How To Get Subscribers For Your Health Coaching Email List

Are you struggling to get more people subscribing to your email list for your health coach business?  Email marketing may not be as effective since it once was since the advent of social media and people’s email inboxes becoming more and more inundated with junk email, but it is still one of the best ways to build a relationship with your client base.

There are several key strategies for increasing both the number of subscribers you get as well as the number of people that open your emails.  The first key point is that you should focus first on delivering high-quality content in the majority of your communications as opposed to endless sales messages.  If people know, like, and trust you as an authority in your field they are much more likely to purchase your services.

Focus Your Content

If all you do is send out a general health email you are much less likely to inspire people’s interest than if you create something that your ideal client needs and wants.

This comes back to picking a target market.  What population do you want to serve?  People with diabetes, struggling to lose weight, looking to manage stress, heart disease, or an endless list of other “niches”.  This doesn’t mean that this is the only thing you work with but you will have a much easier time becoming seen as an authority if you try to specialize in just a couple of areas.

Most people have never heard of a health coach and don’t know they need one.  They are looking for solutions to a problem they have, and if you can provide them with this finding clients will take care of itself.

Create A Valuable Opt-In Gift

I see so many websites where I am asked to “sign up for my newsletter”.  This is not very compelling and will lead to very low conversion rates.  Try offering something of value to your prospective clients in exchange for their email address.

There are many different things you could offer:

• A free report – Make sure to give it an interesting name or “hook”.  You want people excited to receive your information.  This can be very simple, “How to….”, “6 Easy Steps to…”, etc.
• An audio download – Have you recorded any classes or workshops?  Considering making a digital recording of this available as an opt-in gift.
• A video or webinar – Video is hot and gives your prospective client a great way to get a feel for what you are all about.  With the technology available today, this doesn’t really need to cost you much to get done, just some time.  It’s better if this is not a YouTube video, you want your subscribers to feel like this is information they are not going to find anywhere else.
• An inbox magazine – Rather than the tired old “newsletter”, create an inbox magazine where you share information focused around your area of expertise.  You can reach out to other people in your niche and find people that will be happy to help write content for you.  This is the model I am using.  Right now, I only have 1 other steady contributor, but I am planning on adding more in the future.  This is a win, win for everyone involved.  Your subscribers get more valuable content since they are receiving information for more than one source.  Your partners are getting exposure for their business, you can even set up JV partnerships where you can get some sort of financial compensation for any leads your partners get from your inbox magazine.  Probably the best part of this model is that in the end, it is less work for you.  Writing content for newsletters and blogs can be one of the most time-consuming aspects of an online business, so any help you can get in this department is huge.

Start Building Your Tribe

If you have created a valuable opt-in gift the next step is to find people that are interested in getting their hands on it.

Everyone knows to put some sort of opt-in form on their website, but this only works to build your list once you start getting a decent amount of traffic to your website.  What can you do if you are just starting out (or just want to grow your list quicker)

Facebook is a great place to start.  You can put the same opt-in offer on your Facebook fan page as you do on your website.  You can start off by sharing it with your Facebook friends and asking them to share it with others.  You can also take out a Facebook ad and target your niche specifically.  If you just put an ad up on Facebook without doing some good targeting, your conversion rate is going to be very low and it will end up costing you a ton of money.

Another great idea for Facebook is to build a custom tab on your fan page and put your opt-in gift on a “fan-only” page.  This is called the like-reveal feature and is a great way to build your fan base and email list.

Are you doing any online events or teleseminars yet?  If not, you should start.  This is a great way to build your list.  You can set these up for very little or no money and simply require people to register with their email address to get access.  Every time you do a new event, make sure to share it as widely as you can on social networks and ask your friends and colleagues to do the same.

This is an especially powerful tool if you are launching a new product or program.  If you offer some of the best content for free people will be happy to sign up and at the end of your event just tell them…”If you enjoyed what I have shared with you so far, you can sign up for my new program to get even more.”

Be Consistent, Not Overwhelming

Have you ever signed up for a great webinar, only to be inundated with tons of emails asking you to buy whatever the latest thing is?  This is one of my pet peeves and probably the reason email marketing is not as effective as it once was.  Especially in the internet marketing community, there seems to be this mindset of an email list being your own personal ATM.  Just send out tons of emails offering more products and programs than any person could ever use and the money will roll in.  What really happens is that the unsubscribes are the only thing that really rolls in with this approach.

Don’t send 1 email every 6 months, or nobody will remember you, and your emails won’t ever get opened.  Find a workable schedule, once a week to once a month is good for most people unless you have some sort of promotion going on.  Most people don’t mind getting extra emails for a couple of weeks but eventually, people will unsubscribe.

Summary

The days when you could just put an opt-in box on your website saying “subscribe to my newsletter” and expect to get any real results are over.

Focus on creating valuable content for your subscribers and know exactly who it is you are speaking to and what they are interested in hearing about.

Use every speaking and presentation opportunity to collect email addresses and build your list.  Deliver great content to these people over time and you will build a relationship over time that will definitely pay off more than just trying to “sell” your stuff.

By Geoff Young