April 2024 Progress Report: email list growth strategies for newbies

Last Updated on June 7, 2024

Explore top email list growth strategies for newbies, productivity tips, and how to grow your business through collaborations and bundles in our latest Progress Report.

Welcome back to the 2nd installment in the Progress Report series! Last time, we kicked things off with Rachel diving headfirst into her new herbal venture, Seeds and Stalks, without the usual social media frenzy.

April has stretched us in new ways, but it’s also reinforced our commitment to working within our limits and still making magic happen. We’re all about that balance—keeping the home fires burning while pushing forward with our business goals. It’s a delicate dance, but one that teaches us more about resilience and the power of slow, steady steps.

Stay tuned as Rachel now takes the wheel to update you on all things Seeds and Stalks. She’s got the scoop on what’s growing, what’s brewing, and how we’re navigating the entrepreneurial waves without drowning in the details. Over to you, Rachel!

March 2024 Income: $57

• Gross Income: $57
  • Course Sales: $17 tripwire sale of my course Build Your Home Apothecary 
  • Mini herbal consult $40 
• Expenses: $1352.55
  • ConvertKit: $53.31 (this is my email service provider but I’m contemplating switching to Kartra because I love Kartra 1000% more!)
  • GSuite: $164.24 (decided to convert this to yearly instead of a monthly expense)
  • Lizzy Goddard Tripwire Get it done week: $29
  • Continuing Education: $794 (I paid off my coaching program from last year so this number should be going down substantially!)
  • Professional membership fees: $155.00 (for my aromatherapy certification) 
  • Networking Group: $157 I joined BossMom+ this month to connect with other women business owners to set up collaborations and visibility opportunities. 
• Net profit: -$1295.55

Despite a loss this past month, I wasn’t discouraged or derailed this month. There’s a cost to doing business and I’m OK with investing in my business and trusting that the profits will follow!

The majority of my loss was from paying off a coaching program that I did in 2023 (which is now paid off!) and some yearly expenses that happened to be due this month. In future months, I’m expecting my expenses to steeply decline as I am being more judicious about what I am signing up for and how much continuing education I am investing in. 

While I believe that continuing education and lifelong learning is important, it’s also important to recognize that more certifications don’t equal more revenue. I want to shift my time to revenue-generating activities and not on continuing education. 

I’m realizing that I prefer to pay for things as a yearly lump sum rather than monthly. It’s neither good nor bad, it’s just something that I’m noticing as I’m developing my monthly business budget and accounting system. 

On a positive note, I did make another tripwire sale so that was great to see. Participating in a get-it-done-week helped me prioritize the task this month and it was a great use of $29.00 (we’re hosted our own Get it Done Week last month and it turned out so well that we’ll be hosting monthly Get it Done Weeks for the next 6 months!)

Before we get into the details, I also wanted to share my traffic totals for April 2024.

Traffic Totals

Overall, I saw comparable results from last month in terms of traffic and users to my site. However, one notable difference was that the average engagement time increased by 100% (last month it was 34 seconds).

Email List

Note: This screenshot comes from my dashboard in Convertkit.

• Email List Growth: 68 new active email subscribers in April 2024, bringing my list to 971 subscribers at the end of April 2024. 

This month one of my goals was to increase my subscriber count by 20 people. I am proud to say that I blew that goal out of the water and grew my email list by 68 people! 

My main strategy for growing my list was collaborating with other business owners in aligned ways to get in front of more eyeballs. Specifically, I participated in a tripwire get-it-done-week put on by Lizzy Goddard and as part of that challenge, my freebie (and tripwire) got promoted to Lizzy’s email list. This resulted in 51 of my new subscribers (and I made a tripwire sale too!) 

Another strategy that I used this past month was to participate in a bundle. The bundle list building strategy is becoming popular in the online space. Basically, you offer a paid product for free (in this case I offered my Build Your Home Apothecary Course as part of the bundle) then the bundle is sent out to all the contributors’ audiences.

It is a list-building strategy that is a win/win because consumers get access to products for free and business owners get emails and can build their list for free as well. The bundle that I’m participating in is going from April 30-May 17 so more details to come about how it’s performing next month. However, I did see 6 new subscribers on April 30th from my participation in the bundle. 

The other new email subscribers came through a collaboration that I’m doing with Ultimate Bundles or from word-of mouth. 

My biggest takeaway from all of this is that email list growth can be like a snowball, slow to get started then quickly pick up momentum but it’s an active process. What I mean by that is that I didn’t passively wait for people to come find me, I actively participated in collaborations and bundles with the goal of getting in front of new audiences- and it’s paying off!

My current list building Freebies are: 

• Build Your Herbal First Aid Kit
• 5 Day Energy Kickstart mini-course

The first thing that I did once I moved to ConvertKit was set up a re-engagement campaign (basically sending everyone again through a new welcome series) which resulted in about 113 people unsubscribing.

This was actually great because I don’t want to be paying for subscribers if they aren’t interested in what I’m saying. Additionally, I want my list to be as engaged as possible, so getting people off my list who won’t ever open my emails anyway will help me connect with people who are really my ideal clients!

I learned how to do the re-engagement campaign and prune cold subscribers from Kate’s course, the Mindful Business Academy.

Some other cool stats were I’m getting upwards of a 40% open rate on my email broadcasts and my welcome series has a 74% open rate with a 5% click-through rate! **I’ve got to give credit here to Laura Belgray at The Talking Shrimp! I enrolled in her Inbox Hero email workshop and it’s been phenomenal with helping me write emails that get opened!

My current list building Freebies are: 

• Build Your Herbal First Aid Kit
• 5 Day Energy Kickstart mini-course

Domain Authority

Note: DA is a ranking metric developed by Moz that predicts how well a site will rank on Google, and is measured on a scale of 1 to 100. The closer you are to 100, the more traffic and better ranking you’ll have.

Clearly I have some work to do in this area! One way that I’ll be working to improve my domain authority is by following the advice and teachings found in the SEO Course (also in MBA) about publishing high quality consistent content so that I can show Google that I’m a reputable website and increase my E-A-T!

Hours Worked: 30 for the month

I’ve been working between 5-10 hours per week on my business. Most of my time this month was spent on networking and collaborations which I’m excited to report on next month.

I’d like to shift that next month to connecting with my audience and personal outreach to generate clients.

Rachel’s Takeaways

What I focused on this month: email list growth

I leveled up this month- at least mentally. I embraced my identity as the CEO of my business and started talking about it as much as I could. I joined a networking community (BossMom+) and have been diligently building connections and relationships in that group with the goal of setting up mutually beneficial collaborations where I can get in front of other people’s aligned audiences. 

I did not blog as much as I wanted to this past month and only published one blog post. I’m realizing that time management and prioritization of my tasks are really important.

Next month I want to work on a timeblocking schedule and make sure that content creations (blogging) has a recurring time block on my weekly schedule. I’m currently following the Ultimate Calendaring Tool For Women principles and need to revisit that with my new CEO identity and schedule so I can prioritize tasks in my business (instead of working haphazardly on what I “feel” like). 

One thing that came up for me last month, which was shared on our Revenue Partnership coaching call, was the power of focusing on one main task for the week. This was coming off a fantastic Get it Done week, where we picked one thing and completed it as  group in one week.

This experience reminded me of the power of focus rather than starting many projects that don’t actually get completed. So, this month, I’m picking 1 main focus for the week and working on that. 

April 2024 Goals

• Grow my email list by at least 20 people ✅
  • Post my lead magnet in my Facebook group. I have a residual Facebook group with 300 people in it from when I started my business in 2019 and I want to leverage the group that I already have but not spend all my time on social media so I’m trying to move people over to my email list.  ✅ I actually got 3 new subscribers from posting my lead magnet in my Facebook group!
  • Solicit one visibility opportunity ✅ I participated in 2 visibility opportunities!
  • Ask my email list to share my freebie sign-up with a friend 🛑 (didn’t get to this this month) 
  • Write/update 2 blog posts 🛑 (Only posted one blog post)
  • Fully set up my ConvertKit Creator Profile ✅(yes, but I’m not fully taking advantage of this feature yet.) 
• Personally connect with 5 potential clients
  • Add a CTA to respond in every weekly email that I send ✅
  • Personal email outreach to anyone who has clicked links in my emails or responded. 🛑 (I’ve responded to anyone who has sent me a response but haven’t actively reached out)
  • Tell people what I really do. ✅ I have been stepping into my identity as a new business owner and it’s been feeling really good!
• Write funnel emails 🛑 (did zero work on this this month)
  • Figure out what my first funnel will be for
  • Write 3-5 sales emails
  • Put emails into a sequence in ConvertKit

Goals for April 2024

• Create a sales process with multiple connections/touchpoints
  • Personal outreach to 5 potential clients per week
    • Anyone who joins my email list after my welcome series gets a personal email 
    • Anyone who gets my Build Your Home Apothecary Course as a freebie gets a personal email from me. 
    • Anyone who has clicked a link in my email gets a personal email from me. 
    • Consider a live connection point (voxer, survey, etc) 
• Set up 2 visibility opportunities/collaborations 
• Grow my email list by 50 people 
• Create a timeblocking/time management system (phase one) 1-2 hours
  • Power planning hour weekly
• Create a project management system (phase one) 1-2 hours
  • Set up Clickup
• My guiding wisdom for next month:
  • How can I connect with and serve potential clients? 
• My guiding feeling for next month:
  • Inspired curiosity 
• My mantra for next month: 
  • I am laying the foundation in my business and prioritizing connection over profit. 

Thoughts + Self-Coaching

Now that I’m fully stepping into my CEO energy, I’m realizing that I need the systems in place in order to work more effectively and progress toward my goals. One thing that we teach in the Mindful Business Academy is setting up systems and processes for success.

A couple of systems that I’d like to set up are my project management system (so that I can keep track of tasks and what I need to get done) and this includes a visibility pipeline so I can manage all these collaborations. I’m currently using my favorite project management tool, Clickup and want to continue setting up systems this month to support my success. As mentioned above, another system that I want to get into place is my time management system. 

Another takeaway is that I want to take a more active approach to sales in my business. I want to set up a sales process/system to connect and engage with my audience and new leads. I’m doing a great job emailing my list weekly but I’d like to build in some more connection points and start real conversations with my audience.

As I’m not using social media, I want to find another way outside of email to engage and connect with my audience. I’ve got some ideas percolating for next month! PS  If you’re interested in growing your business without social media, check out our 4-Day Beyond the Scroll Challenge!

My husband is having ACL repair surgery this month and I want to plan a lot of white space/buffer time so I can support him and the rest of the family during this transition. Thinking proactively about what I am able to realistically do will help me create goals that I can achieve.

Kate’s Takeaways

April was another month of taking “imperfect action” and Rachel’s knack for turning challenges into opportunities is so inspiring. Her determination to keep pushing forward, despite the ups and downs, is exactly the ethos we celebrate at the Mindful Business Academy. It’s living proof that it’s not about being flawless; maybe more about being fearless. Or at least feeling the fear, and doing it anyway.

Here’s the breakdown of how Rachel rocked this month:

• Maximize Every Moment: Despite the personal challenges this month, Rachel kept the momentum going. She didn’t let personal life upheavals derail her; instead, she adapted her schedule and kept moving. This just goes to show that you can’t always control what happens, but you can control your response. Adaptability for the win!
• Collaborate to Accelerate: Rachel’s growth in her email list is nothing short of spectacular. By leveraging collaborations and a bundle, she not only expanded her reach but also significantly boosted her subscriber count. It’s a solid reminder that joining forces can amplify your impact far beyond what you might manage solo. Borrowing other people’s audiences is such a great way to grow quickly, and for free!
• Engagement Over Numbers: It’s thrilling to see Rachel’s engagement times double. This isn’t just a number; it’s a sign that the content resonates more deeply with her audience. Quality engagement like this can be more valuable than any traffic spike.
• From Learning to Earning: Rachel’s shifting her focus from endless learning to applying what she knows to earn and grow. It’s a vital pivot from accumulating knowledge to activating it in profitable ways. Knowledge without action is futile. It’s good to take some time to integrate what you already know before adding more.

This month, Rachel really showed us ot’s not just about growing a business; it’s about growing as a person and a leader. Can’t wait to see what seeds we plant next month!

Reader Questions

Each month, I feature one question about online business from a reader. Submit your question in the comments and I’ll answer one next month!