Please stop trying to “grow your list”

Every time I see a challenge, goal or intention to “grow your list” something inside me rebels. While on the surface there’s nothing against growing your list of subscribers to your ezine or newsletter, it’s missing the point.

3 Reasons why Growing Your List isn’t the goal:

1. Quality, not quantity should be the focus. You know how it is, someone says they have 3,000 friends on Facebook and 9,000 twitter followers and still no one to help them move. The number of connections isn’t as important as the quality. After all, you can have a list of a hundred thousand but if none of those leads are qualified or interested in what you’re offering then it’s nothing more than a vanity number.

2. Invite action, beyond the first one. The primary problem with list growth strategies is that they ignore the list nurture strategies. Getting someone to sign up for a free offer or newsletter is nice, but if you don’t reach out after that and don’t convert those leads into paying clients then you’re missing the point.

3. Growing your list isn’t a sprint, it’s a marathon. This is one part of business you can’t just focus on for 4 weeks or during a conference. It’s one of the primary things you must do every single week including attract traffic, convert leads, serve clients, manage your team and financials.

How do you grow without “grow your list” strategies and programs?

The strategy I prefer is beautiful in its simplicity: create cool stuff. Create content that’s inspiring, amazing, compelling, groundbreaking, and makes someone sit up and say “wow” because that’s how you’re going to “go viral” in this world where everyone is competing for attention.

Instead of growing your list this month, try tracking the following every week:

1. Traffic to your site – the best offer in the world is useless if no one sees it.
2. New subscribers – of course you need to know how many people are saying yes!
3. Percentage of traffic converting to subscribers – is it 3%, 30% or .03%? You need to know.
4. Open rate – how many of those subscribers are regularly opening your emails? How about your welcome sequence
5. Action takers – if you have a call to action in your content (click here for info, schedule a free call, download this ebook), then you need to know how many people are taking advantage. If you don’t have a call to action then you need one.
6. Opt outs – how many people are leaving your list each week?

When you start seeing these numbers every week you can more effectively understand what you’ve done yesterday, are doing today, and planning tomorrow to reach your goals. Because what you measure, grows.

One little note on opt outs – if you’re not getting opt outs, then you’re not doing your job. Trying to appeal to ‘everyone’ and avoiding controversy is not going to bring you more friends, and may in fact repeal even more. I celebrate when people leave my list because it tells me that a) their business is doing great with systems and they don’t need help or b) I’m not a good fit to help them and so we don’t need to continue the conversation, and possibly c) they’re not willing to change, invest or improve their business.

And I don’t want to work with those clients, so unsubscribes save me time and energy – no getting acquainted conversations, no worrying why they’re not reading emails… it’s much cleaner this way and I’m not offended in the least.

If you’re looking for a goal, stop trying to grow your list, and instead create amazing content that inspires, nurtures and educates those who sign up and prompts them to take action so you can grow your business.