You’ve got a great product and you’ve got a great site, but how do you build an email list so that people know about you and your business?
Here are my notes from the breakout session, “How to Run Promotional Campaigns and Build Your List using WordPress” presented by Wade Kwon (@wadeontweets) from the 2014 Wordcamp.
How do you grow site traffic by a factor of eight for an upcoming event? How do you grow a new mailing list so fast that you’ll save years in the process?
Blogging expert Wade Kwon shares his secrets on using WordPress to run promotional campaigns and build email lists quickly and profitably. His digital conference Y’all Connect brought in new fans and attendees through his targeted online drive.
Wade began his presentation with a story of trying to promote a one-day conference. All of his examples and strategies tied back to the one event goal — to raise attendance.
Step 1: Create a product
What can you create for little or no money that will excite people and jump on your mailing list?
Wade decided to write a book containing stories and insights from 27 social media stars in Birmingham. He personally interviewed these prominent local social media experts and asked each one to recommend someone to follow and why.
Step 2: Set up email capture using a plug in like easy sign up
This sets up and delivers product
With this plug-in you will need to manually port over the addresses from there to an email client like Mailchimp.
Step 3: Promote your product via…
- blog posts
- email newsletter (different from the one that triggered the download)
- social media channels
- the authors who contributed to the book. Wade offered a link to allow the authors distribute the content for download.
Step 4: Measure results
- Traffic on the download web site
- Mailing list subscribers
- Sales (in the book several times was a promo code for the conference)
GreenMellen note: the only flaw we can think of is how to keep the featured social media experts from taking that same book and having their own download link.
