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10 irritatingly slow but effective ways to grow your email list
No time for dilly-dally, here’s the list…
1. Guest on podcasts.
Super useful because people leave their podcasts up forever. If you appear on enough and just one of them takes off, a lot of people will find you while digging through the archives on day (which is awesome).
Further, articulating your thoughts on the fly makes you better at what you do.
2. List swaps.
There are many ways to do this, but…
The main goal is to tell your email list about someone you admire. And in return, that person tells their email list about how much they admire you too. So you should only do this with people you truly admire.
That doesn’t mean you must have known them forever, but it does mean you have to be willing to put your name on their work.
Because you’ll be associated with it now, and forever.
3. Free work in exchange for promo.
Here’s another way to get people recommending you to their lists (regardless of your own list size).
You can do work for free in exchange for someone else promoting you to their list. This effectively let’s you “leapfrog” up a level or two or gain quick access to high value customers in your niche.
4. Organic social media.
No surprise here.
The best thing I can do is encourage you to do more of it, and remind you that lead magnets tend to work way better than “join my newsletter.” (Yeah, I should probably take my own advice one day).
You can also tease upcoming email content with a Pre-Publish CTA post. These don’t get a lot of reach since link posts are penalized… but they convert like crazy when compared to their likes and view count.
And if you don’t have a lead magnet, you can try an “Are you interested?” post. It validates your idea and lets you start collecting emails before you even build the thing.
5. Searchable content.
This includes posting to platforms built for discovery like YouTube, Medium, or your own blog where your content can live forever instead of disappearing in the feed.
Yes, some of these are technically “social” platforms. But unlike feed-based apps, they reward educators who think long-term because your content keeps working for you months, or even years, after you press publish.
And if you haven’t set up your own blog yet, I highly recommend it. It’s the single most valuable real estate you own online. And increasingly, it’s how AI discovers and recommends experts to your future customers.
6. Other people’s communities.
Think of this like a “list swap,” but with real-time relationship building behind it.
When you connect with entrepreneurs in adjacent niches, you can present to their audiences, collaborate inside their spaces, or even help moderate their groups.
If they’re further along than you, it’s one of the fastest ways to build credibility and get in front of a warm, engaged audience. Plus, nothing sharpens your marketing more than spending time around real people talking about their real problems.
Even just showing up consistently in the right community can lead to opportunities you’d never find on your own.
Super fun and powerful stuff if you ask me.
7. Workshops.
A lot like a lead magnet.
Often is a lead magnet, but mentioned separately for a couple reasons.
One, it gets overlooked because it seems or feels like a lot of work (it doesn’t have to be), and they’re also terribly effective compared to other types of lead magnets because once you’ve hosted and recorded it, it’s content forever.
And it can be repurposed, whittled down into mini trainings or lead magnets, stashed inside a paid community, or have traffic run to it indefinitely.
Oh yeah, you can also do them in person too (which is amazing).
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Up until now, all the methods I’ve mentioned only cost your time (which is what makes them “slow” but effective).
Now I’ll mention a few paid options, which tend to grow your list faster, but when you zoom out and look big picture, the reality is, figuring out how to make your money back on paid methods can take some time. So unless you have a bunch of cash you’re willing to burn through on things that might not work, for all intents and purposes, paid methods should also be approached with a “slow and steady” mindset.
The first of which being…
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8. Solo ads.
A lot of people don’t know about solo ads, and to be honest, I can’t honestly recommend them to you because I haven’t used them myself, but it’s worth knowing that they exist.
Why? Because every time I dig in and investigate them, I find it’s clear, they do actually work for offers that appeal to mass audiences.
For example, if you’re doing a gluten free cookbook in the diet and weight loss niche, then buying solo ads might be right up your alley.
It’s just never made sense for me to mess around with them since I spend most of my time on the “fringes” of society.
9. Newsletter sponsorships.
One of the faster ways to grow your audience is to borrow trust from someone who’s already earned it.
In newsletter sponsorships you pay to appear in front of a list of warm, responsive readers who already trust the writer, and by extension, some of that trust is transferred to you.
You can sometimes trade placements or collaborate with peers (as mentioned above), but most sponsorships are straightforward: you pay cash for a feature spot in someone else’s newsletter.
I haven’t done this yet myself, but I’ve seen others do quite well with it.
Definitely something worth testing once your offer and core message are dialed in.
10. Paid social media ads.
This paid method is more in my wheelhouse.
I ran tons of ads early on building my own lists. And I still run ads for several clients. I’m not currently running any to my personal list, but let’s just say that could change soon (wink wink).
Platforms like Facebook, YouTube, LinkedIn, and X let you get in front of paying customers without relying on luck, virality, or years of grinding. Which if you ask me is pretty awesome.
But the trade off is, it’s harder to build trust through cold traffic.
That said, paid ads can burn through cash fast. So it pays to go in with a clear, proven plan, or you’ll end up with a list full of unengaged subscribers who hurt your deliverability, drain your wallet, and bruise your ego all at the same time.
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Okay, that about does it.
Now you might be wondering…
“Which ones should I focus on for my business?”
“And once I do decide which ones to focus on, how do I get into the nitty gritty details of doing it right, making sure it’s effective, and not wasting all my time trying to re-invent the wheel?”
Well, I’m glad you asked…
Because I’ve recently launched a weird pricing experiment where you can book a 1:1 strategy call with me for a very low rate that increases over time. And on the call, we’ll audit your current approach to building a profitable email list and create a focused 30 day action plan that will help you turn “irritatingly slow” into “a little bit faster”.
If you’d like to learn more about that, go here (or don’t, your choice, totally up to you):
Kevin Hood