Peace Family,
You’ve spent years building that following, and we want you to keep it.
Here’s the Rundown: Your followers live on Meta’s servers. Your email list lives with you and moves wherever you go.
Building one takes three moves: give your audience a reason to trade their email, put the signup link where you already talk to them, & send something worth opening.
Why Followers Are Borrowed & an Email List Is Yours
I’ve already broken down what happens when Instagram disables an account: the appeal is one automated door, & the years of followers behind it can vanish overnight.
An email list is different. You can download it and move it between tools, & no algorithm sits between you and the people on it. When you hit send, it lands in their inbox whether or not a platform feels like showing it.
Ahrefs calls email subscribers a blogger’s “true fans”; the same could be said for artists & creatives too [1].
The Trade: One Good Reason to Hand You Their Email
Your real fans will trade their email for something they want: first look at new work, pre-sale access before the public, a print discount, the story behind a piece.
Try to be specific, and stay away from the generic “Stay updated” message.
Make the trade plain: “Sign up & you get X.” One sentence, one deliverable.
Outreach is a great launch pad for building your list. Joshua Hardwick built a list of over 1,000 subscribers in a few days by personally reaching out to people who cared about the piece he was making [2].
For a creative, that means messaging the collectors, repeat commenters, & past participants who already show up. Reaching out to them first is what tells them you care.
“People don’t care what you know, until they know that you care” - Dr. Angela Warfield, founder of Compass Academics
The playbook in his own words: something worth wanting, traded for an email, spread by outreach. Source: Ahrefs.
Where the Signup Link Goes
Three places, today:
- Your bio link, on every platform. First slot, above the merch.
- Your website, if you have one. A single line & a signup box near the top of the page.
- The conversation: in DMs, at the merch table, after a commission. “Want first look at the next drop? Scan my QR-code & I’ll email you.”
Then send something worth opening, on a rhythm you can sustain. Email converts about 5 readers in every 100 into buyers, averaged across all industries [3], and those are your odds without paying to boost a post.
The full table, every industry, including the rows that cut against email. Find yours. Source: Ruler Analytics.
Free game.
If you want help getting the website & the signup flow behind it working, I offer a paid consultation: $125 for the hour, & you leave with the list whether or not you hire me afterward. The whole service is outlined at St. Louis SEO consultant, prices posted.
I hope this helps.
Sources
- ahrefs.com · Email subscribers are described as a blogger’s true fans
- ahrefs.com · Joshua Hardwick built an email list of over 1,000 subscribers in just a few days through outreach for a link building content piece
- www.ruleranalytics.com · Email conversion rate averages 4.9% across all industries