How to grow your email list – Guide for teachers

It seems like everyone is in a race to growth their follower count. As someone who runs social media in the corporate world, I will never knock the influence social media has. But imagine spending years building your brand on someone else’s platform at the mercy of their algorithm and their ability to shut you down in a heartbeat. This is why this post, How to grow your email list – Guide for Teachers comes in.

The problem with social media platforms is that they have control over your followers and you don’t own anything. If [enter social media platform here] suddenly shut down, how would you contact your followers?

This is why have an email list is super important. Not sure where to start? I’m sharing how to grow your email list – a guide for teachers below!

Before you read….snag the free download!

How to grow your email list:

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New Content

Checklist

A downloadable printable/fillable checklist is one of the simplest (and easiest/quickest to consume) lead magnet options.

• Which areas of your expertise or niche could easily be described in the form of a checklist?
• Do you have any recommendations of processes that you could formalize into a checklist?

Printables

Have you ever created a teacher resource that is not quite ‘meaty’ enough to create into a TPT resource? However, it can still provide value for someone? Printables like templates, graphic organizers, or one off pages that could benefit a teacher is a great piece of gated content to share value in exchange for their email address.

Resource Library

A common trend I’ve noticed amongst Teacherpreneurs for marketing their email list and I can totally see why. Teachers will create a password protected blog post on their website and the only wait to obtain the password is to sign up for the newsletter!

Now, teachers have access to a slew of resources you’ve created in the past and will create in the future. This is also minimal effort for you since you just add the resource to the library and it’s the same link/password every time.

Create ‘bonus’ content

Bonus content very similar to what was mentioned prior. It’s a small piece of content but instead of it being out of the blue, it might accompany a paid product or bigger resource. Teachers can download a tiny taste of the pie, and a bonus is that if they like the resource they will purchase the paid product.

Create a quiz

This is one of the oldest tricks in the marketing book and I see it implemented across accounts super successfully! If a quiz is created with the end in mind, it can create quality leads for your products and services. You can tailor a quiz to point towards solutions to different products you sell or free resources, or better understand if they’re ready for a particular stage of your marketing efforts.

Plus side is that this is a low risk entry for teachers and they’ll receive a fun anecdote about them, so they’re willing to provide their email in exchange for that blurb.

Events

Host a webinar

If there’s one thing I am an expert in due to my corporate job, it’s running webinars. For THREE years I led social media and content marketing – AND managed to recruit teachers and host webinars TWICE a week! That’s unheard of!

Lure teachers into your webinar by providing value in a packed session so they learn you know your stuff and soft sell how your products can be the solutions to those problems. You’ll get tons of teachers to register in exchange for their email address.

Promoting your email list & social media

Promote an online contest

Create some sort of contest where in order to win a prize that is tailored to your desired audience, they must enter with their email address.

Add CTAs in your IG bio or YT description

Teachers will not know your email list exists if you do not promote it across your other channels. Make sure you’re giving it the real estate it deserves on your social media channels.

Don’t forget to talk it up occasionally via IG stories with the swipe up to immediately subscribe.

Create a visual element to subscribe on your website

When teachers land on your website to learn about topics you’re interested about, you’re got them on the line and now you just need to reel them in. Ensure that either the top nav or side bar has the option for teachers to subscribe to your newsletter.

You can also create pop up forms for your email list OR embed it directly in the post, like this….

Use Pinterest to promote visual gated content

You can create images to directly drive sign ups to your email list through Pinterest Marketing. Remember that teachers on Pinterest are wanting to do – try – or buy. Keep this in mind when writing the headings and sub-headings for your images.

Here is an example: