In this episode of The Dietitian Success Podcast, Krista Kolodziejzyk, RD, MPH, MBA talks about how she grows her DSC email list by >100 new subscribers each month using relatively passive tactics.
This episode covers:
- What to do if your email list isn’t growing (and why your email list isn’t growing)
- What to do if you don’t have an email list set up
- How to choose a lead magnet topic that is compelling enough to get people to want to download
- How to drive organic traffic to your lead magnet
- An unexpected hack for generating lead magnet ideas
Links:
- Check out our lead magnets here
- Learn more about the DSC Nutrition Counseling & Coaching Certificate of Completion here (and join the waitlist)
- Access the letter template to request financial sponsorship from your employer for professional development here
Episode Transcript:
Welcome to the Dietitian Success Podcast. I’m Krista, the founder of Dietitian Success Center, an online learning platform for RDs and students. I am on a mission to help more dietitians build confidence and expertise in running successful, profitable businesses. I went to business school so you don’t have to.
My team and I have grown DSC to a platform that serves hundreds of members. We’ve experimented with all types of marketing, tech, sales strategies, productivity tools, systems, and more. And we want to spill the tea on what’s working, what’s not, and how you can leverage our insights to kickstart, expand, or elevate your own business.
Ready to dive into your business school crash course? If so, let’s get started.
Hey there and welcome to a new episode of the dietitian success podcast. This is such a fun topic to talk about. And for us, this is really email list. Our email list is kind of the backbone of our business. It’s how we continue to grow and scale every day, every month, every year. And the reason why I decided to talk about this topic today is because. Something that I notice, I look at a lot of businesses. Every day I do.
So. As I’m bringing back some I’ve started bringing back some one-on-one business strategy sessions. I, if you’ve been listening to this podcast for a while, you know that I took those away when I started to, or when I got pregnant and when I had a baby. And so I’ve started to bring back one on one business strategy. And as part of that new offering. What I’ve been doing is business audits where I basically go through. Somebody whose business from a perspective client’s perspective.
And I run through the entire customer journey and pull out some low hanging fruit or just things that. The business owner can do to help. Fill in some of the gaps, plug up some of the holes that are leading to missed customer opportunities areas for growth areas for opportunity. And so as part of this, one of the things that I notice is. Email lists and how email lists tend to be a bit of a consistent challenge or a consistent struggle amongst a lot of business owners. And I think because an email list tends to be a bit of an, a long game approach, they can be a bit of an afterthought. So either a business won’t have one. Or, and they’ll continue to, or a business owner won’t have one and they’ll continue to say to themselves, oh, I was going to do it.
I’m going to do it next week. I’m going to do it next month. I just haven’t found the time. Or there’s a form sitting on a website that says, Hey, you fill this out to be subscribed to my email list, but there’s really no incentive or any reasoning why somebody would do that. And so it’s obviously not growing or not working or they, the business knows or has an email list.
They have a lead magnet. That’s pulling people into the email list, but the lead magnet just isn’t very good. It’s not powerful enough to actually be fueling the engine of email list growth. And that’s what I want to talk about today is how do you set up an email list instead of a lead magnet? So that it can act like that sales and marketing engine for you fairly passively.
And I’ll talk about our experience with that and how we grow our email list by. Actually I went and as I was prepping for this episode, I went and checked how much our email list had grown in the last 30 days. And it was actually a 283 people. So it’s more than a hundred subscribers each month. So if you use this technique, it can definitely work for you.
It’s working for us every single month. And so if you are new to email lists, then I have quite a few episodes on this topic. We also go through email lists at length within the dietitian success center, business memberships. So we talk about the step-by-step for how to select an email provider, how to incorporate it into your website. We give you templates for the first emails to send out to your email list. So if you haven’t done that process yet, then make sure join DSE and you can take advantage of those materials. But what I mean by an email list is. When, so th these are not emails that you’re sending to your clients in Gmail. For example. This is your email list is something that a person. A subscriber. Opts into, on your website and they’re opting into receiving marketing emails from you.
So, when you go to your favorite clothing store and you’re purchasing something and they say, Hey, do you want to opt into receiving marketing emails from us or you purchase online? And then all of a sudden you’re receiving a bunch of emails from them, marketing emails from them. Or you you’ve probably downloaded a lead magnet.
Maybe you’ve downloaded one of our lead magnets before. Or if you subscribe to a food blog and you want to get their new recipes every week or their new blog posts every week, then you subscribe to their email list. So that’s what I’m talking about. When I’m referring to an email list. Now I think the reason why an email list is kind of an afterthought is because you don’t necessarily need it in order to start working with your first clients, whatever those clients might look like, whether that’s one-on-one, whether that’s freelancing clients, whatever. You don’t need an email list to get started because often your first clients are not going to come from your email list.
They’re going to come from. People you are acquainted with people, who refer. Maybe connections you’ve made in your community. Other avenues. But in order to really scale your business and in order to sell things like. An online course, a group program, a digital product. So in order to really grow and scale. My perspective is that you do need an email list.
And the reason why this is my perspective is because I don’t have any examples or know of any businesses. That have been able to successfully sell. And what I mean by successfully sell is like really make a significant amount of revenue or money off of an offer. I’m not just talking like one-off sales that you might get from. Somebody coming across you on Instagram, I’m talking about like a really impactful launch that actually moves the needle in your business. I haven’t or like a really efficient sales engine. I have not seen that.
I’ve not seen an example of that. In a business that doesn’t have an email list. And I think maybe, in the past, this might’ve been the case that you could get away with. Selling on just by just using a platform like Instagram, but I have not seen evidence that this is the case now. And I think that’s just because the Instagram algorithm is changing constantly.
We have no control over that. You really have no control over who is seeing your content. And in order for someone to be in a position where they’re ready to buy something from you. They need to learn about it in multiple ways at different touch points. So for example, we’re about to go into a launch for, we have a nutrition counseling and coaching certificate of completion program.
I’ll link that below. This podcast episode in the description, so you can check it out if you want. But we’re about to go through the launch for that. And we have 21 emails that go out just to give you an idea of how important an email list is for this type of launch with 21 emails that go out. Over the course of, I think it’s two weeks probably. Well, actually, no, that’s not true. Our launch window is longer.
And that does include some of the, we do some pre-launch things because one of the cool things about this program is that it’s a really great fit for getting, for using professional development funds through your work. So if you have professional development funds through your work, if you have a budget for that, this is a really great thing to spend that budget on.
And so. As part of our launch process, we do a, we send out a few emails at the beginning basically saying, Hey, here’s a template you can use to request funding from your PR from your employer. So. And again, all actually include that below. In the link. Or in the description of this episode as well, so that you can use that if you want to. And so our launch runway is a little bit longer.
But majority of those emails go out within a condensed time span. So that just gives you an idea of the importance because, and each of those emails says something different. I mean, there’s definitely some consistent messages, but by and large, Like we’re using each of those emails to educate and to talk about the program and to talk about the benefits and to talk about the offering in a slightly different way. And so that’s why it’s just so important to have this as a part of your business.
So what if you don’t have an email list? Well, The best times to start an email list was yesterday. And the next best time to start an email us is today.
So this is your call to action, to just get an email list set up so that you can start. Collecting email subscribers for, and you don’t have to have an idea of like what you want to sell to them eventually, or what you want that offer to be. Eventually you can figure that out, but just start building the email list right now. Because the sooner you start, the more people you will have on your email list for whenever that time comes, that you want to sell them something.
Now let’s talk about how to create a, an email list. Sales engine. That will grow your email list by a hundred plus subscribers every month. Now it will take time to get to this point. It may not actually. If you have a really amazing lead magnet. It may not actually take time to, to get to this point. But the goal is that we get to this point that our email list is consistently growing every month.
And like I said, it’s relatively passive. And so this is I’m going to walk through the process that we have actually done that has worked for us. To grow our email list to consistently over 250 people, new people every month. And so what are the things that you need in order to make this happen? Well, we need two key components. We need an amazing lead magnet or more than one lead magnet.
And. I think. So perfect example of this is like, if you have something that is working well as a lead magnet, then don’t get rid of that. Just add something else. Or maybe you have two sort of customer segments. So for example, within dietitian success center, we have our nutrition membership and then we have our nutrition plus business membership. And the nutrition membership is really for. It more so attracts the practitioner who is in a primary care setting. So not necessarily. Or a clinical setting, community setting, public health setting. Not necessarily someone who’s interested in business and private practice.
That’s more for our business membership. So our lead magnets are intended to attract people to those different offers. So we have a business specific one. And to nutrition specific ones. But the whole point is we need a great lead magnet. And what is a great lead magnet? Well, it’s something that someone cannot get for free online.
And I think that’s, so what I mean by that is they can’t just read about it in a blog post. They can’t just. Google it and something pops up.
It needs to be valuable enough for someone that they think, oh yeah, I will gladly exchange my email address for this awesome thing. So that should really be the approach. If somebody thinks, whoa, I can’t believe I can get this for free. That’s so cool. And so. Things like guides tools something that actually helps someone. Go through a process or get a win. Is going to be so much more impactful than something that’s just purely informative. So, an example of an informative would be like 10 foods that can help with your PCOS symptoms. Like that is very much information that I could just get. If I Googled it, I don’t need to join an email list in order to get that information. But an alternative to that could be. A blood work tracker, something that somebody could actually. Take to their employments, with their MD and record their values to be able to see changes over time. Or a and I find that these ones tend to do quite well is like a supplements guide.
So how do I choose out? How do I choose out? How do I choose? The best prenatal vitamin. Those sorts of things and giving brand recommendations. So making it super actionable or brands that you like, brands that, you feel like do a good job. Right. Speaking of super actual that somebody can actually get a win out of it.
It’s really practical for them and making it super specific to the problem that your ideal client needs solved as well. So like a general meal planning guide is not going to do as well as a seven day low FODMAP eating plan or meal plan or menu plan or recipe plan. Right. There’s two, those are very different and one is so much more impactful than the other, if I’m interested in low FODMAP.
Yeah. I’m going to pick that one because I want to have, I’m going to pick the second one, the low FODMAP eating plan or recipe plan, because. That’s my problem right now is. I want to try out low-FODMAP, but I don’t really know how, I don’t really know the first steps. And so the whole goal in the lead magnet is that you are helping people to to go through some of those steps.
Now, the important thing to remember here is that. This a lead magnet does not replace you. And it does not replace your service. And it does not replace your offer because your offer. Helps people with the implementation. It helps people take that information and actually implement it in their day to day life. So if we think about those low FODMAP example, my I’m, I download this lead magnet and I might think, whoa, this is really great, but oh shoot.
I have an allergy to that. Oh, wow. Do I have to eliminate all of this stuff right at once? Or, can I do it progressively? I’m a little bit confused about that. Oh, do I have to go cold Turkey on some of these FODMAPs? Or are there some that I can include in smaller doses? I have so many questions about how this relates back to me. So though it’s helpful.
It’s not replacing you because your role is to help with that individual level implementation. So if you find yourself with that block, Around. Oh, but I don’t want to give away too much information for free. Again, I like to reiterate the point that people don’t pay for information they pay for implementation.
They pay to have you help them, support them. Get from point a to point B.
And so we want to make sure we have an awesome lead magnet. And then the second piece is making sure that we have traffic to that lead magnet. So I like to think about this almost as like a breadcrumb approach. And this is how we grow our email list by about 250 new people every month, without having to actively talk about it all the time. And that is by scattering it places where we know people are already going. So for example, We have a blog on our site and each of our blog posts is keyword optimized. If you’re not sure what I mean by that I’m talking about search engine optimization.
I’m talking about SEO. We cover this in detail within the dietitian success center, business membership. But. Each of our keywords is keyword optimized. Meaning we know that we know what we need to write about in order to get traffic, organic traffic to our website every month. And so we have organic traffic coming to our website every month because people are searching for those keywords on Google and our blog post pops up for them. And we scatter our lead magnets throughout those blog posts. So, you’ll read a chunk of the blog post and then there will be a little banner saying, Hey, download.
And I should mention what our lead magnets are. We have a client resource kit, which is five free client handouts. That you can just start using with your clients today. We have a PEs statement, cheat sheet. And then we have a business planning workbook, which we’re actually going to be retiring because I actually don’t think that one is good enough.
So like I said, your lead magnet has to be awesome. And I think we need to test out with our ideas because I think this is okay. And it’s worked. But I think there’s something that could work better. So we’re going to be retiring now. We’re going to be trying something out also, but I’m in the process of testing.
What that might be. And so we have a blog post about something and then we have, yeah, we have just like a little image that we create in Canva that just hyperlinks to our. Email list where they can subscribe the subscribe form to our email list. So somebody is reading the blog post and they see this little banner that says, Hey, download the PDF statement, cheat sheet.
And they think, oh, cool. Yeah, I’d love to do that. So they click on it and then they go to the subscribe form and they’re able to subscribe and then get it directly to their inbox. And so, and so, yeah, so that is our main source of traffic to our email list is having these breadcrumbs scattered throughout our blog posts, but then also scattered in other places like. Our bio of our Instagram and tic talk our bio of YouTube. Our LinkedIn bio’s or LinkedIn descriptions, like there’s so many different places. That you can scatter your lead magnet that can help people find it organically.
Now here’s a pro tip. Even better. If you can create a lead magnet that is keyword optimized. So if you find a keyword that. Really. If you find a keyword on a tool like key search, and again, if you don’t know what I’m talking about, we talk about this in detail. Within search engine optimization within DSE. But if you find a keyword that’s really powerful for your target audience, create a lead magnet around that keyword.
So for example, our PEs statement, cheat sheet, that is a keyword that we discovered. And so we created that lead magnet because we knew people were already searching for it. And now it’s one of the number one things that brings people to our website. So it’s so incredibly impactful for us.
And so if you have an email list, if you’re listening to this and you’re thinking, yeah, but Krista, I have an email list and it’s not growing. Well, I hope that so far you’ve gotten some ideas for things that, you could be doing that you may not be doing, which could help. But if your email list isn’t growing. Either you need to test out different lead magnet ideas.
So don’t be afraid to test things out right now. I just did a simple survey on our Instagram stories that. Just asked people, Hey, here’s four lead magnet ideas, which one do you like the best? So do something as simple as that to test it out. See what topic maybe resonates with your ideal client and try it out.
See what happens. And perhaps you’re not talking about it enough. So if you don’t have a lot of traffic to your site, yet, if you’re just getting started, if you’re in the early stages, You may just not be talking. You do need to talk about your lead magnet too. So you may need some more of that active effort in order to get people, to actually download it and pay attention to it.
So what I mean by that is. Talk, writing a post about it on LinkedIn and getting people to download their, talking about it on your Instagram stories, creating Instagram reels about it. Creating tech talks about it. Whatever that might look like for you, but just making it more visible.
Okay. So I hope that you enjoyed that episode.
Again, this is one of those topics that I’m so interested and so passionate about because it’s one of those things that is once you have it set up and it doesn’t take. That long to set up. I mean, honestly, you could probably by following our step-by-step instructions, you could probably have your email list set up in an hour or two. And then you just have to figure out what your lead magnet is going to be, which we can provide support for that within the DSC community.
For sure. But if you’re thinking about it now is a great time to join us in DSC. We are going to be going through some massive changes in the new year. I’m going to talk more about that. And so some masses of massive, amazing changes. I might add. And as part of that, not for current members, but for new members. As of the new year and I don’t know exact dates.
So don’t quote me on this. Prices are going to be going up. Not for current members, not for current members. And if you join before the end of the year, You can lock in your price and you will still be able to reap the benefits of all of the incredible things we’re going to be offering in the new year, but you’ll have a locked in rate.
So if you’ve been thinking about joining us for a while now is the time to do it. We give so much more value than what our price point reflects. That’s why we’re increasing our prices. And this was permission for you to do the same to reassess your prices. If you’re giving a lot more value than what you’re charging. And with that, a lot of our business content is going to be improving, changing.
We’re making it better. We’re making it richer. We’re making it deeper. We’re adding more examples. We’re adding more ready to use templates. We’re adding more done for you. Things to save you time to save you money. So now is an amazing time to join us. Okay. So my call to action from this email or from this podcast episode is if you don’t have an email list get one set up. Today, put that on your list.
Put that on your task list for today. Strike while the iron is hot. If your email list is not growing in the way that you want it to grow, test out different lead magnet ideas. Oh, also this is kind of funny, and this is a. Fun little tip that I have discovered that might be helpful for you. So if you see something and so if you see. An ad. And you think to yourself, oh, that’s a really effective ad, particularly on Instagram.
I’m talking about, I haven’t done this on any other platform, but I noticed it this week on Instagram. So I got an ad for. Let me just pull up my camera roll so I can actually look at what this ad was. So I got an ad for a, an interactive 140 page nutrition coach workbook. And I was like, whoa, that’s a pretty enticing offer.
I don’t care about this. Like, I’m not interested in this freebie, but I was like, this was interesting even for me. And I’m not their ideal client. And so I took a screenshot of it because I was like, okay, cool. I want to learn from this and glean some inspiration from this to see how I could. Incorporate some of these learnings into our lead magnet.
So I took a screenshot of it. And ever since I have been getting so many similar ads which again, just give me inspiration. I love it because I’m like, okay. I mean, I’m not buying any of these things, but they give me amazing inspiration. For ideas. And so that’s just a little hack. If you see an ad that pops up for you that you’re like, whoa, that’s pretty effective. Take a screenshot.
Instagram will continue to deliver those ads types of ads to you. And you can learn a lot from them. In terms of what is effective and what resonated with you. So that’s just a little pro tip there. Okay. Thank you for listening to this episode. I hope you have an awesome week and I will see you next Thursday.
