Episode 76: The easiest (and cheapest!) way to grow your email list with targeted leads

Hello, my pumpkins, and welcome back to this episode of Summer Shorts. I am coming to you from my favorite room in my house, which is my screened in sunroom. It's actually not too hot today here in Cincinnati. Um, although my air conditioning went out in my car this morning. Of course, the week Matt's out of town, which I was not going to say that, but I'm like, by the time this airs, he'll be back home.

But Yeah. I was like, why is it so hot in here? And it was blowing air on my side and then blowing heat on the passenger side. And yes, I tried turning my car off and back on. I tried turning the AC back off and back on. It wasn't on dual. I don't know what's going on, but luckily it's, I mean, it's high eighties, but it's not like it was last week where we had like a crazy, like high nineties heat wave.

Anyway, I digress. I'm drinking this morning's coffee over ice. And does anybody else do that? Like, that's my iced coffee for the afternoon is that morning's coffee over ice. Um, today's episode, I'm very excited about. It's going to be all about freebie swaps. It's going to be 10 minutes or less. This is one of the favorite ways or my favorite ways that I have grown my email list over the past few years.

I have to credit my online business manager, Carolyn, for bringing this idea to the business. This is again, why I think email swaps If you are a visionary, if you're the CEO, go back a couple episodes and listen to the ones on virtual assistants. I don't talk a ton about online business managers, but it's kind of think about like your office manager, integrator, whatever you want to call it.

She's the one that brought this idea to the business and Yeah, it's really helped grow my email list with like really targeted leads. So, um, if you have, if you don't already have an email list and or you have a list, but maybe you don't like actually do anything with it, that's fine. You can totally still, I would still encourage you to listen to this even because it'd give you something to plan on, but I'm going to give you, um, some, some pre homework to do, um, ahead of time.

So anyway, without further ado, I'm going to stop rambling because these are supposed to be short. Hush Molly, I guess the iced coffee's kicking in. Uh, here we go.

Hey, welcome to Holistic Marketing Simplified. This podcast boils down to the fact that we wholeheartedly believe that more humans need to know about holistic health solutions and you didn't go to school to learn how to be a full time content creator and show up on Instagram and do all of this marketing stuff all day, every day.

So while marketing, yes, is a super important part of your business, I want to bring you really bite sized, tangible tips so that you can get your message in front of more people who need to know about the beautiful and wonderful work that you do. So I joke that my new tagline should be come for the marketing advice, but stay for the life coaching.

And that's because you'll hear a lot of mindset and behind the scenes, subconscious tips and tricks and things that I've done to look at your marketing from a really holistic perspective. So let's come hanging out while we chat. All things easy new marketing. And my goal is that you shift your mindset around your marketing from a quote should to a, I get to more dream patients and clients.

Yes, please.

Hi, I'm Melissa Birdsell. And I'm a chiropractor in Moline, Illinois, and I listen to the Holistic Marketing Simplified Podcast.

Okay, freebie swaps. Let's just first, let me just give you the prerequisite. If you don't have an email list and or you're not emailing your list, regularly, then I would go back and listen to episode eight of the podcast way back with Allison Hardy. Allison Hardy is just like the go to gal for all things email funnels anyway.

And then listen to episode 49 where I give a little bit more of like the email marketing 101. Um, just to keep this, you know, short to 10 minutes, I'm not going to go through all of that. But how my email list works for me is when someone goes to the landing page to download my free download, my free guide, whatever, then, um, I capture their email address and I use Cartra.

Cartra is probably a little more robust than what most of you would need. Um, I love Flowdesk. It's actually our go to that we usually recommend for people. Just because it's so easy to use and it's so affordable and their emails are just super pretty. But, and you can create landing pages in flow desk if you have a free download or something like that.

So anyway, once they get onto my list and then they go into automatically, they start getting a couple of nurture or welcome emails for me. They're really education heavy. And then after that, it goes into an automatic, uh, Um, sales pitch for holistic marketing hub. And so that's just like always working for me in the background.

Right. So maybe I need to do a whole other, well, I guess in my email marketing episode, I do talk a lot, um, a little bit that in the evergreen funnel, but that's how my email list is like always working for me. I particularly, I don't like to live launch just because that's not my personality. I don't like.

I'd need something that's kind of like working in the background for me. If we didn't have the Instagram, um, management agency, I probably would have more bandwidth to put into a live launch. But since I essentially like my time and attention is being pulled in two different directions, like I just, I like to have my course on evergreen.

So like I said, go back to episode eight with Alison Hardy or episode 49 with me where I kind of dive into like the more basics of email. But what a freebie swap is. is pretty literally self explanatory. So this is not where I had somebody ask me, had somebody asked me once, bless her heart, she was, she did not, she meant well, if we're like sharing email databases and I'm like, well, that's illegal.

So no, we're not sharing email lists. It's a permission based, uh, gathering or swapping of emails, essentially. So it's where I would have a free download and then the person that I'm doing the freebie swap with has a complimentary audience to me and, uh, they have a free download and I email my list with their free download, uh, a link to it.

Not to just like the download directly, right? Because. That wouldn't do that person really any good because they wouldn't be capturing emails. I am emailing my list a link to the landing page of my, the person I'm working with. I'm doing the freebie SWOT with free download. And then they are emailing their list with my landing page to my free download.

And some examples of how I've used this in the past and then how I could see you using it. It doesn't have to be just a freebie, right? That's like another thing I have on my outline to talk about is what this could be. It could be, um, and then I'll, and then I'll give you some examples of what I've done.

So it can be just like your basic freebie, right? Whether it's like a PDF or a masterclass. a free guide to something or whatever, but it could also be like an event you might have going on. Like I said, any type of like training you have coming up that could also be part of the freebie swap. So I just did a freebie swap with, um, my friends, Chelsea and Jennifer over at LaunchRx.

And it just so happened that the time we did the freebie swap, they were gearing up to host a free masterclass. So I emailed my list. a link to their free masterclass to opt in and they emailed their list a link to opt into my 101 Reels prompts for health and wellness professionals freebie. I also did this with Stephanie Wigner's scale up event in Nashville back in the spring where I I sent a couple scale up emails, which I would have done.

I mean, a lot of these things you're like, I would do this anyway, right? Also, because I was, I was also an affiliate for scale up and I was at scale up, but let's just say I wasn't. Um, I would email promoting her event and then she emailed my reels freebie. I've done it with Prana foundation before, where I've emailed about some of their awesome CE classes that they have and trainings.

And then they've, you know, done the same for me. So the, like I said, it's just really great because I, My, my, I'll use my friend Kate Matheson, for example. So she's more on like the business coaching side of things for brick and mortar practices. And she's an amazing just knack for helping brick and mortar businesses like chiropractors, massage therapists, Reiki, all that kind of stuff be booked up.

Right. And I don't do as much on that side. I just do the marketing and more specifically Instagram and email marketing. So even though she covers some email. Marketing and Instagram marketing and her courses, like it's not as in depth as what I cover. And even though I cover some of the like very basic things she covers in her course, it's still not the main thing I cover.

So even though we have a tiny bit of overlap in our business, really, our programs are super complimentary. And so she's like, yeah, I don't want to continue. It wasn't her. I can't remember who else I was talking to. It was like, I can't. I can't keep up with continuing to update my Instagram course. It's just like way too much work.

So I'm just going to send people to you. If you can send people to me for like the business coaching side of it. And I'm like, yeah, like I said, that wasn't her, but it was someone else. I was like, yes, perfect. So how I could see you using this. Let's say like if you're two health coaches, for example, one really has a focus on PCOS and the other one of you really talks about menopause, let's say, so you would email your list and be like, Hey, you know, if you're struggling with PCOS, have you met my friend so and so?

This is her free masterclass on five things, you know, whatever. And then vice versa. I don't know that that's the best example, but I really could see this working like super well with maybe someone who's more recipe heavy and then someone who's more like helping with habit change heavy. Um, maybe somebody who does subconscious work with someone else who teaches like blood sugar balance, you know what I'm saying?

Like, where is it that you're like, Ooh, my clients need this piece? You to be like the full puzzle of their journey, but it's not something that I offer. That's a great person to do a freebie swap for. So you want to just make sure you outline the parameters ahead of time. We've done either one or two emails.

Sometimes we're like, Hey, I'll send two emails and you send two emails. And we've done it where with the two emails, we'll send one. If the person has multiple free resources, then one free resource one time, and then another one, the second and see which one's more popular. There's all kinds of like, there's no.

If you want to get even fancier, you can, of course, do some type of affiliate link and give people, um, you know, commission. Like if anybody from their list opts in and then eventually buys, that's what I do. But if you're just getting started and you just created your first free download and all that, like, I don't want you to get bogged down in all this fancy stuff.

You can literally just do a straight up freebie swap. And how to find people. So I've never really gone looking for anyone. I feel like, I mean, sometimes I guess I've like, for example, I'll look at like the chiropractic marketing hashtag sometimes and I'll see who else is posting there. But typically these people kind of already exist in your world and you just don't realize it.

Maybe you went through all like, uh, like a similar training program and there's like an alumni group or something like that. You could read, you know, sweep that group and ask for. People there, or you could even just put a poll on your stories and be like, Hey, um, who are your favorite accounts to follow for XYZ?

Like whatever that missing piece is. And then just, you know, reach out to people that way. I've never been someone who has asked like, well, how big is your email list and what's your open rate? I just trust that I'm working with some really cool people. And I've, I feel like I know, like I have a good gut instinct on the people that I've done freebie swaps with.

I'm never just like, randomly gone and found some stranger who I've never actually like seen the quality of their work. So I, like I said, to me, those things don't really matter. Um, and no one's asked me for mine either. But I do know that anytime I've done it, I would say the lowest I've ever gotten was like two, new opt ins on the day that it went out, like two new email addresses.

And on the high end, it was around 40 something on the day that the person I was doing the freebie swaps email went out. I got like 40 opt ins on one day, which if you were going to try to do that with ads, that would cost you a boatload of money. So I typically send The people I'm doing a freebie swap with, the results on my end, nobody asks for them.

You don't have to do that. I just think it's like a nice thing to do. Hey, I sent out your email, you know, I sent out your XYZ guide today. It got, um, you know, 60 percent open rate with in 14 people clicked on it. You know, that's usually what I do. So yeah, I, like I said, I don't like ever think of it as a quote failure because also you don't really know unless you're actually using like a trackable link.

There's no great way to know even like weeks ahead of time if somebody went back and found the email and joined your list. So I hope you found this freebie swap episode helpful. Keep in mind that even if you don't have an email list yet, this is still something that you could do and modify for Instagram.

Like I'll post it on my Instagram for you and you post on your Instagram for me. Um, there's so many things you could do with these types of collaborations. So I hope you have an amazing day. for listening to Holistic Marketing Simplified. And hey, you know how every podcaster at the very end of their episode asks you to rate and review their podcast.

Well, that's because it's super important. These podcasts take a lot of time and heart and effort to produce, to bring you free information. So in order for me to be able to continue doing that, we need more people to find out about the show. So if you could please just take like two minutes out of your very busy day to leave me a rating and share this on your Instagram stories and tag at Molly A.

Cahill. C A H I L L. I would greatly, greatly appreciate your support. I know your time is valuable and I can't wait to see you in the next episode.