying, if you’re not capturing your audience’s emails, you could be missing out on both money and valuable connection opportunities.

So many of us can spend a lot of time building our Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn or other social platform followers.

However, building your email list is where you can truly build relationships with both your clients and your potential clients.

Email lists are also something that you own. Completely.

With all the changes going on right now with social media platforms, you have no control over these getting shut down.

Imagine having thousands or even hundreds of thousands of followers on Instagram and the whole platform gets taken down!

What exactly is an email autoresponder?

An email autoresponder is a tool that allows you to both collect email addresses and sends automatic emails based on the criteria you set up.

If you’re just starting out, you could choose a free autoresponder such as the free tier on Mailchimp or MailerLite.

However, many of the more feature-rich autoresponders, such as ActiveCampaign, start at a very low entry cost of $10 per month.

Other popular email autoresponders include CovertKit, Keap by InfusionSoft, Get Response and more.

Of course prices will vary so it pays to shop around.

Email autoresponder features

Some of the key features I suggest you consider when choosing the best autoresponder for you include:

• Email templates – this makes setting up your emails easier, allowing you to choose a template to go with your business branding and have a consistent look and feel
• Automation – setting up email series, client onboarding emails, launch sequences and more is the power behind autoresponders
• Tracking – you want to be able to track what’s working and what isn’t so you can test and tweak
• Customer support – you want to be supported each step of the way
• Integrations – make sure you can integrate with other tools and services you use such as scheduling, analytics, payment processors and more

I mentioned ActiveCampaign before. This is an autoresponder that I highly recommend.

I’ve been using ActiveCampaign for over 3 years now and as my business has grown, I’ve been able to add more and more functionality.

ActiveCampaign integrates perfectly with many services I use to run my business. These include Calendly, ThriveCart, various Google services including Analytics and Drive, Stripe, Zoom, Facebook, WordPress, Slack, ClickUp and more.

ActiveCampaign is an incredibly powerful autoresponder and CRM. I have many different automations set up for my various lists such as RTT and coaching clients, my website subscribers, buyers for my online courses, virtual summit sequences and more.

Each automation takes my customers on a journey, personalizing their experience.

Whilst the set up can take some time, once you have your automations in place, you save so much time in the long run.

Their customer service is fantastic. They will help you get set up and their response time is very fast if you need support at any time.

In my past business, I have used both Mailchimp and Aweber. I definitely prefer the features, ease of use and support that ActiveCampaign offers.

So if you haven’t already gathered from this blog post, building your email list is imperative and a huge part of building a sustainable and profitable online business.