Email is one of the best tools you can use for certain aspects of your online business. For one, it’s a powerful tool for taking someone from a relatively cold lead to a buyer. That means if you haven’t started building your email list for your online business, you’re potentially leaving money on the table.

If you’ve been in the online marketing space for a while, you’ve probably heard entrepreneurs talking about the importance of email marketing. Maybe you know you need to get started but you keep getting tripped up by all the complicated advice out there and just need someone to give you the basics.

So let’s cut through the noise and clarify what you actually need to start building your email list.

Struggling with email marketing? Learn how to do email marketing the right way in my course, BADA$$ Email Marketing. You can get FREE access to my email course inside BADA$$ Online Marketing University.

1. An Email Service Provider

The first thing you need is an email service provider. A lot of people want to know whether you can just use Gmail? Maybe, but you shouldn’t. 

There’s a couple of reasons why you shouldn’t use your personal email to send your marketing emails.

First, there are law about email marketing. If you’re using email for a commercial purpose, you have to comply with certain legal requirements, including the spam act, and you have to provide an easy way for people to unsubscribe. That’s what your email service provider does for you.

If you’re sending emails from your general account, you might encounter issues later on. An email service provider ensures that rules are taken care of.

There are several email service providers out there, but the one that I personally recommend and what I use is ConvertKit. ConvertKit is great if you’re starting out. You can choose a free account and then get a paid one as your list grows. It’s affordable and scalable.

2. A Reason for People to Get on Your List

The next step you need to take in building your email list is to create a reason for people to want to get on your list. You can use a form that simply says, “Hey, join my mailing list,” but not a lot of people are going to do that.

People want to know what’s in it for them. When you get really good at email, sometimes people will go straight to you to ask how they can join your email list because they heard it’s great and has tons of value for them.

But most people are signing up because they want to get a freebie. Once they sign up for this and see that your emails are awesome, they’re gonna stick around.

Some examples of freebies you can create and use are quizzes, PDF guides or checklists, or e-books. For some of our lead magnet designs, we use Canva. There are tons of templates there that you can customize to suit your branding and needs.

3. A Delivery Email that Doesn’t Suck

Your delivery email is going to have one of the highest open rates, and people are going to read it more than any other email you send. That’s why you sure as hell don’t want to send a boring delivery email that just says, “Hey, here’s the freebie that you wanted to download.”

Please don’t do that. You should use that email as a way to connect with your new subscribers. We use what we call CATCH structure: congratulate, acknowledge, tells me about you, credibility boost, and then hook. I walked through the structure in more detail in a recent blog post.

Start Your Email List Now

That’s it. You don’t need some complicated funnel. You just an email service provider, a reason for people to join your list, and a good delivery email.

If you’ve already started your list and want to uplevel your online marketing skills, then you should join my FREE training program, BADA$$ Online Marketing University.