Email opt-ins are a great way to grow your email list and fill it with your target audience. I’m going to show you how you can use my 5 steps to create an email opt-in that converts!

Step 1- Decide what you are giving away and create your email opt-in

What is an email opt-in? You’ve seen this before, a website or influencer gives away something they’ve created for free–all you need to do is give them your email address. Some common examples of this are free e-books, a free challenge for a few days, a template, etc. Why do people and businesses do this? So you can sell them something down the line. It allows you to create a relationship with them. In order to do this, you have to know your audience. Who are you wanting to sell to?

Ask yourself these questions:

• What do they like?
• What are their problems?
• How do you solve their problems?

Use the answers to these questions to create a freebie from your email opt-in that correlates to your product or service that you sell. For instance, if you sell business courses, don’t offer a freebie for cupcake recipes. That wouldn’t make sense, right? Remember, you want your email opt-in to convert to sales!

Step 2- Qualify Your Audience

This may be hard to hear, but you can’t serve everyone. You can’t be too broad with your offering, or you will miss out on your ideal audience. Think about your audience from Step 1 and their problems. Niche down your offer so they really want it or don’t want it. You need to be polarizing to a certain extent. You want those on your email list to be your client someday, so you grab their attention by offering a taste of what they are needing in their lives. I teach how to create content that converts. That’s what I do. So, I want people on my email list who are content creators. If these people sign up for my content challenge, then I know they will be great for my core content mini class, which will make them my ideal client for my Business Academy. I know this because I’ve already done the qualifying in my initial email opt-in!

Step 3- Solve the Leading Problem with an Obvious Solution

Ask yourself this question, “What problem does my audience have that can be fixed today?” Listen, there are always deeper problems that you can solve as well as the more obvious problems. We’ve discussed these before– fear or not knowing how to do certain things. But with an email opt-in, you just need to solve the top problem. For example, say you’re a marriage therapist and your target audience is newlyweds. Your email opt-in could be something about 10 ways to talk about hard conversations. This freebie would lead into your course for newlyweds all about how to get great communication from the start. Do you see how this works now?

Step 4- Create the Email Opt-in Solution

This leads us to step 4- create the solution to the problems you’ve identified in the earlier steps.

There are many different options that you can utilize for your opt-in freebie.

Some common ideas for email opt-ins that convert are:

• A challenge with a different email each day for a short amount of time
• a PDF or e-book on your topic
• a webinar
• Audio Files
• Workbook/printables
• Recipes
• Templates for creating something

These are just a few of the many email opt-ins you can offer your audience. Don’t get too stuck on making it one way or another. Think about what is easy for you to create and what content do you already have that can be re-packaged? If you are selling makeup, do you have videos or tutorials on different methods of makeup application that you’ve already created? Consider taking them and creating a series of emails that will walk your audience through different topics.

A few bonus tips-

• Your email opt-in should position you as the expert. Stake your claim and say you’re the expert in this territory.
• Make sure you have a fun and catchy title for your email opt-in that grabs your audience’s attention.

Step 5-Create the Email Sequence and a Sales Funnel

This is the fun part. Once you’ve done all of the planning and research, it’s time to put your ideas into action! I’ll have more information on how to complete the final step in a future podcast and blog post. But, for now, I’ve got an assignment for you. I want you to create your email opt-in freebie. Look at what you are offering, and create an email opt-in that converts to sales. I promise you that implementing this practice into your business will completely change your business. This is how you make money while you sleep!

Want to learn more about creating content that converts? Join my free facebook group HERE

Looking to grow your email list? Check out this blog post for my strategy!

Are you struggling with branding yourself? Here’s my guide to Branding 101