49: Week 6 of the series How to Automate & Streamline the Backend of your Lead Magnets (and Offers) – My Top 5 Favorite Ways to Grow my Email List

Is your opt-in ready for subscribers, but you aren’t sure how to get it out there? Maybe you know what the experts say to do next, but you want new, creative ways to promote your lead magnet. If you are ready for fresh ideas, five ideas to be exact, on creative ways you can grow your email list in the next quarter of your business, this episode is for you. In this episode, I share all about the puzzle piece of having a plan of action as to where to share your lead magnet or even product once it’s put together.

The Systems and Workflow Magic Podcast is brought to you by Dolly DeLong Education. This podcast is for creative business owners who want to learn tangible steps to automate their business through workflows, systems, tools, and strategies to go from scattered to streamlined with purpose because even muggles can become automated wizards.

Automate the Backend of Your Lead Magnets

Are you ready to automate the backend of your lead magnets? I have put together the comprehensive checklist you need to ensure that all your puzzle pieces are in place for your next opt-in, your next offer, or even your next bundle! Stop letting tech fears hold you back from automating and streamlining the backend of your amazing offers and opt-ins!

Grab the Guide

(Need more than a checklist? Sign up for the mini-course!)

Review the Show Notes

Utilizing your podcast to promote your opt-in (3:09)
Using your CRM to direct leads to your freebies (7:44)
Use your pillar content to promote your lead magnets (10:06)
Growing your email list through bundles (12:47)
Diving into bundles (15:17)
A lead magnet within a lead magnet (20:21)

Links Mentioned

How To Automate The Backend Of Your Offers, Opt-Ins, & Even Bundles
Mini-Course
Kate Doster’s Bundle Growth
Dubsado (Get 30% off!)
The Legal Paige

Listen to the series

Week 1 – The Importance Of Copy & Having A High Converting Landing Page Featuring Ashlyn Carter

Week 2 – All About Lead Magnets

Week 3 -The Perfect Guide To Making Your Way Into Your Subscriber’s Inbox

Week 4 – The Ultimate Crash Course To Setting Up Your First Nurture Sequence Featuring Amanda Stores

Week 5 – How To Incorporate Visuals Featuring Jennifer Carfora

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REVIEW THE TRANSCRIPT:

Dolly Delong
Welcome to the systems and workflow magic podcast where I help entrepreneurs go from scattered to streamlined in their creative businesses. I’m your host, Dolly DeLong, a wife, a mom, and a photographer turned systems educator. Join me every week as we have conversations centered around creating tactical workflows, and automation in your business. Now, let’s make some strategic workflow magic.

Dolly Delong
Have you Hello, everyone. And welcome back to another episode of the systems and workflow magic podcast. I am your systems and workflow BFF dolly DeLong. And even though it is Halloween, I promise I only have treats for you know tricks, because I want to help you become more automated and streamlined in the back end of your business. So this week, we are going to talk about the puzzle piece of having a plan of action as to where to share your new lead magnet or your often or perhaps even your offers once it’s put together. Now, we have already answered the questions of what a lead magnet is. And in previous episodes, we have hit up some key points on how to better optimize the back-end puzzle pieces of your opt-in offers and or bundles. But let’s say you have an actual opt-in or lead magnet you need and you want to promote and you want to grow your email list. All right. So in this episode, I wanted to give you some ideas, five ideas to be exact, on some creative ways you can grow your email list in the next quarter of your business. And now you don’t have to do all five. But I would strongly recommend you try at least one or two of these all right. Also, note I have a list of 39 ideas of how to promote your new opt-in or your offers even. And I am going to share that freebie with you. Again, this is a freebie that I have been promoting for almost the past two months now and it is a brand new lead magnet free resource. And it shows you just all the puzzle pieces that you need to consider on how to best automate and streamline the back end of your offers your opt-ins and your bundles. So I’ve been talking about it a lot. It is something I am super passionate about sharing with other creative business owners and just trying to take the overwhelm out of all of the puzzle pieces. So that list of 39 ideas. Well, it’s in that freebie. So don’t forget to head on to the show notes after you listen to this episode. And that way you will know 39 ways to promote your lead magnet. All right. So in no particular order, here are my top five favorite ways to either share my opt-in or grow my email list in unique ways that I believe not a lot of other business owners are either sharing or talking about because you will hear like strategies like share on social media or share through Pinterest or share on your Facebook group. So these are obvious ways. But I am going to share five ideas that I have always been using well, especially in the past two years, and especially in the past year with this podcast. And so maybe it will spark a new idea for you, and maybe encourage you to think outside the box. All right. So number one use your pillar content piece like a podcast. So using my podcast, here are some creative ways within my own podcast that I have grown my own email list or I have promoted a specific lead magnet. So I don’t know if you know this, but I am a small fish in a very very big saturated pond. And so I don’t have sponsors clamoring to me because they have literally no idea who I am. So that’s okay, that’s totally okay with me. I realized everybody has to start out small. And so what I do for ads for my podcast is I promote my lead magnets like they are acts and that way I am creatively growing my email list now. I do make sure that my podcast episodes can naturally weave in my ad, aka my lead magnet. And I like to think of this as a way a person can take the next action step after they consume my podcast. So I have been doing this for the past year since starting this podcast, I’ve been trying to creatively weave in my lead magnets as commercial ads throughout the podcast. And, again, it is helped me grow my own email list in very unique and creative ways. And, you know, if I was trying to get a little bit more technical, maybe in the future, I could do this. But I could create tracking codes that would help me know like, where the subscribers are coming from, like what podcast episode, again, that’s a little bit more strategic and more advanced. But that’s something that was suggested to me a few weeks ago. So I don’t know, I was just thinking, I’ve been doing that for the past year. And it’s helped grow my email list. And I thought This has been a lot of fun. And maybe in the future, Lord willing, I’ll have sponsors for the podcast. That way, I can intertwine different sponsors, within ADS. But for now, I’ve been using my lead magnets, and creating ads for them has been a really, really fun way of growing my email list.

Dolly Delong
Hey, creative business owner, definitely here. Finally, put together that opt-in. Know, that lead magnet your ideal client has been begging you for. Now, we’re excitedly wanting to publish it. But here’s one thing holding you back. It’s probably the fact that you don’t know how to have an effective follow-through system. And making sure the back end of your new option or offer is optimized. stop sweating because the comprehensive checklist needs to ensure that all of your puzzle pieces are in place, where your next often the next offer, or even the next bundle you’re part of this year, stop letting tech years hold you back from automating and streamlining the backend of your amazing opt-ins and offers and dive into this free checklist today, head on over to the show notes to get access to the link. And don’t forget, I am cheering for you

Dolly Delong
on. Alright, so point two is I have been using my CRM tool Dubsado. So let me preface this by stating that Dubsado is not an email service provider. And you should not use it as your email service provider to blast your newsletters. All right. However, you can send people to your landing pages and opt-ins, okay, from a templated email that is within a workflow. For example, I do this at the beginning stages of my inquiry process workflows. So someone fills out my contact form, they will get an autoresponder based on which service they self-select, and very strategically, okay, in that first auto responder email, I add a next step sentence Do you want to learn more about branding photography? So for example, let’s say somebody fills out an inquiry form on my contact form. They want to learn more about branding photography, well, I made sure to have that first autoresponder set up, and it thanks them for filling out my contact form. And then I tell them, hey, like while you’re waiting on a response from Excel, let them know it’s my automated response. Do you want to download a guide to help you plan out your session like, just so that they can get more excited about talking to me and also excited about planning out that branding session? And guess what, that is one of my most popular options. And so I have learned again, your CRM tool is not your email service provider, they just have a link within that first email. That gives them an option. Hey, like this is a freebie. And again, we’ve spoken about this throughout this series that they exchange their email address for the freebie so I have made sure to put that link in there. And that way, they’re not only in my workflow with Dubsado but then they are funneled into my workflow for my lead magnet and they’re being reminded about me in two very unique ways. And these ways are automated. So the third way, I like to grow my email list that’s very unique that I feel like, again, not a lot of business owners talk about it. And if they do talk about it, they just glaze over it as I use the pillar form content of using my blog. So, I spoke about using my pillar content of podcasting. But besides podcasting, blogging is another form of pillar content marketing for me. So each blog has the purpose of not only educating other small business owners on branding, and photography, or educating others on systems and workflow education. But I try to have a strategic next step on how the reader can take action. And again, I want them to actually consume something that would give them a win while they are reading the blog post. And so personally, this is what I would recommend having about two, maybe up to three really, really good lead magnets, please like learn from my mistakes, and do not make a new lead magnet every week for your pillar content. Okay, that is exhausting. And I mentioned this, I’ve been guilty of doing this. And sometimes I can be guilty of wanting to like, I start the process of creating a new lead magnet, it seems like every other week, because I get so excited about not only content creation but just want my audience to experience small wins, strategic wins small steps towards systems and workflows. And so I have to be reminded, okay, like, if I create another lead back that, then I’m gonna have to create all the puzzle pieces that go alongside it, and I’ll have to monitor it. So again, I would say maybe up to three tops, good lead magnets. And then that way, each form of pillar content that you create, like blogging in this example, you can weave in that call to action to access that freebie. And make sure it’s actually kind of a natural alignment step with your blog so that the reader will naturally want to take that next step. And so again, think about ways of how you can use your pillar content to naturally be aligned with your lead magnet, like as a natural next step. So number four, okay, so this is more advanced, but I love growing my email list through bundles. Now, again, let me preface by saying this is a bit more advanced. And I would definitely recommend doing this type of email list growth strategy, once you know your audience. And once you know who you want to serve. And I would recommend having a good long-term game strategy plan, meaning you’re not jumping from one shiny object to the next, you know, you’re in it for the long game. And in the beginning stages of your creative business. Well, you will experience shiny object syndrome because you’ll be in such a rush to experience so much growth. But I would recommend slowing down and using this strategy, maybe two, or three years down the line. And some business owners would argue with me and say, No, like do it right away. But I just want to encourage you to really hone in on who you serve, who you want to serve, what you do, and what your services are. And then once you know just like where your money makers are coming in from, what services are the best fit for you and your clients? Maybe then try growing your email list with funnels. Alright, so I led my first-ever bundle earlier in 2022. You know, it was free paid content, so it was not lead magnets we were promoting, these are actually paid content that others can download for free. So this acted like a lead generation of growing out my email list exponentially in one week’s worth of time. So let’s just say I grew my email list by over 4000 new subscribers in one week. And in 2023, I am actually leading a second version of this bundle, but it will be a paid bundle with even more valuable paid products meaning the actual products in this bundle are what the contributors, so in their shops, and so the goal of the second bundle is going to be not only to continue to build more brand awareness, but the secondary goal of this bundle will be to grow my email list again. Now, if you’re wanting to learn more about bundles, I do have two recommendations for you. If you are more of a, you want to go at your own pace to DIY and learn from another entrepreneur who has gone before you and done this, I would highly recommend Kate Doster. And I will put her link in the show notes because I have actually purchased her course. And she leads a DIY course all about the systems and strategies of bundles, and just how to grow your email list through bundles. And thanks to her, her guidance, and her system. And she like helped me out in so many ways. And Kate, I don’t even know if you’re listening. But I will tell everybody about this mini-course. So again, check it out in the show notes I get no affiliates from this. By mentioning this, I just really have really enjoyed learning more about bundles from Kate Doster. Calling all creatives

Dolly Delong
if you have an amazing opt-in offer. And you have been asked to be a part of a bundle with other creatives, which by the way is also awesome. But you feel stuck because you don’t know what steps to take to Automate, optimize and streamline the back end of said, opt-in offer or bundle offer, then listen up. You don’t have to hire an integrator because I have created a step-by-step mini-course to guide you through the process of putting together the puzzle pieces you need. In order to lay the groundwork for this back-end process. I have created how to automate the back end of your options and offer many courses because as a system and workflow educator for creatives, I want to help you succeed as a small business owner. And I really want you to feel confident in your systems. After listening to the podcast, don’t forget to head on over to the show notes. And click on the link for an in-depth look at what this mini-course entails. as always Stay Magical with those systems, you amazing muggle!

Dolly Delong
Okay, so because I have been learning so much in the past, it’s always been two years of me, just applying this knowledge to email list growth. I have had a lot of people, either DM me, email me, message me or even talk to me in person when I’m either doing a podcast interview with them, or we are like networking together, they’ve said tell you like you should lead a group and be like a leader or a coach on how to grow out your email list exponentially in one to two weeks. And since one of my superpowers I say this to everyone is I firmly believe I’m very good at being organized and really good at systems and workflows. So I have the systems and workflows down pat when it comes to bundles. And of course, I’m like no, I, I’ve been saying no, a lot. Because it is just for me. I’m like, Oh, just another thing to do. Or what if people are just saying they want to learn but then nobody, you know, actually buys? And so because I’ve had so many people approach me again, this has been the past two years. I am actually considering offering a 12-week mastermind on how to execute growing your email list strategically with a bundle. And I’m absolutely terrified that I’m mentioning it. But that’s again something that so many people have been DMing me about emailing me about or just asking me questions about so I figured I would use this podcast to gauge even more to see if there is a small group of business owners who want to build out their email list exponentially with a bundle. And again, probably for 2023. I’m considering leading that type of mastermind program and I will serve as your systems and workflow guides. So in the notes, after you listen to this podcast episode, it will show you my email address and the best way to contact me and so shoot me either a DM on Instagram or send me an email and let me know if this is something that you would be interested in participating in. But I just kind of like to recap, point number four, growing your list exponentially through bundles is incredible. And again, I made sure to put resources in the notes for you to check out for that. Okay, so my fifth, and this will be my final point. So my fifth favorite way to grow my email list insert to grow specific lead magnets is this, I love inserting another lead magnet within a nurture sequence after someone has already downloaded one of my other lead magnets, that sounds so meta, it’s like a lead magnet within a lead magnet. So this is something I learned from my past mastermind leader. And I like to call her my spirit animal catch Moya. And she taught me this when I was within her mastermind, and we were going through the importance of nurturing consumption sequences and how it’s just like eating up all this wisdom. But something that she pointed out to me was maybe in one of the emails after a person is consuming the current lead magnet like maybe you can give another lead magnet away, like an opt-in to a lead magnet, if that is in alignment with that current magnet. And you can offer your new subscriber a new with. Plus, not only does it give them a win, and another reason why to trust you. But it also likes helps prepare them to want to buy from you or learn from you. So if you have downloaded any of my resources, you know I do this for each of my lead magnets. I just want everyone to experience more than one win. And I want people to know how to start incorporating systems and workflows into their creative businesses in multifaceted ways, I realized this is something a little bit again, more intermediate. So please don’t feel like you have to do this one right away, especially if you’re just now getting started and you only have one lead magnet. So I would say once you have like two or three good lead magnets that are converting really, really well for you. And you know, people love downloading this and you’re seeing some really good growth from it. Then maybe start incorporating this by adding a supplemental lead magnet within your nurture sequence after someone has already downloaded another one of your lead magnets. Alright, So in recap, here are five ways you can creatively grow your email list with lead magnets, or just like grow your email list in general, right? So here are my top five favorite ways to advertise your lead magnets in podcasts as commercials or ads. Number two, utilize your CRM tool like Dubsado and insert a link to your landing page on your autoresponder. So that way, the new user who has just inquired from you can click over to that resource that goes alongside the service they inquired about. Number three, use your pillar content wisely to promote your lead magnets. Number four, use great lead gents to grow your email list, like a bundle for example. Now I don’t say don’t give away your lead magnets in the bundles, especially if it’s a paid bundle or a bundle that you want to be super valuable. So don’t give away freebies, in bundles. But think of a bundle as a great lead magnet as a great lead gen. And number five, insert other lead magnets within your sequences, which align with that lead magnets nurture sequence. I know that’s a mouthful, but just think of creative ways how you can give your new subscriber a new win with another lead magnet and insert that into the nurture sequence. Now if you enjoyed these tips here is me reminding you again to head on over to the show notes and stand-free resource on how to automate the back end of your offers opt-ins and or bundles because I have a list of 39 ways to promote your lead magnet within that lead magnet. Alright, so the link is in the resources. You’re welcome. And before I sign off, I want to also stress to please stay legally compliant with your lead magnets and include a Privacy Policy and Terms and Conditions in the footer of your landing pages. When you collect those email addresses to grow your list, it’s really, really important to stay compliant and to grow your email list in an ethical and legal way. Alright, so head on over to the show notes for a link to the legal page and snag her Terms and Conditions and Privacy Policy templates to add your website today. And as always, I hope you continue to stay streamlined and automated in your systems and workflows in your creative business, my friend, I hope you have a wonderful and spooktacular week. I really had to insert that since it technically is Halloween today. But I will talk to you all next week. I really do hope you have a wonderful week. But

Dolly Delong
thank you so much for listening to the systems and workflow magic podcast. You can find full show notes from today’s episode at dolly DeLonge photography.com forward slash podcast. If you’re loving the podcast, I’d be so honored if you’d subscribe and leave a review on your favorite podcast player. Be sure to screenshot this episode, share it with your stories, and tag me at dolly DeLong education over on Instagram. Until next time, go make some strategic workflow magic.