Episode 5: The Money Is In The List: How My Email List Literally Saved My Business + How To Grow & Nurture Yours Quickly
Here’s a preview of what you’ll learn in this episode:
Why “the money is in the list.”
The horror story of how I lost all my social media accounts but still had a record month and launched a new business through my email list.
The email marketing platform I recommend as well as the ones I don’t love.
The exact steps to grow your list.
The 5 emails to include in your welcome sequence to turn leads from cold to warm and ready to buy.
Key Links:
Get 50% off FloDesk forever: flodesk.com/c/LOCKLIN
Check out the Business Breakthrough Accelerator here: ashlylocklin.com/business-breakthrough-accelerator
Show Transcription:
Hello, friend! Welcome to Episode 5! Today we’re diving into something not-so-sexy, but oh so important - email lists and welcome sequences!
Have you ever heard the phrase: The money is in the list? Well it’s freaking true! Your social media is borrowed land. Those followers you have, they belong to Mark Zuckerberg, not you.
Let me ask you...
If your social media accounts disappeared tomorrow - would you still be able to run your business? Would you know who you were talking to and how to get a hold of them if you couldn’t log onto Facebook or Instagram?
Would you have a list of leads to reach out to in another way?
Would you have their contact information?
Let me share my horror story with you so you can see why an email list is critical to your business. Then I’ll explain how to start, grow, and nurture your email list through a 5 part welcome series, and share my preferred email marketing platform with you (and give you a discount link)!
First, the horror story...
Earlier this year (before Coronavirus hit), my family and I went to Disney World. And the day we got there, the music sticker in my Instagram Stories disappeared. And music is really important to the vibe of stories- especially in Disney World (you know, first world problems). So I started to play music on my husband’s phone and hold it up near my phone as I was doing my stories as a work-around. So if Instagram wasn’t going to give me music, I was gonna play my own music.
A few hours later I get a text from my assistant saying, there’s an important email in your inbox about your Facebook page. Now we had just sat down at Cinderella’s Royal Table for dinner (which is one of the hardest reservations to get).
But I thought, “oh I better check this email.”
And the subject line said something like: Copyright Infringement, your page is scheduled for deletion. And it looked super legit. It said “you have violated Facebook’s Copyright rules and your page is scheduled to be deleted. If you want to request an appeal, please complete this form.”
So I obviously freaked out and thought “ohmygosh, I’ve been playing music in the background of my stories through Sean’s phone, I bet that got me in trouble” - because my Facebook business page and my Instagram account are linked.
So I quickly clicked on the link to the appeal form, entered my info, wrote that it was mistake, and then I tried to submit it and prompted me to log in. So I logged in and it took me back to the appeal form - but it was blank. So I filled it out again and tried to submit it and then it prompted me to log in again. So I did this a few times at the dinner table, while the princesses are coming over and my daughter is all decked out in her Bibbidy Bobbidy Boutique dress and hair and makeup...and I’m missing it all because I’m freaking out about my social media accounts….which sounds ridiculous to any normal person, but when you realize that your entire business and income come from social media, it’s pretty freaking scary and important.
And then I realized something was wrong...all of a sudden, I couldn’t log in at all. It said, “your account has violated our community standards and has been disabled.” And that’s when I realized it was a scam and I had been hacked.
So I immediately go over to Instagram and same thing, “your account has been disabled for violating the community standards.”
I check Messenger, can’t get into that either.
So I’m sick to my stomach, literally cannot even take a bite of the food in front of me (which is unheard of for me!). I missed every princess that came to see my daughter. And was just so mad at myself for falling for this scam.
Warning: if you ever get an email like that, DELETE IT, it is a scam. They do a great job of mimicking a legit email from FB, but report it and delete it!
Anyway, I spent the rest of the night trying to contact people at Facebook, trying to appeal the disabled status, but it was a dead-end. And this continued for a MONTH. There was literally no way to get a hold of someone at Facebook or Instagram. There was a form to fill out and it asked you to submit a copy of your license. I did that 5-15 times a day.
And I never heard anything from Instagram, but I did receive emails from Facebook saying “We’ve reviewed your account and it will not be reinstated because of violence, hate, discriminatory speech, and of this crazy stuff that I never posted.
I did create a new Facebook account just so I could get into the groups I was running, but Facebook kept deactivating that one too- because it was deemed suspicious.
So can you imagine how frustrating this is?
I’m assuming and I was told - eventually - by a Facebook rep - that the hackers probably posted something extremely inappropriate as soon as they got into my account and that caused the accounts to be disabled.
They also changed all of the contact information on my Facebook business page. I had other authorized users and page managers on there (my husband, a few people who had helped me with running ads), and the hackers immediately removed them, changed my email address, changed the phone number, everything.
So this is what made it so difficult. Because to report a hacking, it kept prompting me to enter my phone number or email associated with the page, but because the hackers had changed them, FB kept saying, “no, there’s no page associated with that info.” So I couldn’t report the page as being hacked and my personal account was disabled - there was literally nothing I could do.
And the best part was- the hackers were posting to my page. Crazy videos of squirrels, wood working, eyebrow threading, bowling, birds. Things I would never post. It was so frustrating to just sit there and watch them hijack the page and community I spent 5 years building, 100,000 followers, and realizing there was nothing I could do.
Now here’s how I got my account back…I was very lucky because most people don’t get their accounts back.
I had been running ads on both FB and Instagram. And when the hackers took over, they never stopped the ads. So the ads kept running and every time I filled out that dang form saying my account should not be disabled, I wrote, I also have ads running on my business pages and I’m concerned about my financial security since the hackers have access to my ads manager, to my payment information, to my home address, etc. thinking that would get FB’s attention.
But that never worked.
However, I finally got my lawyer involved. I waited weeks to contact her, naively thinking, “oh they’ll see the hundreds of forms I’m submitting and give me my accounts back.” But no.
So she contacted their legal department and shared that I had ads running, that they are unauthorized since I do not have access to the accounts, and I want the ads stopped, I want a refund, I want action taken immediately since my financial and personal information has been breached, and I want my accounts back.
And literally, within a few hours we had movement. They got back to her very quickly. We had to submit IDs, paperwork, lots of back and forths, but a week later, I got my accounts back, I got a refund from FB for the entire month of ads, and all was good! So shout out to my lawyer, Robin, for applying the pressure! She sent some serious legal documents and threats that got Facebook’s attention. But had I not been running ads, I truly believe I never would’ve gotten anyone’s attention and I wouldn’t have gotten my accounts back.
So I tell you all of this to warn you that if your accounts get hacked, it’s going to be very difficult if not impossible to get them back. Facebook confirmed that most accounts are never reinstated and people just move on and give up.
So imagine if this happened to you and you didn’t have ads running, you didn’t have a lawyer to get Facebook’s attention, would your business continue to thrive?
For me, even though it was a nightmare, it was actually a blessing in disguise.
My friend, Jessica, had also been through a similar experience and she called me. She said, “Ashly, you have a big email list, you don’t even need social media. Love on that list, serve them, send daily updates, and really lean into those people.”
And I realized - she was right!
At the time I had about 25,000 people on my email list because I had been building it for years. So I started to write daily emails, provide lots of value, share pictures from Disney, just show up for those people and serve them every day.
And what happened was amazing - I had one of my biggest months in my business - with no social media presence!
But beyond that, this is also when I launched my second business - which was my own course, membership, and 1:1 coaching services. So I was freaking out because here I am trying to launch a course on social media when I have no social media because my accounts are all hacked.
But I had been warming up my list and they knew what was going on, so I decided to launch it anyway.
I actually got my social media accounts back a FEW days before I officially launched this second business, so that was a blessing - but the majority of the sales I made in that launch were from my email list. And I had a $20K launch - on a social media course and membership - when I hadn’t even been on social media for a month.
That my friends, is why you need an email list.
Because the people on your list actually care about you. They have given you permission to show up in their inboxes, which is far more personal and impactful than posting on social media. Mark Zuckerberg can decide to shut down Facebook and Instagram tomorrow. Your accounts could be hacked or disabled tomorrow. So building your business on social is extremely risky.
But you own your email list and that’s how you should be solidifying and scaling your business.
So now that I preached the importance of having an email list, let’s talk logistics.
First: email marketing platforms:
I personally recommend FloDesk because they have beautiful templates and it’s very user friendly. But most importantly, it’s affordable. I have a discount code linked in the show notes and if you sign up with that link, you’ll get 50% off every month forever. And the price never goes up as your list increases.
I previously used MailChimp and was paying hundreds of dollars a month because of the size of my list and the emails were, in my opinion, not that pretty.
I’ve also used ConvertKit and Get Response and didn’t love either of them.
BUT you get unlimited emails and unlimited subscribers with FloDesk for $19 a month (through the link in the notes) and as I said, the templates are beautiful! So that’s why I recommend FloDesk!
So step one: head to that link in the show notes and create your account.
Step 2: Start building that list.
Here’s what I did, do, and recommend.
Create a form for people to complete in order to get information about your products or services.
Anytime someone wants information on something I offer, they have to complete a form (giving me their name and email address) to get any info.
I never give details in the DMS.
I always direct people to the link in my bio (where I’ll have the form) or in stories, I’ll tell people to swipe up (and it will take them to the form), if someone DMs me and asks for info, I’ll say, “Sure, I'd love to give you all the deets, just fill out this quick form and you’ll get an email with the info!”
This way I have a list of the people who are interested in each product and service - OFF of social media.
This also creates a tracking system and allows for easy follow ups because I can then mass email everyone who filled out the form and expressed interest in that freebie, or that program, or that offer, whatever it was.
At the beginning, I would manually email each person who filled it out, but now I have automation set up for everything.
In Flo Desk, this is called a Workflow. So you’ll create your form and then draft the email you want sent with all the information they are requesting. Then you’ll create a new Workflow and it will walk you through setting up the triggers.
If you don’t use Flo Desk and your email marketing system doesn’t offer automation or forms, you can create forms for free through Google Forms or you can use JotForm, TypeForm, Wufoo, there are so many options. And I recommend using Zapier (that’s Z-a-p-i-e-r) to set up automations- I use this a LOT for several different things because it integrates with everything! Automation is key to scaling your business without sacrificing allll of your time.
So the first way to grow your email list is by using forms.
Another way to grow your email list is through a freemium or a lead magnet. This is when you create a PDF, a tracker, a video, an ebook, a workbook, a Canva template, whatever and your audience gives you their name and email address in exchange for your free offer.
If you are in health and fitness, maybe it’s a free weekly meal plan, or a grocery list, or an intermittent fasting guide, or a carb cycling tracker. If you’re in beauty, maybe it’s a guide with DIY at-home hair and skin masks, or a video tutorial of how to do a fishtail braid, or a PDF of how to eliminate adult acne.
If you are in real estate, perhaps you have a PDF with staging tips to sell your house, or a checklist of things to do before putting your house on the market, or a checklist of things to look for when searching for a new home.
You want to create something that is magnetizing, that is appealing to your ideal customer, something they’ll gladly give you their email address for.
Then you’ll pump it out in your posts, in your stories, in ads (this is really how you reach new people- ads are a great way to find new leads)...
Speaking of ads, I interrupt this broadcast to share that this episode is brought to you by my course Business Breakthrough Accelerator, or BBA. If you are looking for more help with lead magnets, email marketing (such as email templates, blueprints, subject lines, best practices), ads, and all the things that will scale your business, this course is calling your name. It’s everything from A-Z to scale your business - from branding, to marketing, to selling, to scaling. There’s a link in the show notes if you want to learn how you can have your breakthrough.
Now back to the show. You can also pump out this freemium on Pinterest, and you can share it in FB groups you’re in, ask your friends to share it, the possibilities are endless. And again, people have to fill out a form (sharing their name and email address) in order to get this freebie.
This freemium or lead magnet establishes you as a credible authority in your industry, builds trust with your cold audience - who you’re now going to warm up, and allows you to build that email list and consistently bring new people into your network without you having to go hunt them down on social.
To recap that section of growing your email list
- Have prospects complete forms to get information on your products or services
- Create a freemium aka a lead magnet that is irresistible and have leads complete a form (sharing their name and email) in order to get it
Now let’s talk about nurturing that list and turning these leads from cold to warm.
This is done through your welcome sequence, which is an automated sequence of emails that goes out once someone opts into your freebie/lead magnet.
Here are the 5 emails that should go in your welcome sequence:
5 Email Welcome Sequence
- Deliver the goods - this email delivers whatever it was they opted in for (the PDF, the video, the guide, the tracker, etc.)
- Introduce yourself (You can share fun facts about yourself, but you also want to introduce yourself through the lens of what you do and who you help. For example, “I help women scale their online businesses to six figures while having fun” or “I help women break the cycle of yo-yo dieting through intuitive eating.” This is also a great place to build your credibility and authority by sharing your accolades, or certifications, or specialties so that your new lead is like “Oh, okay...this chick knows what she’s talking about, I wanna learn more from her.” And a great way to end this email is by highlighting their main struggle and saying that you’ll be back tomorrow to share your top tips or your best resource with them. So you’re priming them to look for you in their inbox the next day. So this could look like: “I know what it feels like to constantly worry that everyone’s looking at your acne instead of you. Imagine if you could have a conversation with someone in person and never have that thought cross your mind again. Tomorrow I’m popping back in with my best tips for gaining confidence while in the process of clearing your adult acne.”
- Solve their problem - as promised. You give tons of value for free. These are your 5 steps for gaining confidence while clearing your acne or 3 tips to start intuitive eating. You’re still building trust and authority with these new leads, so you don’t want to be pitching to them just yet.
- More value and/or surprise freebie! This can be something super simple to help them. So maybe they originally opted in to an intermittent fasting getting started guide. Here is where you can provide them with a free intermittent fasting schedule or a free intermittent fasting tracker. This freebie doesn’t have to be super long or in-depth, it’s just something to compliment what you’re already providing to them. Then at the bottom of this email is where you make your first pitch. So you can say, if you want to learn more, book a complimentary call with me, or If you want to get serious about intermittent fasting, reply to this email to learn about my support & accountability group for women just like you. Your call to action can be whatever way you typically bring in clients.
- The actual CTA/pitch. For this email, you still want to provide free value at the beginning of the email but then you want to make that pitch and push them to take action. Register for your webinar, buy the low-ticket offer, complete the interest form, book a call, join a group, etc.
So over the course of these 5 emails, you’re providing hella value, introducing yourself, gaining their trust, and then pushing them to the next step.
Plus you now have a solid list of prospects you know are interested in what you offer because they opted-in to your freebie, they literally raised their hand and said, “I’m interested! I’m here! I want this.”
So you’re not out there hunting people down and trying to push your offer down the wrong throats, it’s called a lead magnet for a reason - it brings the right people to you so that you have a very warm audience to convert and nurture over time.
Now there are so many other aspects of email marketing to get into, but we’re going to do that in another episode- so stay tuned!
I hope you now understand the importance of growing and nurturing your list and you stop putting all your eggs into the social media basket!
To recap:
- Don’t rely on FB & Instagram to build your business because that’s borrowed or rented land and it could be gone tomorrow.
- Instead, build an email list of interested leads because that list is yours forever.
- I personally recommend using FloDesk for email marketing (you can find a discount link in the show notes).
- Automation is your friend and will save you so much time as you scale your business. Zapier is an amazing tool for this if your current platforms don’t offer automation.
- Start building your list by having people request info through forms AND by creating a freemium that they can’t resist and excitedly give you their info in order to get their hands on it!
- Craft your welcome series so you are establishing your authority, gaining trust, serving these new leads, and eventually pitching and converting them.
That is a wrap!
Thank you so much for tuning in! Please take a screenshot of this episode and tag me on Instagram at @ashly_locklin. Let me know what you think and if you’re going to dive head first into building your list. I’ll catch ya next time, bye friends!
Show Notes:
Today’s episode is brought to you by the Business Breakthrough Accelerator here: ashlylocklin.com/business-breakthrough-accelerator
Get 50% off FloDesk forever: flodesk.com/c/LOCKLIN
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