Have you ever been a speaker at a meeting and wish you could add all of the attendees to your email list?
Sure, you could pass around a sign-up sheet, but then you’d have to decipher all of those scribbled emails and type them into a spreadsheet. Or, you could give the audience your website address and ask them to go to your site to sign up for your list. But, you’ll be lucky if three people actually do it. Out of sight, out of mind.
What if people could quickly text their way onto your email lists from their phones? Wouldn’t that be a great idea?
Oh wait. They can do this!
And if you make your audience an offer they can’t resist such as an mp3 from your new CD, a chapter from your book or the slides from your talk, they’ll whip their phones out faster than you can say, Text Me!
Thankfully there are many Text to Email List companies, such as Textiful and Join by Text that make this process easy to implement. Some email providers such as Constant Contact have this built right in, but I can’t vouch for them. Most of the services They generally work in the same way but their pricing schedules are a little different.
At your event, tell your audience about your free offer. Then, give them a secret code word they can text to a 5-digit number which will let them enter their email address for you to use to send the offer to them. Easy Peasy.
To get started, check out the pricing schedules of the various text to email services and choose the one that best fits your needs. Once you sign up they’ll ask you to choose a one-word, easy-to-spell keyword and link that keyword to one of your email lists in your email marketing platform or you can have the addresses download into a CSV/Excel file.
Create a reply text message that will go out to each person who texts your code asking them to enter their email address so that you can send out their free offer along with anything else you’d like to offer.
Write another automated text that will be sent right out, thanking them for signing up and letting them know to check their email for your free offer.
You’ll then need to go into your email marketing platform and set up a confirmation email attached to the specific list that will go out to anyone joining the list. At the end of your email message include the link for them to download your free offer.
In addition to capturing email addresses, you can also use this system to create text marketing campaigns. And you can promote your keyword and code for your free offer, anywhere you want to capture email addresses including presentations, events, brochures, TV ads, and more!
