Hi photogra-friends! Today’s post is all about mailing lists! I think there are two types of people out there…you’re either fist pumping at the idea of talking about mailing lists or you’re literally crying in the corner over your lack thereof. Trust me, I was the latter of the two just a few months ago.

Not anymore, ladies and gents! I’ve finally gotten a grip on how this whole thing works and I want to help you do the same!

First, a moment of transparency. My mailing list is small. Small but mighty! By “small” I mean we’re right at 500 subscribers at the time of this writing. I ignored my mailing list for roughly 9 years. 9 years of missed opportunity and missed connections! I was so focused on growing my social media following that I completely neglected the only thing that actually belonged to me. I have roughly 15,000 Instagram followers and just 500 mailing list, subscribers. How backward is that?! You see, Instagram is great, Facebook is dandy but you don’t own them. These platforms could change or disappear completely tomorrow and then where would you be? Your mailing list is different, though. You have the control and also the opportunity to serve your people well so USE IT.

WHEW! Now that we’re through the hard part, let’s talk about some statistics. Below is a graph of each month’s new subscribers from the time I joined Convertkit (September 2017) until now. You can see that I was working toward growing a list but still didn’t have the momentum I needed. I had created a few freebie opt-in forms by October 2017 (I offered a free business tool download in exchange for their name and email address) and was starting to see a bit of traction. However, once I understood the freebie opt-in process, had the dots connected and everything was going smoothly, I decided it was time to introduce a Facebook ad. Can you guess how the ad did? 🙂

This particular ad was the first Facebook ad I used with a solid goal of converting people into subscribers. The average conversion rate on a given Facebook ad across all industries is roughly 9%. My ad converted at a rate of 40%. 40 PERCENT, PEOPLE. I just had to yell that one out loud because holy cow, this went really well! I had a freebie opt-in (a Lightroom preset!) that was a HUGE convertor and the results were incredible. SO, the lesson here is that having a desirous freebie is key. The preset we gave away was also a basic version of our new Lovely Light Preset suite. People loved it and we received some great feedback that helped us in fine-tuning the end product. That was a win!

Overall, the combination of a great freebie opt-in with a carefully constructed Facebook ad was highly successful and we plan to continue implementing this process moving forward. If you’ve been trying to grow your mailing list but just can’t quite get your head around it, this is a great place to start.

Let me know if you have any questions! Cheering you on, friend!