Ch. 13: Capture - The Artful Exchange of Value for Email Addresses

Welcome to this special Book Club Series! Over the next several episodes, you'll be able to go "behind-the-scenes" with Jonathan Milligan as he teaches through his latest book, Your Message Matters!

Think of it as your own special audio course to go with the book!

Don't have a copy of Your Message Matters yet?

No problem! For a limited time, you can get a free physical copy of the book sent to your home address (Just pay $4.95 for shipping and handling)!

To get your free book go to: YourMessageMattersBook.com

Implement the Blogging System that 40x My Online Business! Click here to get the training video

Transcript

0:40

Hello, and welcome to the market. Your message show. I'm your host, Jonathan Milligan and author of the book. Your message matters. How to rise above the noise. And get paid for what, and we have been going through this book club series. And the reason I created this book club series is because I know books that I've read. I wished I could sit across the table. From the author and hear more about the book or get more applications or more insights into applying what was in the book. So I thought it'd be a fun idea to do a book club series chapter by chapter in the book. Now, if you do not have a copy of the book, we are still giving away free copies. All you have to do is pay 4 95 for shipping and handling. So it covers our shipping costs. And we'll send you out a physical copy of the book. It's a 267 page book. It's got exercises in it. And so much more and you can use it or ride along this. We could call it an audio course series to help you implement. Everything inside the book chapter by chapter. And I've been doing online business through blogging, speaking, writing, coaching. For over a decade. And actually longer than that, I started in 2009. I've been doing it full-time since 2011. And when I wrote this book and published it back in end of 2020. I encapsulated everything I know about building an online business and broke it down. Step-by-step for you. So go grab that book. Right now, by going to your message matters, book.com. All right. If you've got your book with you. We're going to start on page one 70 today. And we're going to start with chapter 13, capture. The art full exchange of value for email addresses. And I kicked off this chapter with one of the most compelling reasons to have an email list. By telling a true story. Let me read it to you. Can you tell a story in six seconds or less? That was the premise of a once popular social media platform known as vine. Twitter known for keeping its messages short acquired vine in 2012 as a video based platform with the same idea of brevity. Users had six seconds to tell their story via video. And it's peak in 2016, vine had well over a hundred million active users. That much daily activity create an opportunity for many previously unknown creatives. Some of those super users. I amassed more than a million followers and they affectionately became known as Viners. Then the unthinkable happened. Without much warning. Twitter killed the platform. Sarah Austin, a writer for entrepreneur magazine wrote quote. Almost overnight Twitter reduced vine to little more than an archive of the world's shortest, most entertaining video content. Leaving it survivors to abide on other platforms. End of quote. Here's the point millions of followers. Gone overnight. Some Viner survived because they were already building a platform on YouTube. Facebook and Instagram. But many others lost their fame and influence in an instant. And this is a sad tale of what happens. When we build our empire on rented land. Who knows if in the days ahead, the same will happen to influencers on YouTube, Facebook, and Instagram. By the way, little author note here. I wrote this back in 2019. And that was still early on. Before a lot of the canceling happened. On the different platforms that really started happening in 2020. A little bit of a protection here. Here's the point. There's nothing wrong with leveraging social ponds. It's what I call them to attract our Idaho audience. But smart messengers and your smart messenger. Cause you're here investing in yourself. Smart messengers are ruthless about one crucial skill. Capturing an audience you own. And that is what an email list can do for you. I had a mentor early on in my blogging career, he was doing it full time and I said, What are some pointers? What are some tips? What do you have for me? And this is what he told me. I never forgot it. He said, Jonathan, there's only two things you can take with you to the grave. In this online business. And that is your reputation. And your email list. And I went, I got it. I got it. And email lists is so critically important. And I'm going to give you some reasons in a second, but I want you to think about it. If you get shut down your Facebook ad account. If you have an email list, you can survive. If you get your Facebook group, shut down. If your Instagram account is taken down, if your website goes down, You can let your followers know. Hey. I'm over here now. An email list. Until something else. Supersedes it and nothing else has as of yet. An email list is the life and energy. Of your business. Let me give you some reasons why you need an email list. Number one. Your email list is the foundation. Of your business. Do you remember that hourglass funnel that I shared back in chapter 11? If you think about an hourglass, the skinny part. Is the one that represents capturing emails in your business. You see all the content you're creating. Is not just a good will, although that's a part of it. But we're creating blog posts and we're doing podcasts. We're doing YouTube videos. Because the next step in the journey for a listener and a reader and a follower. Is to join. On an email list or we can build the relationship. So an email list is the foundation. Number two. Your email list is traffic. You can control. So if at any time I need traffic to a blog post, or I want traffic to my sales page. Or I went traffic to an affiliate product. All I have to do is write up an email and send it. And I will get traffic to those things. It's traffic. You can control. Number three. Your email list is the best way to make money in your business. Now, this has been proven over and over again. They keep running. Different. Surveys to figure out if this is true and it is listen to this HubSpot, a customer software company reports that email generates$38 for every dollar spent. If you're wondering whether people are still paying attention, email, I want you to consider this 99% of consumers. Check their email every single day. Now, of course, that doesn't mean 99% of your email list is going to see. Your emails. But that's a high percentage. The study also found 73% of millennials prefer communications from businesses to come via email. So it's still. The popular tool in your business. Number four, your email lists gives you instant access to your audience. Just like I said before, if I wanted drive traffic to a brand new sales page, a new product. I don't have to post it on social media, hoping that may be surely somebody might see it. I can send an email and get instant traffic. Number five, the relationship is in the list. You see the relationship's important now there is money. And when we talk about that on second there's money in your list. But before that, The relationships in the list. An email list. If you do it correctly, we'll continue to build value and Goodwill so that when people see your name in their email inbox, they associate that with value. And that's what you want. And number six, the money is in the relationship. Now, it's not that we are trying to manipulate a relationship to make money. But if you are truly adding value, And that's truly your desire to add that value. People will pay. Four. Ongoing value. And I think that's really important to understand and to learn. Jeff Walker. A lot of people know him in the internet marketing. And he's the author of the best selling book launch. This is what he said about an email list. Having an email list is the closest thing you can have to a printing press that will print money for you. Now. That is so true. There's been different times where I remember when my son, he had a lump on his neck, we weren't sure what was going on there and ended up not being cancerous. But he still needed to have surgery to remove it. And at the time they wanted a certain amount of money to perform the surgery. Guess what I did. I discounted some of my courses. And within 24 hours, I was able to raise the money that I needed. To move forward on that surgery. It is as close to things as possible as having a printing press to print money. How do you build NEMA last? That's the big question here. And. What is your recommendations, Jonathan? There's three questions and I talk about this on page 1 76 in the book. There's really three questions. Number one. Who do you want to attract? Number two. Where can you find them? And number three, what tool will you use to attract them? So number one. Who do you want to attract? This is important. If you're trying to create. Now to build an email list, there is an exchange that happens. You can't just say, give me your email address. Right? People want to exchange some kind of value for their email address. If they're going to let you into their world. They would like something in return. And I'll talk about in a minute, some of my favorite tools, things that we can do. To get people to make that exchange with us. But there's gotta be some value there. And in order to have value and create value, you need to talk to a specific person. So for example, if I'm. If I'm creating a business, edgy E-bay education business, I wanna teach people how to sell on eBay. Then I want to create a PDF that's. The 10 secrets of selling on eBay in 2023. And it's completely free. All you do is put in your email address, right? Create something that somebody may even potentially pay for. And that's just one example. So see how by knowing my audience, I can then create something really attractive when you don't know your audience. And you're just. Creating something out of thin air. It may not be good enough to build an email address or an email list. Number two. Where can you find them? So once you've created something of value and you know who your audience is, you got to go find them. Now we'll be talking about this in the chapter coming up. About traffic. So stay tuned for that. But there's really three ways that you can drive traffic. Free. Paid. And partner. We'll get into this in chapter 15, coming up. But you have to use one of those three, either free. Those are. I like to call them ponds, right? Like a social pond. I think I like ponds there. You have to go find your fish and they're hanging out in a pond. So free ponds are things that anyone can access. Like search engine pond. Social ponds. Then there's paid. Ponds. Right where you need to pay to get access. You have to use paid advertising to fish in that pond. And then there's partner pawns site. These are ponds, your friends own. Affiliates or other people who already have an email list. We'll get into all of that, but just know that you have to figure out where they're hanging out. Again, number one. Is who do you want to attract? Number two, where do you find them? And finally, number three, what tool? Are you going to use? To attract them. Now, I've got a list of my top nine in the book, and I certainly don't have time to go through and explain all of them in the session. So I'd encourage you to like, Work through them. Look through them. In the book it's on page 1 78. But let me just hit the highlights content upgrade. That's where you create a bonus content on your blog, post or podcast, by the way, me saying, Hey, how would you like a free copy of the book? Go to your message. Matters. book.com. That's a content upgrade. Cause you're going to put in your email address, you're going to pay 4 95 for shipping and handling. If you want the book. Of course. And then I'll send out the book, but you'll also get on my email list. Where I can continue to build a relationship. That's an example of a content upgrade, and we can do those with blog, podcast and videos. You could do a contest, giveaway and collect emails. You could do a five day challenge and get people to opt in. To attend that challenge. You can create a. PDF blueprint, like I shared earlier. So you can definitely do that quiz. You can do a webinar. You can collect testimonials. You can do virtual summits. And you can even do launches like an affiliate product launch where affiliate promotes you, but they have to opt in to get the free videos. Those are, that's a fast moving through that list, but just know you don't have to do all nine. You need to choose one. So there you go building an email list. Hopefully you're convinced now that building an email list is essential. So if you think about our hourglass funnel again, the very top. Was the create habit. That's all of the value we're creating either by blogging podcasting or doing YouTube videos. And then the skinny part is what we talked about today. We are funneling people to us to get on our email list. Now the bottom part of that funnel. Is the compile. Habit that we're going to be talking about. That's where you package your knowledge into products and services. And that's what we'll be covering in chapter 14. Once we have a list of people. How do we create products? They want. So that we can build a business. And they can get the results they want. So that's it for this episode. I hope you enjoyed it. Take a moment and like share, subscribe, or even review our show. And also, if you don't have a copy of the book, go to your message matters. book.com, happy to send you out a free copy. All right, that's it for this episode. We'll see you next time and never forget. Your message. Matters