How I Grew My Email List to 74,000 (Without Living on Instagram)

  Sam Vander Wielen: You could post the best Instagram post of your life, and the truth is hardly anybody will see it. You keep putting in so much effort there, but it’s really defeating to feel like all of your hard work is for, like, your mom and three people you used to work with to binge on your content.

You want an audience that you own, people who open, who read, and they click and buy when you’re ready to launch or sell something. But building a list feels slow and techy, and you’re just not sure what you’re supposed to even send to your newsletter. I have more than 74,000 people on my email list, and and that’s way more than whoever follows me on social media.

Today, I’m sharing exactly what grew my email list, what I’d skip, and what I’d do again if I started over tomorrow.

I wanted to welcome you to On Your Terms®. On Your Terms® is a podcast for online business owners who wanna feel as present in their lives as profitable in their businesses, and there’s literally no better way to be both profitable in your business and present in your life than having an email list, ’cause it is the thing that will get you off the hamster wheel of constant short-form content creation or having to be on social media all the time, having to be on your phone all the time, all that kind of stuff.

So I am so glad we’re having this conversation today.

So hello, good morning. Hi, I am so glad to be back on On Your Terms®, and I’m actually recording today live at at Kit Studios in New York City today. Um, I am so excited to be here. It’s like, you know, it’s kind of nice every once in a while to have a little posh, like, professional-looking studio and good lighting. Although sometimes it’s like the lighting’s, like, almost too good and the camera’s too good and it’s a little scary when you see yourself in all of the pictures.

Um, but otherwise, no, I love, I love being here. It’s really cool because I, I live on Long Island, but then I can take the train into the city about two hours and be here and just spend the day, and it kind of reminds me back in the day, like when I started my business and I would go… I lived in Philly and I would just, like, go to WeWork and be around other creatives and, like, there are other people here who are recording content and podcasts and all kinds of things.

So it’s just, it’s a very, very cool perk, honestly, that we have as, being Kit customers, if you’re on a pro plan, then I hope you already know you can use, uh, Kit Studios here in New York or in Chicago and in Boise as well. I’ve, uh, I’ve recorded in all three.

So yeah, very, very lucky to be here. And I’m actually also here in the middle of my launch, so you’ll be listening to this a couple weeks from now, but I am doing my last live launch of the year right now.

And I think what’s really funny is, like, like, people think that launches are really stressful and, like, hectic, like, kind of like the morning of a wedding or something like that, but for, like, the whole launch. And honestly, if you do it right, the launch part itself, other than the webinar, like, the launch week itself is pretty chill because, you know, I’m answering questions.

I’m checking the inbox. The team is checking, like, social media DMs. Like, we’re helping people in the help inbox if they can’t access something. But for the most part, we’re actually, like… Everything’s done, right? Like, we’ve done everything that we could at this point, and it’s really just answering people’s questions and, like, welcoming them in.

I’ve been in the Facebook community for the new members a little bit extra this week, just taking care of, like… You know, ’cause we have, like, hundreds of new people, so I’m just taking care of people a little extra. But honestly, my launch weeks are more like me moving on, because I have to, like… I have to worry more about post-launch now, right?

So t he way that I look at my job is that literally the day that launch ends, which in this case would be October 24th, is the day after launch, that day becomes immediately going back to building my email list, and it is the top priority for me. It is always the top priority to me.

If you’ve listened to the podcast before, if you’ve heard me yap anywhere else, you know I always say, “All roads lead to the email list.” Like, everything I think about in my business, I think about how could… Either how does this support my email list? Like, if I’m gonna think about taking an opportunity on, I’m like, “Does that grow my list?

Not really. It’s not worth it.” Or in the kind of reverse, I think about, like, if somebody brings me something, I’m like, “Hmm, I would do that, but how’s it gonna support my email list?” Or like, “Where’s, where’s there a way that we could do this where it actually does help me boost my subscribers?” So I’m always thinking about that, as well as thinking about how to make my emails, uh, hopefully good or better, you know, and continue to improve, like, my writing and the value that I’m providing to my subscribers so that not only people sign up, but then they stay.

And then when they stay, they refer, right? And they talk about it to other people, or they link to it, or they forward it, or something like that. So the reason that I’m here in the middle of launch doing content for my podcast is because I have moved on, um, because I am already thinking about new lead generation, right?

I am already thinking about building my email list again. And I have to tell you, I’m very excited about today’s episode. In a second we’re gonna kinda jump into, like, how I m- think about my, building my email list, things that, uh, tactics and, you know, strategies I would continue to stand by today, and kind of what I was doing if I was starting from zero or even 500 or 1,000 subscribers.

But I am very excited to tell you that I’m doing a free workshop with Kit, where I’m actually gonna go behind the scenes and show you guys what’s in my Kit. So it’s called What’s in Sam Vander Wielen’s Kit? So you get to essentially come to this free workshop where me and someone from the Kit team will go live and show you the behind the scenes of what my email list, like, not necessarily, like, the software, but kinda like the setup of it on the backend.

Um, you can see how I manage, like, my visual automations, um, what my newsletters look like and all that kinda stuff. But we also talk about, like, how I set up my freebies and then how I set up those freebies into a funnel, and then how I take those subscribers and what I do with them for my weekly email.

So if you’ve ever wished that you could, like, hack my email list on the backend and just get in there for a minute and, like, like, sneak in, you know, in the middle of the night and just see, like, what is the skeleton of, of how I’ve built this whole thing, you have to come to this free workshop with me and Kit called What’s in Sam Vander Wielen’s Kit?

So I’ll drop a link down below. It’s completely free. It’ll be on Tuesday, November 10th at 3:00 PM Eastern. But if you can’t make it live, make sure you just sign up anyway because we will be sending out the replay to everyone, and again, it’s completely free. They’re also going to offer all of the people who sign up for this a, uh, really special offer and discount on Kit services.

So if you’ve been thinking about who to sign up for for email marketing, for landing pages and forms and visual automations and all that kinda stuff, Kit is the place to go. It’s the only brand and company I’ve worked with for over 10 years. It’s what my literal entire business is built on, and yes, I’m a, a Kit affiliate.

Uh, for sure, it’s pretty much the only thing I affiliate for these days. Um, and I stand by it because it’s, uh, it’s my bread and butter. So I, I love them. I love the team. I love the software. Big, big fan, and so I would love for you to come and see what’s in my Kit.

So I don’t think I can fully describe in words just how much my email list means to me, not only because it’s one of my favorite kind of like cozy spaces on, on the internet, which is kind of funny because, like, back in the day, it made sense that it felt nice to write to, like, 500 people, and I kind of knew most of the people who were receiving my email.

But I’m, I’m kind of pleasantly surprised that, like, when I shoot off an email to, like, 74,000 people, I still feel that sense of like, “Oh, it’s just us.” Like, it’s just us talking. So it’s my favorite thing to, like, pour into in the business, honestly, probably ’cause I also love to write. But it’s also I, I feel like the kind of like the backbone and the foundation of my business, so I, I owe a lot to my email list.

When my parents died, you know, within the same year, I, as you can imagine, just didn’t have a whole lot left, right? And I didn’t have the energy or capacity to do a lot of, like, short-form content, and before they had died, I was a content beast, right? Like, I, I’d- I just, like, pumped out the most insane amount of content over and over and over again.

Um, but after they died, I just didn’t have it in me, right? So I kind of assumed that if I couldn’t post as much content as I used to, that automatically my business just wouldn’t do as well. And because I just knew I couldn’t be on social media, I didn’t have that capacity anymore, I decided to just go all in on my email list.

Now, my email list was not very big back then, right? So it was not nearly as big as it is now, but I had enough people, enough people to sell to, right? I think that’s something that gets lost a lot in our industry, that I have this conversation with coaches a lot who are, like, on this mission to build, like, a bigger and bigger and bigger business, and I’m like, “How much is your product?”

You know? And it’s like, “Oh, you can sign up for my coaching services for $4,000 or $5,000.” It’s like, well, you don’t need a million people. You can’t work with a million people. So we don’t need to focus on having so many people. We need to focus on having the right people and then actually speaking to those people and getting them to take action, right?

So I didn’t have a lot of people, but I didn’t need that many in order to just kind of keep sales going and keep cash coming in the door.

So when I was in that period, I just put my head down, and I focused on the email list. I consistently emailed every Tuesday, sent out an issue of Sam’s Sidebar. It’s my weekly newsletter.

If you don’t get it, make sure you go down and sign up below. But I sent that out weekly, and I ran a couple of sales that were just, like, automated email sales to my email list while I was in, like, the depths of grief, right? So I didn’t do big live webinars.

I didn’t do big campaigns. I wouldn’t be on social media, but I would send out a series of emails talking about the Ultimate Bundle®, my signature product, and I would just kind of methodically, like, set these up ahead of time, schedule them, and send them out. And I would be making money in my business and keeping the team afloat and keeping the expenses paid and, you know, the proverbial lights on while I was, like, laying on the couch, snotting into a tissue or something.

So it- my email list literally is like the lifeboat. It’s the life raft, essentially, of my business that kept me afloat. But that really shitty time period also showed me a lot because it showed me that maybe when I quote unquote “came back” from, from grief, right? Still haven’t. It’s three, three and four years later and still, still haven’t come back.

I haven’t gotten my, uh, grief, grief body back, but I, I, I, I thought, like, when I get better from this, I… doesn’t mean that I have to go back to the way that I was doing things. Like, it really, it taught me a lesson that I could rely a little bit heavier on my email list, and in fact, that my email list was much more valuable than maybe even I had realized, like, going into that process.

And while everybody else was all focused on social media and more followers and more noise and virality and all these other things, I was like, “You know what? I’m just gonna keep my head down and I’m gonna keep building my email list.

Because here’s why, right? And you’ve heard this a million times. This part is cliche, but then I have something to share that I think is, is really what we should be focused on. But y- y- you’re building a house on rented land, right? Like, we’ve talked about this many times. It’s always been my thought process, but kind of my mindset, um, about social media.

If you put all of your attention there, you are building a house that one day somebody can come and say, “We’ve decided to take this house back. Goodbye.” And all the money and the time and the furnishings and the renovations and the white countertops that you put in, they’re all gone, right? Because you, you just decided to build that, but you didn’t really own it, and that is the truth of the situation.

We do not own social media. We have no idea if Instagram will be around, if Meta will be around. The amount of lawsuits that are going on with Meta, who knows what’s gonna happen. We also, even if the apps themselves exist, we have… You know, I’m preaching to the choir here. I get it. But, like, we have no way of controlling what happens there.

You can put your heart and soul, that’s why I started this episode the way I did, you put your heart and soul into creating the best content, the most thoughtful content, heartfelt content that you put a lot of effort into, maybe even money, right, and a lot of time, and seven people see it. And you can have 60,000 Instagram followers and they can show it to five people.

That is just the name of the game. So at the end of the day, I don’t think it’s worth spending a whole lot of time, like, fussing and being frustrated with that because it just, like, is what it is, and honestly, they don’t owe us anything. Um, it is like free advertisement, right? And it- I kind of just, like, take it for what it is.

But the more or maybe even the faster that you can pivot away from that and be like, “Okay, that’s what it is. I just needed to, like, see it differently. It just is what it is, and how can I actually turn the tables on social media and start to squeeze the shit out of it so that I get from what, from it what, uh, will actually help me in the long run?”

So for me, that’s email list subscribers. So the way that I look at social media is just like I want to squeeze it as fast as I can to get those people, like as if they’re in a waiting area, I wanna, like, move them out of the waiting area over to my email list, which is like the sit-down restaurant.

Because here’s the other reason, right? This is not just because of, like, we can’t control who sees it, and we don’t know what’s gonna happen to, uh, Instagram, and the fact that it’s, like, you know, rotting our brains and everything else. It’s also the fact… And this is the part I just don’t think people talk about enough, is that people who read emails buy stuff, right?

And I would… In fact, I would also argue that people who buy stuff probably have to read emails or, or go on your website or see something that’s a little bit deeper than an Instagram reel. Think about the last time you’ve made a large purchase. Maybe you’ve bought the Ultimate Bundle® from me. Maybe you bought, uh, you signed up for a business coach.

Maybe you signed up for an expensive course from somebody. Did you just see s- one person’s reel and, like, click on the reel? Think about this. Did you click on the reel, click on a link in the reel? No, it doesn’t even exist, right? You have to go over to their profile. Did you go to their profile and click their profile link and then buy it right off the bat if it costs more than, like, 50 bucks or 100 bucks or something like that, right?

No. People buy cheap, little things, quick things, right? They buy, uh, trendy items. They buy a little caddy for the sink or a dish towel or, like, w- that’s supposedly super absorbent but definitely won’t be, you know, something like this. So I’m not under the illusion that people are seeing a reel from me who don’t know me and, and are buying and, like, plunking down $2,000 for the Ultimate Bundle®.

No, those people are signing up for my emails or coming to my, my webinar, then they are getting my emails. They are probably clicking over to the sales page. They’re reading testimonials. They’re writing me emails asking me questions, right? We work for it. We work for it. And you’re gonna be in the same position.

So you need to get people over to a place and nurture them in a place where they actually can buy from you, and that’s not Instagram. It’s not TikTok. It’s not wherever else, unless you’re selling something maybe very cheap, uh, in, like, a stand store or something like that.

In these moments too, I like to think about the way that I like to use Instagram or the way that, like, uh, any of my friends… I mean, these days I’m not, I’m not really on Instagram personally or don’t have it on my phone. But even when I think about, like, what I would be on it for if I didn’t have a business, is that I would probably be watching dog videos and, like, HYROX inspiration, ’cause I would just get targeted for that since I did HYROX, and it seems to follow you around like a, a amoeba of some sort.

So I would probably get, like, HYROX inspo, and I would get, like, you know, food things, ’cause I’m obsessed with cooking. That’s what I would see, right? And that’s also what I would go there for. Like, I’m not going there to consume lots of buying content. In fact, when I see coaches talking about their programs or whatever, I’m typically skipping over it.

It’s a platform of entertainment. TikTok only drove that home, right? So long story short, we need to get people off of there. People are not buying there. We need to get them to a place where they will.

And as I’m gonna talk about a lot in more detail next week, my email list is a lot bigger than my social following, and I don’t think that that’s an accident. I think that I’ve just been really consistent over the years of, of chipping away and getting people to move to my list. But it’s also the reason, as I’m gonna talk about next week, that I’ve been able to do so much less this year but make so much more in my business.

So let’s break down what actually grows my email list right now today in 2026.

First and foremost, I realized a long time ago that the way that you can, like, be on social media but with- not really having to be on social media is to run ads there, right? It’s kind of the name of the game. It is kind of what makes sense in terms of getting people to take action, because it does allow you to have a link directly on the post.

And so running Meta ads to my free legal class or to, um, a guide or any other freebie that I have, that has done wonders for growing my email list and bringing me a lot of really highly qualified leads. The thing is, once you get to a point where you can invest in that a little bit and, you know, get your ads up and running, that you realize you don’t have to be on social media as much on your own because you kind of…

That’s kinda like what the ads are doing for you, right? I’m really glad that I spent years on my own building up my organic following and getting kind of organic content creation under my belt before I went the ads route. I think I was at least three, four years in before I went the ads route.

But if I had to do it all over again, honestly, I would do it even faster if I had known. I was really scared to, but, like, if I had known, I would’ve done it faster. As- basically as soon as I had kinda my messaging tight and if I had some sort of little funnel set up, even if it was like I have a freebie that I know people want and they’re signing up for it already, and then that freebie goes to, like, a little nurture sequence, and then I’m consistently emailing those people, I would’ve turned that on much faster and, and should have frankly because I would’ve been, like, way ahead of the game.

The other thing that’s really helping me to grow my list, especially kind of taking them o- people off of, like, social media and throwing them onto my list, is using, um, ManyChat, which is, like, an automated process that we’re using on Instagram in the DMs. So that’s where you see people comment, like, “Class,” or comment, like, “Webinar,” or whatever, and then it triggers a series of DMs to them.

Yes, it is automated, and I’m not a big fan of any time when it’s like something’s automated or, like, eh, I never will do something where it’s, like, kinda looks like it’s me talking but it’s not. Like, it’s, it’s not like… I won’t do anything, like, deceptive like that, of course. Um, but with ManyChat, in the way that it comes up, it’s very clear in my opinion.

Like, it’s like these little bubble boxes. Like, it doesn’t look like it’s, like, a human typing, and people can tell that it’s an automated message. Um, and we don’t try to make it seem like anything other than what it is, um, at least not intentionally. So that has been really helpful, again, as this way of like, okay, let me turn the tables and use social media for what I can without actually being on it and having to ruin myself and my brain from being on social media all the time and being able to turn my attention to what matters more in the business, which we’ll talk about in next week’s episode.

But I’m using ManyChat to just, like, funnel as many people over as I can. Now, a really cool thing that if you are a Kit customer… Now, again, I’m just… I am a Kit customer, so all I can do is tell you, like, what I do. I know I’m, like, um, Kit’s number one fan, but, like, I, I… legitimately, it’s all I use, and I’ve used it for 10 years, so, like, a very happy customer.

But what’s really cool is that in the DMs you can actually have somebody, like let’s say they want to sign up for my free class, so they comment class. And then it’ll send them a DM and be like, “Hey, what’s your name?” And then they say, “Michelle.” And then it’s like, “Great, Michelle. What’s your email?” And then Michelle puts her email address, and it automatically like connects them essentially.

So it, it has an integration with Kit and ManyChat where they can go right from that DM, just from what the responses were in Instagram, it p- imports their information over to Kit, which then triggers a series of emails that gets them signed up for my free class.

So why is that important? Well, again, remember what we talked about. People are on Instagram to be on Instagram. They’re not on Instagram to leave to go listen to a podcast episode or to read an email or do anything else. So if there’s a way that you can use technology to keep them on the app, they don’t have to leave the comfort of their DMs, but you get to extract their email address, to me, that’s like a no-brainer win-win situation.

Ever since I started using ManyChat, we’ve gotten so many more people to sign up for, um, my email list because I think it’s just way easy, like… Because I think that there’s just, like, way less friction in terms of getting them to respond in the DMs, and then they can go back to scrolling and watching cute dog videos.

For example, I kind of haphazardly put together, um, this AI guide, this new free AI guide on Instagram in, like, mid-September, and we didn’t even do it for the entire month, but we got 205 email list signups in September just from that guide alone, just from the ManyChat DMs. So that doesn’t include all the people who went through and clicked a link or went over to my website or got it through my email or whatever else, but this was just through the ManyChat signups.

Another thing that grows my list the most today are person-to-person referrals. So a lot of times I’m, uh, first… So in my emails themselves, I have a link that says like, “Was this forwarded to you by a friend? Sign up here.” And so that, that’s a good way to get people to sign up. But I think I’ve also tried throughout my copy itself to get people to tell other people about signing up for my newsletter.

I’ve asked people when I’ve been on a podcast, I’ve made that my priority, right? To be like, “Can you just tell people to sign up for Sam’s Sidebar? It’s my free weekly newsletter.” Um, I have just made it very important for, like, people to get on my list, for as many people to tell people as possible. I’ve written to other people with newsletters and said, “Hey, I think your email subscribers would like my email list as well, and what I send out.

Here’s a bit about what it’s about, would you mind sharing a link to my newsletter in one of your future issues?” And then they do. So I think people-to-people referrals works really well as well.

Last but not least, I get a couple of hundred of subscribers every single month just through Kit’s referral program.

So Kit has a, like a creator referral program where other creators on the platform can recommend your email, your newsletter to their subscribers, so that when people sign up for their newsletter, it can say like, “Hey, this person also recommends that you sign up for Sam’s,” and then they can sign up for mine too.

So I get several hundred, um, subscribers per month from that. And then we’ve set up a sequence on the back end that I wrote a series of emails so that when somebody comes into my email list through that referral program, they go through a series of emails that I’ve written that just kind of orients them to my world, and like what I talk about, and who we are, and where they can find more information, and all that good stuff.

Now that’s a lot of what I’m doing that’s working for me right now. What would I, though, do if I were to start over tomorrow? Like, if you only had to focus on four simple things, what would those things be? What would I do again, like my ride or dies that I stand by?

The first thing I would do if I started over building my email list tomorrow is that I would start on day one, right? So I kind of accidentally did this, but I’m so glad that I did because it feels a little bit like when you put money in, like, the stock market or in, in a retirement fund or a high-interest savings account where you’re like, “Is this $5 per day deposit, like, really doing anything?”

It doesn’t feel like anything. And then one day you look back and you’re like, “Wow, time went by a lot faster,” and also like, “Yay, compounding interest,” right? So it feels a little bit like that, where I’m like I, I had, like, nobody coming in in the beginning, right? It’d be five subscribers a week maybe, or maybe, right?

And so I was like, “Wow, five subscribers.” But then those five subscribers tell people, right? And they forward your email, and then it just kept going. I, I don’t know how else to put it other than that, like, at the time it felt so insignificant, and looking back on it, I am just so glad that I started from day one.

If I were you, I just would not wait. Like, there’s no reason to wait. You don’t need to have more followers on social media. You don’t need to be making any money. You don’t need to be more put together. You don’t need to wait to become a better writer. You don’t need to wait for anything.

In fact, all of those things would be better off right now with having fewer subscribers, right? Like, my early emails probably weren’t very good, so I’m very glad that not that many people were reading them. So I needed to get those reps out of the way in order to be ready to write emails to 74,000 people now that I can stand behind.

The second thing that I would stand by and absolutely do if I started over again today is to treat social media like that waiting area that I talked about.

I would just try to move them off of social media and move them somewhere else. So for as much time as you probably put into thinking about, like, how do I grow on social media, and how can I get viral, and how can I get more views on this reel, I want you to spend even more time figuring out how that piece of content serves your email list.

The third thing I would do is create one freebie that solves one specific problem, and I would focus on something that is the most helpful to your audience itself, not the thing that you think that they should have or, like, that they should want, but the thing that people keep asking you about, the thing that would just resolve a really quick problem for them.

When I started, these used to be, like, 30-page PDFs. It doesn’t have to be that way anymore. First of all, I think something that long is probably not a good idea, but also I just feel like the possibilities are sort of endless these days. Like, depending on what you do, these can be things like prompts or, like, 30 ideas for subject lines or 30 formulas you can use for subject lines.

Like, there’s so many different things that you can do. I’ve always been a fan of, like, calendars. Like, if you… If I was in, like, the health and wellness field or maybe even, like, money field or something like that, I would do, like, a calendar challenge. I mean, if you did a calendar challenge every month, you could start over.

Like, so at the end of every month you could be like, “Get September’s calendar challenge.” Where, like, every day in September you’re gonna do, like, a little self-care act or a little thing for your health, like a little health boost or something. Or maybe you create a calendar that has a different vegetable on it for every single day and then you’re like, “Okay, every day throughout the month you have to eat that vegetable,” right?

And I think that you could just, like… I don’t know. You could create these all the time so that you would give yourself, like, the ability to have, like, fresh content to talk about and play with the urgency of having something like… For example, let’s just go with this calendar thing, right? You can translate this for your industry.

But, like, if you did the calendar thing for, like, okay, in November, like, you’re gonna eat a different colored vegetable or a different vegetable every single day throughout the month. Or you’re gonna do, like, um, a fun fall activity every… that takes five minutes or less, um, every day in November, and so you’ll have them on the calendar.

Well, at the end of October you get to go on social media and say, “November’s calendar’s coming out. You’ve gotta sign up by October 31st to get it.” It f- it builds in some urgency for people to actually sign up for your emails. Otherwise, they can just sign up whenever, and people put things off, right? So if there’s any way you can take my idea here and, like, translate this to your industry and be like, “Oh, I see how I can play with that,” anytime you can introduce urgency like that is a good idea.

Another freebie strategy that I just wanna throw on top of this that works really well is adding anything that’s timely, right? So sometimes for me, like I will see like something happening in the law that’s going on, like a year or two ago when the BOI form was required. This kind of came out of nowhere and became like a big issue seemingly overnight.

And so I just was like, “Okay, I’ll create… I’ll- I have to figure out how to do it, so I’ll just film myself filling out the BOI form, and then everybody who signs up for it can just get the video of watching me fill it out.” We had thousands of people sign up for my email list, right? This AI guide was… that I just created was born out of people asking me like, “Hey, do you have AI disclosure language?”

And I didn’t, but I was like, “I’m happy to write it.” But again, okay, let’s like pause for a minute, right? And let’s like, I guess, break down how I think about this. People were asking me for something, right? So it shows that I’m like, “Okay, they want this. They already want this.” So it’s not me thinking something they want.

They’re telling me they want it. So people want this. I could have just written it and like sent it out to people or put, put it in the Ultimate Bundle® or whatever, but I immediately think, “How does this support the email list?” All roads lead to the emails. Okay, let’s turn it into a freebie, right? Okay, now let’s start to create the content for social media.

That’s fine. I’ll be there if I have to. But if I’m going to be there, everything’s gonna go to the email list. So the, all the content that I shot around this was just like, “Hey, there’s this new issue about AI. People are asking about it, so I created a guide for you. Comment whatever, and you can get it here.”

And that was it. So it’s like that’s kind of the like soup to nuts process of how I even think about turning these things into little email list builders.

Last but not least, the fourth thing I would do if I started over tomorrow is that I would email every single week, even when it feels like nobody’s reading, like you have nothing to say, like you’re not very good, like nobody responded last week, like nobody bought, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.

All the things that happen to all of us as creators, all of those things have happened to me, right? I’ve had emails flop. I’ve had nobody reply. I’ve had few people on the list at times, and I kept going anyway. I didn’t know it then, I would tell back me then now that you should just keep going, right?

And I’m so glad that I did. I kept emailing. I got the reps in. I got better, and it turns out, looking back m- almost 10 years later, there are a heck of a lot of people watching and listening now that weren’t listening. Nobody was listening back then, but I’m so glad I got the practice in. I’m glad that I listened like, back then, it was also a lot easier to know kinda like who was in my community, what were they saying, like take it in and build it, like, almost together. Whereas I would be crushed if I did that now, right? And so I’m so glad that I just kinda leaned through that period and saw it for what it was. It was part of the build.

It was part of the rise, and it’s so much of why that, you know, became successful and got bigger.

Okay, now I’ve shared what’s working and, like, what I stand by today, but I, you know me, I like to keep it real, so I also wanna talk about what is not working and what I’m kinda still fixing or playing with behind the scenes these days.

So what I have going for me, or big, like, pro I have going for me with my email list is that people open.

I have good open rates, and people reply. I have great reply rates. We don’t track that because it’s not trackable, but I, I get a lot of responses from my emails, and I love that. It’s, like, one of my favorite things. But the thing is, I haven’t actually focused on clicks or what we call click-through rate or CTR.

So this tracks the number of people, like, who received the email and then clicked on the email, or you can do, like, an open click-through rate, based on the percentage of people who actually open the email, how many of those people then clicked on a link in the email. Now, here’s the thing. In my emails, if you get Sam’s Sidebar, you know that I tend to tell some sort of story, and then I share a lesson or a takeaway from it that relates to our business or our life as a business owner and so a lot of times my emails are more, like, story-driven and then asking you to reply and share yours.

And like I just said a moment ago, I get a ton of replies. Like, that’s great. The thing I guess I didn’t really think about or realize was that then I don’t get a lot of clicks, ’cause I’m not asking people to really click on anything. I’m asking them to reply. My emails up until this point have had a lot of places to click after the story, right?

So if you scroll down below after I’m telling you the story and the lesson and then asking you to reply, there’s a box with, like, all of my, the other ways that you can get things from me and, like, free and paid, right? And then there’s, like, resources or maybe links you’ll love or a link to my podcast episode.

So I’ve had all these other things, but I think what I’ve realized recently is I’ve drifted away from , the old school rule of thumb with your emails and sending an email to your list is that it should be, like, one link, one focus.

And for a, I think the last several years, like, a lot of people drifted away from that and kind of went, like, link crazy and had, like, tons of resources, almost more like zine style. Like, their, their newsletters looked like a little newspaper. And I think maybe that’s not so great because it, it can, it can fracture some of the links.

So, like, if you wanna direct people, for example, to go sign up for your free webinar or to sign up for a free call with you or to even get, like, a freebie. Like, you nurture your current list and you just wanna send them something. If you have 30 links, you’re essentially, like, like sending people… It’s like a pool.

It’s like when you, you know, the first shot in pool and you break the pool cues. Like, that, it’s just sending people all over the place. So I think that what I’m doing, I’m talking about this in real time as I’m currently going to, to test this out and kinda this is the strategy behind it. But I’m gonna tighten that up a bit and keep it more to, like, a this is where I want you to go.

Now, why do I care about click-through rate if my open rates are good and my replies are great? Well, it does signal to the, the tech gods that be, uh, about your email list health, so it is important. It’s also important if you wanna run ads, um, in the future or anything like that, that you, you typically get paid on click, uh, for the ads.

And, like, right now it wouldn’t be worth it for me to run an ad where I’m gonna get a couple of bucks to send out an email to 74,000 people because I got 30 links to, to the things inside the email, right? So I- that’s just not what I wanna do.

The funny thing is that my sales clicks are really great. So what that shows me is that when I run a sale or a promotion like the one that I’m in right now, um, and I do just have that single click, like I- all the, all the links in that email are only going to one thing, our click-through rate goes way back up.

Then it’s normal. So it does show me that if I keep it tight and focused, I can do that.

Actually, this is the first time I’m talking about this, but I’m very excited. I’m actually, like, relaunching, revamping, renovating my Sam’s Sidebar newsletter. So I took some of the time while we were in launch mode to, after I got all my stuff done, to be like, “You know what? I wanna, I wanna give Sam’s Sidebar, like, a little zhoosh, a little housekeeping.”

And so I completely revamped it. Essentially, I mean, on the back end, if you wanna know, like, the, like, un- boring techie side, I’m making them plain text emails again. So I’m gonna test that out and see how that goes, um, which just means it doesn’t have all the graphics and the design and colors and all of that.

So it’s kinda just looks like an email, right? So I’m gonna test that out. But the other thing I, I revamped is really around the content itself. So, like, i’m gonna have these, like, little sections. So, like, for example, the reason why I named Sam’s Sidebar that in the first place is because when, you know, I was a practicing lawyer and I was in court, sidebars are the conversations that only the lawyers go up to the judge’s bench, have with the judge him or herself.

And so they’re kind of, like, meant to be private conversations that the jury or anyone in the gallery cannot hear. And so that is why I called it that, because I wanted my email list to feel like the stuff I would tell you if I could, like, whisper to you from sidebar, right? And like, it’s this… It’s the private conversation that I would have with you about, like, what it’s really like to run this business, what I really think about what’s going on, tactics and strategies I really think work and those that don’t. And I want it to have that feel. So I’m actually going to call that little section Sidebar.

But I’m also leaning into some of the fun little, like, legal plays on words, like having a little section called Hearsay, which is, like, somebody’s comment or most recent reply to one of my emails, ’cause hearsay is, like, inadmissible in court. It’s a whole thing. Um, but so I’m, like, leaning on all these little things.

Uh, Recess, which is what we use for a, uh, break. Uh, for example, in court the judge will issue a recess, which means everybody goes away. So that’s where I’m gonna share a little something that I’m doing outside of the business or, like, offline. So I came up with all these kinda cute things to kind of brand it, but just to give it something a little fresh, but also I think it helps me in terms of, like, the approach and, like, the mental…

Like, how, when I sit down to write it, I’m kinda like, “This is the mind space that I’m in,” and, like, what I’m keeping it to. So I’m really excited about it.

If you don’t get it already, by the way, make sure you sign up. It’s completely free. It goes out every single Tuesday. But it’s called Sam’s Sidebar, and I’ll link it in the show notes.

And don’t forget that next week, Tuesday, November 10th, at 3:00 PM Eastern, I am opening up my Kit account live with the Kit team. I’ll show you my forms, my sequences, what runs my entire business, behind the scenes. Yes, I am an affiliate for Kit, but it is the only platform that I’ve used to build my email list and run my funnels for the last 10 years.

If you can’t make it live, sign up anyway, and Kit is very kind to offer, my subscribers exclusively a deal that’s gonna run for their Black Friday promotion. I’m so excited for, um, you guys to have access to that. So I’ll link to everything down in the show notes below. But before you go, I wanna hear from you.

I have a question for you. If your social account disappeared tomorrow, how many people could you reach, and how would you reach them, right? If you’re sick of social media, what are you doing to ensure that you don’t have to be there? That’s what I wanna encourage you to reflect on. You’re free to tell me.

I would love for you to reply to my email on my new Sam’s Sidebar emails, um, or of course, you can DM me on Instagram, @samvanderwielen. Now, before you go, just make sure you sign up for my free Kit workshop, uh, on November 10th. I’m so excited, and I hope to see you there. Thanks so much for listening. I’ll chat with you next week.

Thanks so much for listening to the On Your Terms® podcast. Make sure to follow on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you like to listen to podcasts. You can also check out all of our podcast episodes, show notes, links, and more at samvanderwielen.com/podcast. You can learn more about legally protecting your business and take my free legal workshop, Five Steps To Legally Protect and Grow Your Online Business at Samvanderwielen.com and to stay connected and follow along, follow me on Instagram at samvanderwielen and send me a DM to say hi.