The BEST Marketers Create an Email List! Join or Fail!
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- You're fired!
- What business is Google ?
- Join the top # of marketers!
- The social media graveyard
- Lemons. Banruptcy. Lemonade.
How many times have you seen something being given away on a website that is really enticing, and ALL you need to do to get it, is enter your email address?
No matter what industry or niche the website is pitching... most are for the "big three"... health, wealth, or relationships... there's one simple goal the copywriter has in mind when giving away whatever it is... one simple, not too hard-to-get target: Your Email Address!
Once they have your email address, half their work is over... they can pitch you, invite you to events, send you info, or even ask what you want for Christmas! And the reason they do it... is because it works!
And... you should be doing the SAME THING with your NFT collection holders, members and especially your potential community members. Why? Read on and we'll show you why it's such an incredible tool.
It's a big topic, so before I get on with the info, I want to share that this is going to be a "2-part" newsletter. I don't want to give you something that will take 2 hours to read, and then more time to actually do it. So, this week I'm going to share why, in unequivocal terms, you should do it.
Actuallt, I'm going to share why you MUST do it... and then next week I'll show you the HOW to do it. Fair enough?
There's some preparation you need to do as well, so I'm going to share what you need to start thinking about, as well as what you need to do or get, so you're ready with the moving parts... and then next week we'll put it all together so you can get started right after.
Maybe I sound a bit harsh saying: "You MUST build an email list!", but I say it with OOMPH & PIZAZZ because it's so important. In fact, the time can come when it's THE most important asset your business owns...
You're fired!
I would even go so far as to say it's so important, that if you run a marketing department in almost any other industry and don't collect the email contact info of your customers and (maybe more importantly) prospects, you'd be making a huge mistake, and might even be putting your job at risk.
Creating a list is easily one of the most important things to do when marketing an NFT collection... or marketing a course, a dental office, a real estate company, a carnival, shoes, yoyo's, underwear... when selling anything! (anything legal, at least, lol)
I've seen someone send 2-3 emails in a sequence on ONE DAY to a properly built email list... meaning fans, past customers, or at least people familiar with the product... and make $100k or more in a day. It's 1000% true, and I've seen it done many, many times.
There have even been million-dollar days totally achieved by digital marketers selling a single digital product with a boatload of affiliates... all sending emails to their lists as well. Of COURSE, there's a lot more that goes into preparation than just sending emails... and I'm referring to a somewhat different industry than what we do... but the importance and the principle are the same.
Huh? What? Why? How? Where? Bueller! Be patient, padawan, we'll get there... but let's start at the beginning so you understand more of the concept, and then why it's such a needed tool in your NFT toolbox.
Ask yourself this: what business is Google in? Are they a search engine? An email company? A digital storage place? Do they sell URLs and domains? Live chats? Mobile apps? Yes, yes, yes, yes... but NO! Google is a DATA business! If there is such a thing as "big brother", his name starts with goo and ends with gle!
Google makes the bulk of its dough marketing information! They pair up my ads with the people ON THEIR LIST who have already shown (by searches, emails, the websites they visit, and more) that are likely to buy whatever I'm selling.
What Biz is Google In?
Because of the terms they search, the apps they download, the websites they visit....Google has all of the data and knowledge of what you and I are interested in to sell that data, in the form of ads and email lists... to anyone who wants to sell stuff to us.
Google did 282 BILLION in sales last year... around 750 MILLION a day. With their list. Of US.
They know what we like, and they have the ability to put offers for those things in front of us... for example when we search for shoes, or gumballs, or a tennis racket. We type it in search, and "BOOM", there it is! Google charges that shoe company or gumball maker to place that ad in front of our noses...
Win. Win. Win. Google sells an ad, the business sells a gumball, and we get to chew on the gumball we were looking for. Everyone's happy.
This is exactly what I'm suggesting we should all do with our NFT and ordinal collections! We know what they like, and have the ability to put whatever it is in front of them.
1 -We know that our communities and our potential members like NFTs. (or contests, or?)
2 - We give them something of value to earn the right to email them. (a lead magnet)
3 - We put the offer in front of them in the form of an email.
Win. Win. Win. We sell an NFT, (or bring them to Discord, or announce a contest, or whatever our purpose was) and they get the item they were excited about, and whatever comes along with it...
If it's good enough for "Big G", it's good enough for you and me! Yet next to nobody in this newborn NFT industry does it, and that almost makes Deacon Nick cry.
I can count on one hand the number of NFT collections I own or know of where they also have an email database. Of the easy 100+ projects I own, here are the ONLY ones I can remember that even ASKED for it.
-Digidaigaku. A little web3 company that did an NFT giveaway on a 6 million $ Super Bowl commercial in 2022. It had something like 600,000 people respond in a 15-minute period. They crushed it.
-Sandbox. Like or hate Sandbox, they are one of the biggest and most well-known Metaverse projects in the industry. They email me for releases, celebrity NFTs launches, airdrops, contests, and more.
-Vee Friends NFT collection, owned by Gary Vaynerchuk (Gary Vee). His media company Vayner Media did $120,000,000 in sales last year. Always copy those whose shoes are bigger than yours. (or who you'd like to emulate)
-Splinterlands. It's an NFT-based card game that sold something like 6 million NFT cards last year. They're only around $2 each... but still.
-Any business that hired my agency over the last 12 years. Any NFT project, or game I've worked on has done it as well. I'll share a story later where an email list from a totally failed business will let me launch a new and more successful one in the future for around fifty bucks as well. (you know I like my stories!)
Join the top % of NFT marketers!
I truly can't understand why more collections don't do this. Maybe they don't know how or don't feel it's applicable in this industry... or they just don't think of it... or maybe they think it's a lot harder to do than it is.
It's extra work (just a little) and takes time (just a little) and you might have to put nineteen bucks into it... but I really, truly, hope you're seeing the importance and why it's needed.
Maybe the most important reason to start your list...
It's YOURS!
There's a THREE-LETTER WORD in the following sentence that says it all. You get a cookie if you nail it btw, and it's not "the", "you" or "and":
The main and most important reason to build an email list of your people, is you OWN it!
It's YOURS! It's a long-term and valuable asset that you own and control. Social media algorithms or other platform policies can change. Facebook or Twitter can ban your account killing your reach and deleting your access and line of communication to a huge % of your community.
Or did you ever leave a social media channel or move to another? A lot of us have. So have some of your holders. If they do, they'll never know you're doing an airdrop, another launch, staking, collabs, or anything else. They gone. Poof.
Sure, they're still on Discord or Telegram... except the ones who ARE NOT. We take it for granted, but what would you do if Discord and/or Telegram went belly up and disappeared?
NO WAY! No way? Remember the original MySpace? Friendster? Ping? Vine? Even Google+! Many don't.
There's a Social Media Platform Graveyard
We just don't know what will be popular in 5 years... but it's safe to say email isn't going anywhere. The above image and more info about the demise of these platforms can be found here: https://frozenfire.com/why-social-media-platforms-fail/
Sure, people change email addresses and such, but some people have had the same email address for 20 years now. Some people also use an extra or "throwaway" email for things like this, but if you make it worthwhile they'll still read your message!
A true marketer always, always (did I say always?) builds a list. Always.
When you have a list, you get more eyeballs on your contests, more people know about your mints, you have more chances to cross-sell related items, poll people for help, etc etc etc.. The possibilities are endless.
Here's the story I promised: In the mid-2000's I was in the mobile app business. We had 1200+ mobile apps on the Google Big Brother Play store... I wasn't getting wealthy... but I still remember where I was and what I was doing the first time I told my wife "hey hun... we cracked $1,000 three days in a row!"
We were getting there. It took 6 of us over 2 years to create them, but all the work was paying off.
I also remember where I was when I got the email telling us our Google Play account was shut down "for multiple infractions of the Google terms of service"... I was literally sick to my stomach.
It was the absolute first time we ever heard anything from Google! We could have and would have changed anything to keep that account open... but we never had a warning, an email, or a temporary suspension...
"Poof". Gone. We petitioned to be reinstated, wrote letters, emails... even were able to speak to someone, but they just talked in circles, and to this day I still don't know what we did wrong. (if anything) Two years of work by 6 full-time people taken away overnight.
It literally bankrupted me. But I learned a lesson... I had NOTHING in those apps that gave our readers a REASON (see last week's newsletter about "reasons"!) to join an email list. What was sad, is Deacon dum dum KNEW he should have done it at the time too! (it was something I did in the real estate business, but didn't do here)
Had I used 1200+ mobile apps to also build an email list, I could have simply sent an email and routed those fans... those buyers... somewhere else.
Oops. I think I said last week that "you can be taught a lesson, it has to be learned!". Here's a perfect example.
Now! Fast forward a handful of years to another story... I'll shorten this one for time's sake... this ALONE should be enough to convince you to get started, btw.
Lemons. A Bankrupty. Lemonade.
A lot of you know that I did marketing, community management, and partnership/collab stuff for a web3 game called "Pepper Attack" for a bit over 2 years.
I'll spare you the details, but the game ended up being taken down 5-6 months after I left their employment. (I still helped out with chat but had no abilities, was not paid, included in decisions, etc) The game is gone.
Lemons.
Guess what I still DO have! An email list of 22,000 web3 gaming/NFT fans. I hope I don't need to explain all of the things I can do with the list... but if you're wondering... I can rent it out, mail crypto offers to it, create an nft program and announce it...
Lemonade.
By the way, it's cheap too. Email marketing is a cost-effective way to reach a large audience. It requires minimal expenses compared to almost everything else, making it ideal for small and medium-sized businesses.
OK! I think we've fully covered the "why" we should have a list, yes? The "why" is the most important part to understand... and the most important thing is you make the decision to go for it.
"K?".
"K."
Next time we'll cover more specifics on actually doing it, but for now here are a couple of things to think about between now and then. First, a lead magnet: a lead magnet is something you'll use to entice your potential member to sign up... something like "register here and get a left-handed yoyo string just for signing up" or whatever it is.
A lead magnet is really just limited by your imagination... for us, it will depend a bit on where we are in the collection process. If pre-mint, then getting on the WL might be enough, or a "mint 1 get an airdrop" or "mint 1 get 1 free" offer. It can be alpha info, a contest entry or a report on crypto.
It can be Discord titles, access to a closed Discord... or so many other things. It can be some project tokens if you mint, or access to a private channel. Start thinking about this between now and the next session.
You'll need what's called an "autoresponder" service to send the emails automatically, as well as a URL (a www address) a website, and a "real" email address. (not Yahoo, Gmail, etc.) It's only around $20 a year to look like a pro... so we may as well, right?
Most NFT projects already have a website to easily add a form to. If you don't have one yet, don't jump out of your pajamas! I'll show you a couple of places to use where any 7-year-old can create a landing page for you in a few hours. (if you're old, ask your grandkid)
By the way, a 1-page website, commonly called a "landing page", is actually enough to do the job at first!
So here's your checklist of things to think about between now and next week:
Uno: Start thinking about a URL (internet address) for your NFT website and email address if you don't have one already.
If you get the address crazypigeonlips.com then you'll also have the email @crazypigeonlips.com reserved for you. It should be named to coincide and make sense with your collection of course.
There are some best practices for getting both, and I'll cover that next week, so be patient. For example, .com or .net is better than .xyz, and for email, joe@ is better for deliverability than xx69@. Yup! Google knows, so you don't want to look like a spammer.
If you want to get started sooner, I get my URL's and email services from "Namecheap" at https://namecheap.com . It's inexpensive and the service is great.
Dos: Start thinking about a lead magnet, and what you can offer in exchange for their email. Remember to create a "win-win" where both parties benefit. I'll share best practices and ideas for these next week as well. (it may be best to wait, lol!)
If you DO want to sign up for some of the services now, here are a couple of suggestions. I've used dozens of autoresponders and webpage designers over the years but now I use "Groove", to send the emails and also as my website maker, and "Aweber" is what I always refer my agency clients to.
You can get started at either one without paying until you grow. As you grow there is a cost, but the rest of the providers tend to charge up-front.
Groove will get your landing page and autoresponder setup, and also provides blogs, payment systems, and a lot more: https://grooveme.net . (I use this primarily)
Aweber has landing pages and the autoresponder, if you don't need more toys later. The autoreponder is a bit easier to get started. https://emaillist.arisingfloor.com
So there you have it! The reason to create your database, some of the basics, and resource ideas and some things to think about so you'll be ready to jump into the water when we next publish.
Read this twice if you need to, and remember... I always record the video version of these a few days after I send the newsletter. In addition, I'm around to help a bit in Discord when you get going.
Remember, if you're hungry.... may the fork be with you!
Deacon Nick
PS - I know I've stressed this plenty already, but please consider doing this either on your own, or have someone set it up for you. If you have questions, hop into the Discord and ask! (that link is below a tad)
A Rising Floor is a weekly newsletter and Discord Mastermind created for NFT and ordinal collection owners, staff, and founders. It’s a free source of news, marketing help, and a place to communicate with peers for the advancement of the industry.
Follow Nick on Twitter: https://twitter.com/nickcifonie
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