7 Practical Steps to Set up Your Email List and Grow your Reach

You’ve heard you’re supposed to have an email list. People have told you about lead magnets and opt-ins and freebies. But how are you supposed to get those up and going? Which provider should you choose? And how do you add a form to your website?

If you’ve been asking yourself those questions, today’s super specific blog post will come in handy. I’m going to walk you through the exact, hard-to-find technical details to get started with your email list.

So, let’s go.

1. Which provider should you go with?

Part of the struggle for many writers is simply deciding which email platform to go with. The options are endless and which one is best?!

Truth is, none of them are bad and all of them can help you. So for the sake of this post, we’re going with the platform I use, which is MailerLite. I love it because it’s free until your first 1,000 subscribers. It provides analytics to know what’s working and easy automations to shoot out your freebie.

Sign up on MailerLite:

(Remember, we’re getting nitty gritty!)

1. Go to mailerlite.com.

2. Click on the “sign up” button and enter all your information.

You can start to explore the dashboard after you finish this.

In order to get your account approved, you’ll need to complete your profile and verify your website.

Complete Profile:

1. Navigate to your dashboard page.

2. On the second step, profile information, click complete.

3. Fill out your information.

4. Specify how you’ll be collecting subscribers. You’ll likely choose the top two. This step is to prove that you aren’t buying subscribers illegally.

5. Include a short sentence or two on what you’ll be sending out to your subscribers. According to MailerLite, being as detailed as possible here will help you get approved faster.

6. Answer all the remaining questions, agree to the anti-spam policy, and click save.

7. Next, you’ll click “complete” on the request approval step.

Verify Website:

If you complete this step as well, it’ll help get approval faster.

1. On the dashboard page, click “I would like to verify my website.”

2. Enter your website URL.

3. Enter email address associated with your domain and click next.

4. A verification email will be sent to your domain email address. Once you’ve verified your address, your account will be submitted for review by mailerlite. You’ll get an email once you’ve been approved.

2. Create your first lead magnet.

Now that you’re all signed up, approved, and verified, we can jump into the fun stuff.

A lead magnet is a valuable freebie to encourage readers to sign up for your email list. Most people don’t just sign up for an email list. They want to get something in return for handing over their precious email. So give them something of value.

For example, I’m offering a “5 simple tips to grow your email list” freebie as a lead magnet. My hope is that I’m giving you enough value that you get excited to hand over your email address.

So what’s it for you? What can you offer? Anything that might help people save time, money, or solve a problem is a great place to start.

Exercises to Brainstorm Lead Magnet

1. Spend a few minutes thinking about the things you signed up for in return for someone’s “freebie.” Could you adapt that freebie to your audience?

2. Here are a few other ideas to consider:

• A checklist
• A free guide
• A chapter of your book
• A quiz
• A discount code to a book or service you offer

3. Another helpful way to brainstorm would be to swipe a few powerful headlines and adapt to your needs. Here are a few of my favorites:

• How’s your ___________ ? Here’s a tool to make it better.
• How to make progress by ____________
• My Favorite 5 Step Process to ________________
• 6 Reasons Why You (something negative) + How to Avoid Them
• The Beginners Guide to ___________________
• How to Start ___________ + Free Checklist

Once you’ve got one or two ideas, here’s what to do:

1. Open up Microsoft Word or Google Docs and type out the information like you would for a blog post.

2. Input it into Canva to make it a little bit prettier. You can use one of their templates and add in your logo (if you have one, no worries if not!).

3. Once you’re finished in Canva, download the freebie as a pdf.

4. Then go to Google Drive and upload it into a folder. You’ll store it here for now until we upload it into MailerLite.

3. Create an embedded form in MailerLite.

Now, we’re going to get a little techy. Stick with me. You can do it!

• Go to MailerLite and click on “forms” in the top bar.
• Click Create Embedded Form.
• Give your form a name. I prefer to title it with the freebie and wherever the form will go. For example, this checklist will be “Email Freebie Blog Post.” I have others that say “Front page website,” “sidebar,” etc. This helps me identify the forms later.
• Choose your subscriber group. If you don’t have any subscribers yet, no worries! You can make that group right now. (Later, once you get more advanced, you can make multiple groups based off of where you got their email addresses and what information you’d like to send them.) Everyone who signs up for this freebie will funnel to this group. I funnel all of my subscribers into one generic list, so I wouldn’t worry about making specific lists right now.
• Now you can make it pretty! Choose how you’d like it formatted on the right hand side. If you’ve got your branding colors and fonts solidified, you can use those here. If not, don’t worry about it. Just make it look how you want.
• On the top bar, click “success message.” Make sure to customize this as well. Click next when you’re finished and that’s it!

Remember, your form doesn’t need to be flashy or fancy right now. Just get something that you like and you can always change it later!

4. Create an automation.

An automation is the automatic email that will send your reader the freebie they signed up for. Now that you have the form for your people to sign up, you’ll need to deliver the freebie to them. Here’s how to do that.

• Go to “automations” at the top of the page in MailerLite.
• Click create workflow.
• Give it a name, then select your trigger, which will be when a subscriber completes a form.
• Choose the form you just created.
• Next, click on the plus sign to create your first automation.
• You’ll add “email.”
• Fill in all the information about your email to the side.

5. Create the email for automation.

Now, you get to make it pretty! Click on “design email.”

If the blank page is scaring you, I understand. You have a few options. You can upgrade in MailerLite to a paid plan and use their templates. You can also go to CreativeMarket.com and search their email templates. You can also try to recreate their templates. You could look at your favorite emails from other writers/companies.

Or, my favorite, make it super simple!

A lot of marketing research shows that simple emails resonate with readers more. They feel like a message from a friend, rather than a newsletter from a company.

Whichever option you choose, remember to not lose sight of your goal. Whenever I get stuck trying to make something look pretty, it’s often because I just don’t want to do the work of writing the words. So choose a design, stick with it, and write.

Whichever option, remember to include the following in that first email:

• A welcome message
• A reminder to your reader of what they signed up for
• A button for them to download the freebie.

(The left hand side of MailerLite are your formatting options. You can add buttons, text, images, and more here. On the right hand side are your design options. You can change fonts and colors over there.)

The button is where you’ll drop the link to your freebie that we made.

To do this:

• Go to Google Drive.
• Right click on the freebie and click “share.”
• Change the access to “anyone who clicks the link” and then click on “copy link.”
• Go back to MailerLite and input the link in the box to the right. You can put “download now” or “get your freebie here” or whatever you’d like for the button text.

Click done editing at the top right when you’re all finished.

6. Turn it on!

Now you just need to turn on the workflow in the top right hand corner. And it’s ready to go!

7. Embed the form on your website.

You’ve got everything all set up. You’re almost there! Now, you’ll need to put the form on your website.

To do that:

• Go back to the forms page in MailerLite.
• Click “get embed code” underneath the form. This will give you the java script or html code that you need to embed it into your website.
• Go to your website and embed! Most website builders will have an option to embed a code into a blog post or front page. Just add this form wherever makes the most sense on your website.

Whew! You did it!

Setting up the technical side of your email list can be tedious. But, don’t let technology get you down. You’ve made HUGE strides. You created a profile, made a lead magnet, designed a form, and embedded it into your website.