Franklin Taggart's Unconventional Life Blog

I've built several email lists over the years for various enterprises. My music email list grew to about 3500 people over 20 years. This isn't huge compared to the efforts of others, but it was grown a couple of enrollments at a time when I was playing for small audiences consisting of mostly the same people. My current email list is less than 500 people, and I write only a few emails yearly. Most of my marketing for coaching is face-to-face, and I've not had much to promote through email. I'm not someone who will tell a new business owner that they MUST do anything regarding tools and tactics. I think we need only to concern ourselves with two questions - how will we make and maintain connections with customers, and do our methods work adequately? My social media experience goes back to MySpace. I've experimented with every platform except WhatsApp and Snapchat. None of the social media platforms have been as reliable as email for reaching people I need to stay in ...

 I've made a lot of PDF downloads for lead magnets, starting with a first guitar buyer's guide I offered for one of the first blogs I started in 2009. Free PDFs were how most online marketers built their lists back then, and it seemed to work pretty well - until it didn't. When I started to study digital marketing more intensely a few years later, I started to collect PDF lead magnets. The Google Drive folder where I keep them now lists over 600 document files stored there, and I can probably count the number I've read completely with my two hands. I've also tried to offer mini-courses in exchange for email addresses, which worked for a while, but those ultimately slowed down as the PDFs did. Finding ways to attract new customers and clients grew more difficult as people became wise to the tactics and the lead magnets' quality declined. I remember trying to find a way to use tools like surveys, and Google Forms to both gather information and deliver value, but i...