RYB 902: Giveaways vs Digital Downloads To Build The BEST Email List (What’s Best?)

00:01 What we want to do is we want to create a lead magnet. And if it's going to be a giveaway, it needs to be really, really focused on that market that only someone in that market would want,

00:15 Wait, Hey, Hey, what's up, everyone. Welcome to the rock, your brand podcast. I'm your host, Scott. Voelker a serial entrepreneur on a mission to help you. This show is designed to teach you to inspire you, to motivate you, to take massive action and build a future-proof business. So whether you're just starting out or taking your existing business to the next level, this is your home. Now, if you're ready, I'm ready. Let's rock your brand. What's up guys. Welcome back

00:48 Back to the rock, your brand podcast. This is episode nine Oh two. And today we're going to be talking about giveaways versus digital downloads to build our email list. And that's a question that I get quite often, and there are pros and there are cons, but really both of them work. And what I decided to do is I devoted a full coffee, talk to where I jumped on, and we went through the pros and the cons, and also gave you some examples of what it looked like from running a giveaway, the cost, and then also running a digital lead magnet and the cost of that when we're running paid ads. So if you are at all thinking to yourself, I'm not quite sure if I should be building my list with a giveaway or with a digital download this episode here will give you a little bit of clarity on that.

01:50 Now I will say this, they both work. I've used them both. And I'll talk in depth about that in this episode. But I did just want to say no matter where you are, you should be thinking about building that email list. If you haven't started already, if you did start building the list and it didn't go as planned, well, I've got some good news for you. It's probably just a tweak. It's probably a tweak in the lead magnet, or it's probably just a tweak in your Facebook ads that you're running or you're targeting. And what I have done is I created a full training that you can take this workshop in three hours. All right. It's actually about three hours, maybe a little bit longer with the Q and a that we added in there, but this is a full workshop where I break it down.

02:40 Step-by-step and it's called the email list, building fast track workshop, and it will get you up and running in no time. And you will start building that list the right way within 24 hours. So it's all about let's, let's learn really quick and then let's start implementing even quicker. And, uh, that's what this track workshop does. So if you're interested in checking that out, you can head on over to brand creators.com forward slash list. And if you go there, it'll take you over to the email fast track workshop. So this way here you can get started as soon as possible. All right, guys, let's get into today's episode. If you are starting from scratch and you're like, okay, uh, what, what should I start with? Should it be a giveaway or should it be a digital download? So let's talk about those two first. Okay, well, let me back up.

03:34 The very first thing that we need to talk about is a lead magnet. Okay. And the lead magnet is super, super important because that is what's going to attract and repel the right people. Okay. Or it's going to get rid of the wrong people. Right? So it's really, really important that we have a lead magnet that does that now a giveaway or a digital download. It's just a form, a different type of lead magnet. That's basically what it is. So one thing that I I've seen people do giveaways, and the reason why they don't work for them is because they're raffling off and I'm trying to look for something. Well, they're just raffling off iPhone seven, iPhone eight, whatever, right? Like they're, they're trying to get people to opt in for something that they know that anyone would want. Right. So that's mistake. Number one, we do not want to do that.

04:31 What we want to do is we want to create a lead magnet. And if it's going to be a giveaway, it needs to be really, really focused on that market that only someone in that market would want. Right. It's like if someone is not in the bass fishing, but I have this ultimate bass fishing kit, they're not really going to want it right now. You could argue and say, well, some people are going to want it because they could get it and sell it. You're right. Okay. You have some people that might want to get it and give it away to someone they know that's in the bass fishing. That's true. Okay. So whenever you do a giveaway, you are going to have, and I'm just going to say it right here. You are going to have a slightly less of quality leads. Okay. Plain and simple, but there's a lot of upside to having a giveaway and here's, here's a lot of them.

05:25 Okay. And I'll go with you. I'll go through a few of them right now. Okay. So number one, they're easy to set up super, super easy. You don't have to worry about, okay. I got to create a digital download. I got to figure out how to host it and all this stuff, really, all you need to do is come up with your prize. Right. So it's pretty easy to do. Um, and actually if we go back about three and a half, four years now, uh, the brand that we just sold, we started that email list by building a list through giveaways. Okay. And we, I think our first list, we like four or 5,000 out of those four or 5,000, there was probably 50% of them that stayed on our list. Okay. And you would say, well, Scott, isn't that, you know, isn't that not good?

06:07 Because then you have all of these people that you paid for to get on your list. The thing is, is those leads are super, super cheap. Like, and what I mean by that is like, if we always go at it, like if we can pay, just to give you guys an idea of what I'm willing to pay per email. Now this doesn't go for like brand creators and the pod, like the podcast I don't advertise to, but people that were, that are going to be in my audience, I would pay for those people more because in our industry of, you know, being in the, make money online or build an online business, it's really expensive. It's kind of like the insurance business in a sense, right. There's a lot of competition, but there's also a lot more people that are willing to spend more money when you get into these niches.

06:51 Okay. Something like bass fishing, you can get leads for as little as like 12 cents and I'm not kidding. Okay. We did a case study where we built a list through a giveaway. Okay. We did this exact process by the way. And we built a list of over 9,000 subscribers in 30 days. And those leads cost us on average about 14 to 18 cents. Okay. Now, okay. That list. Okay. You would say, okay. That's, that's great. But now, even if I only kept a third of that list, let's say after I send a whole bunch of emails, you know, over the course of a month and I start to see who's, uh, who's, who's someone on this list, that's actually opening my emails. And then I trim it. Even if I only have three or 4,000 emails from there, that's still good. Because then you would say, well, okay, so it costs me 50 cents, or it costs me 75 cents.

07:45 It's still not that expensive. If you look at it that way, the other thing is doing a giveaway, allows you to get a lot of share-ability meaning when someone opts in, when someone enters their name and email address to enter the giveaway on the thank you page. And if you're not doing this, you should do this on the thank you page. You give them ways for them and you, and you incentivize them to share it. So it's kind of like, Hey, share this with three of your friends. And if they opt in, or if they enter the contest, we'll give you five more entries. Right. So then they're like, Oh, cool. I'll go share it on my profile. Or I'm going to share it in my Facebook page or my group, or I'll just email my friends, like, whatever. Right. That right there. I'm telling you right now, it will get you free reach.

08:35 Okay. Think about that. If someone has 200 friends on Facebook, only 200 friends and they share that with their friends right now, not all of their friends are going to be in the bass fishing. Right. But some of them are right. Cause if they're their friends, they might have a group of buddies that, or women that like the bass fish. Right. So that's the benefit. That's the upside of it. It's real easy to get one going, like, there's nothing stopping you. Like right now, guys, I'm not even kidding. If we sat there and we brainstormed for maybe, I don't know, a half hour, we could come up with a prize for our market. And then I can build a landing page in like 10 minutes. Right. And then from there I can turn on a Facebook ad and get it approved in the next 24 hours.

09:17 We could have this running in 24 hours from right now. Right. And so that's the upside of that. Okay. So they're really good. They have their place. Okay. But the next thing is the digital download. Okay. Now I've been doing digital downloads for years. Okay. And inside of the workshop, by the way, tomorrow, I'm going to be sharing something that we recently tested, um, from something that I had a long time ago and I brought it back to life and basically we did it as a test and we ended up selling stuff on the back end of it. So I'm going to share that tomorrow. That's another little insider thing that I'm gonna be sharing in that workshop. Um, but that digital download will most likely give you a higher quality lead, but you're going to spend a little bit more money for it. Okay.

10:11 And I say a little bit more money right now. We're seeing like on that test that we ran, we're getting emails for any, from anywhere from 40 to 60 cents. Okay. Which is great, which is awesome. Right. That's still pretty inexpensive. But if I did a giveaway in that market, I could probably get them for 15 cents. Right. So you have to have, you know, you might want to just mix it up, do a giveaway every quarter maybe, and kind of bring people in that way. Right. Um, it also has to do with targeting. You want to make sure you do your targeting. Right. Okay. Um, so that's the benefits of a giveaway. Now the digital download. Let's talk about that. The cool thing about that also is most likely you don't have a, or you already have a digital guide in your business right now that you don't even, like, if you're already publishing content on your website, you probably already have a digital download ready for you to set up.

11:10 Right. And what I mean by that is we did this, actually, we showed it in the Academy. I'm actually going to show it in tomorrow's workshop too. And I'm going to show the two side-by-sides that I did, but basically in this niche. Okay. And we'll show you the niche and all that. We basically took two blog posts and we turn them into PDFs, which took about 10 minutes. And then from there we put those up on their own landing pages and then we started driving traffic to it. Okay. And we did them as we wanted to split test the two, well, within probably a week, we realized that the one on the left was not doing as well as the one on the right. Okay. A wasn't doing as good as B. Now it was still doing really pretty good. It was doing, I think we were converting at like 30.

12:04 I want to say 32% off top of mind. Um, the other one was converting, I think at one point it like 40%. Right. I think it's come down to about 38%, which is great. Okay. Anything over 20% were like, yes. Okay. But it's still, it was costing us just over 50 cents. Right. I think it might've been been at one time, a dollar and then, and then we trimmed it down and that's the other part of it too, which Chris Shaffer will be teaching that inside of this workshop, as far as the Facebook, if you want to just even start a Facebook ad and run it for like five bucks a day, you know? Um, but when you do that, your, uh, you're able to then target people, bring them over to the lead magnet. And then from there you can see how it's converting. Right.

12:51 And that's another big thing, right? Like even if we're doing a giveaway or if we're doing, uh, you know, a digital download, we want to look at the conversion rate. That's the first piece in any of this. Right? So whether you pick a giveaway or you pick a lead magnet, understand what you're pulling in, like what you're bringing into your business. And we only want people that are interested in our business, in our brand, right? That's all that we want. Right. It's not about having a large list. It's about having a quality list. You know, I shared this before, you know, I built a list of a thousand people. It was actually just under a thousand people, uh, over 10 years ago, right. Using a Webber back in the day. And I sold my first digital product through there and made over $12,000 on a launch.

13:41 Okay. In the photography space. So don't think that you have to have a massive list. That's why during this workshop, by the way, our goal is, and we're calling it like the three to 500 method, which is follow these three steps to get to 500 subscribers. Like that's the goal. And my goal is for everyone that attends, they they're able to build a list of 500 quality email addresses. Because guess what, if we get 500 email addresses in your market, put 500 people in a room that are interested in what you have to offer in your brand. It's a pretty good chance. They're going to want to go over to your blog. They're probably going to click around on your website. They might stumble on an affiliate link and buy something through Amazon or wherever your affiliate links are. Or maybe they're going to buy one of your products because you sell a physical product or maybe you sell a digital product.

14:33 There's all of that happened with just 500 people. Like we can learn that process and we can also start getting in front of people like that. Right. So just imagine that, imagine having the power of having 500 emails, just 500. Okay. And you're like, I want to send an email about three to era, you know, like a three-day promotion coming up. Maybe it's a blast Friday coming up. And you're like, I want to prep people for this. You're going to write emails and get instant traffic. They're instant. Okay. So you just want to think about the quality of your list. If you do a giveaway, it's still going to be quality. Right? Like I said, that list that we built to 9,000, I think right now we've trimmed it down to 7,000. Okay. So we got rid of the other 2000 that weren't, that weren't doing anything with it now, little here.

15:23 Here's a little Ninja tip though, for you. All right. This, this only happens on coffee talks by the way. Or if you're listening to this on the podcast, if this makes it to the podcast, um, what you can do before you clean your list before you take those emails and you, you go, you know what, if they don't engage within 30 days, I'm going to go ahead and I'm going to delete them. Okay. You can export your list, your fullest export that entire list, put it in a CSV file. And boom, put it over here on the side. Now, why would you want to do that? Those 2000 people or 3000 people that aren't opening your emails right now? Why would you want those people, if you, and why would you ever want to bring them back into your business? Well, you can actually use them as a way for you to build a lookalike audience in Facebook so we can take those people or the entire list for that matter and upload it into Facebook and then create a lookalike audience of those people.

16:23 So it gives, it gives us a leg up, so we don't have to start from scratch. Right? So there's really cool things. The other thing you can do is maybe those emails, maybe they just haven't checked their email and forever. You can run retargeting ads to those people with a lead magnet and then get them back on your list through the lead magnet. That might be something that they're interested in. So there's all of these different things you can do with that list. So a little Ninja tip there. If you are going to clean your list, export them, put them off on the shelf, keep them there. If you want ever need them for a Facebook lookalike audience, retargeting that stuff, you still got them, but you're not paying for them inside of your inside of your account. Okay. Really, really important. Um, and that's, uh, that's a little Ninja tip there.

17:05 All right. So make sure that you do that, but we trim that list down to about 7,000 ish. And then there's a feature inside convert kit where we can send to the, the, uh, cold subscribers that haven't interacted within like 90 days. Uh, and we can send to them directly. And I think the last time I looked our engaged list, meaning they've opened something of ours in the last, within the last 90 days, at least in the last 90 days is like over like 3,800, almost 4,000. I'll take that right. Because I only paid 15 cents per email address and yes, I've trimmed it down. So even if you mapped it out and you said 50 cents, I'm still okay. Right. So again, you want to think about the quality of your list and it really does come down to what you're offering as a lead magnet.

17:54 It really truly does. Right? Do not do not make this mistake and just put something up that you think that everyone would want, because what that's going to do is it's going to give you a lot of people that just want to get something for free. Right. We want to do is we want to call specifically out to that market. All right. Well, there you have it guys, like I said, there there's some pros, there's some cons and really the cons to me are just like ad costs are a little bit higher for the lead magnet, but you do get a little bit better of an email subscriber. So there's really not a right or a wrong. I always tell people what is going to be the least resistance for you right now. And I think I mentioned it in that Copytalk that when we built the brand that we just recently sold, we actually built our first list using a giveaway.

18:47 And it worked really, really well. It helped us launch multiple products when we were selling completely on Amazon. And we were launching those products through our email list. That's all we had at the time. We didn't have any website traffic or anything. So if you're, if you're thinking to yourself, well, Scott, I don't even have a website yet. The great thing about having your own email list is really you have that traffic now that you can direct to your blog posts or your YouTube videos or wherever you want to send people. That's the really cool thing is we now have control over that traffic, whether it's 300 subscribers, 500 subscribers or 5,000 subscribers, uh, it does really speed up that process. So again, if you're interested in going through the email list, building fast track workshop, head on over to brand creators.com forward slash list. Again, that's brand creators.com forward slash list. All right, guys. So that's it. That's going to wrap up this episode as always remember, I'm here for you. I believe in you and I am rooted, but you have to, you have to come on, say it with me, say it loud, say it. Proud. Take action. Have an awesome, amazing day. And I'll see you right back here on the next episode. Now let's rock your brand.