Email 101 with Nathan Barry

Following on from the Startup Advice with Justin Jackson and Ryan Hoover, below are some notes from Nathan Barry's latest webinar: Email 101

Why Email?

Consistency

A very popular post in November 2011 brought 60,000 visits in a few days. But it was a one-hit-wonder. You need a way to stay in touch with people. You need a way to tell your audience when you’ve written something new. Your email subscriber count can keep growing throughout the year.

Email subscribers are like recurring revenue for your audience

Conversions

The goal is to make money. So, why use email and not twitter or facebook? Email is much more effective.

Conversion Rate by Traffic Source (via Gumroad Stats)

• 2.2% YouTube
• 5.4% Twitter
• 6.3% Facebook
• 9.4% Email

Nathan’s own Study (Average Click Rate):

• 3.1% Twitter
• 29.5% Email

Example

1,000 Twitter Followers -> 31 Clicks -> 1.7 Sales

1,000 Email Subscribers -> 290 Clicks -> 27 Sales

Email Subscriber = 15x as much as a Twitter Follower

Control

You want to be in control of your audience. What if you had built your audience on myspace? All that work that you put in to creating content, adding friends is now useless. Or what about focusing on RSS subscribers? Many of the platforms like Google Reader have been shut down.

The same is true with facebook.

With email, you keep control of the list. If you want to move email providers, you can export your list and move to a new provider.

“The email list is the most valuable thing I have”

Tactics

If you want to grow your list, you need an incentive. Incentives increase conversion rates and give people a reason to care. An great example is a free course that you can combine from existing blog posts.

Perceived Value:

• PDFs have a higher perceived value than blog posts
• Audio recordings and interviews are even higher value
• Videos are even higher still

So, create a product and create a landing page to collect email addresses.

Landing Pages

What makes a good landing page?

• Single call to action
• Email opt-in form
• Remove fluff (top navigation, sidebar etc.)
• Strong Headline
• Single graphic describing the page e.g. a picture of a book
• Having one product per landing page

Why Use ConvertKit

ConvertKit is better than many other providers

• It’s easy to give out incentives
• You can have multiple opt-in forms per list
• Managing Multiple Lists
• Drip Campaigns / Email Courses are easy
• One single interface that allows you to easily write content for a course

ConvertKit Academy

The ConvertKit app has made many people successful but some people need help getting email subscribers. That’s why the ConvertKit Academy exists. These include

• Training course on getting your first subscribers
• 5 incentive templates
• 2 live hangouts for personalized advice
• help designing your incentive
• 6 month subscription to ConvertKit