Email List Builder Step 1: Create an Information Product that Eases Pain

Why Do you Need an Email List Builder that Eases Pain?

The job of an Email List Builder is to collect emails and grow your email list.

In order to motivate prospects to give you their emails, you have to give them something they really want, which is information.

Your prospects are suffering in some type of way that you can fix, and when you package together information that shows them you understand their problem, why they have that problem, and show them how to fix it, you bestow your prospects with extraordinary value.

The reason you present your Information Product to your prospects as a pain point to be relieved, as opposed to a positive outcome to be achieved, is because humans are psychologically more motivated to take action that relieves immediate pain than they are to take action that may lead to positive outcomes in the future.

Obviously if you relive pain for your prospects, that’s going to cause a positive outcome, but your online offer is a better motivator when you focus on the pain your prospects have now, and how your Information Product will solve that problem and relieve that pain now.

How to Create an Information Product

Here’s how you create an Information Product for your Email List Builder:

• Focus on One Legal Service. Certain law firms of substantial size can truly be a one stop shop for every type of person with every type of legal issue. But most attorneys end up specializing in one area, simply because the law is so voluminous, and it’s hard to remain competent across multiple areas of law. Additionally–and this is a big one–it becomes very cumbersome to manage clients operationally when you provide more than one legal service. If you want to grow and take on more clients, you stand a much better chance of doing so successfully when you provide one legal service.
• Address One Specific Niche. The best way attorneys can immediately improve their Email List Builder is to make it niche-specific. Let me ask you a question: does “Subscribe Now for Updates!” sound very exciting to you? I would be wondering: updates for whom? About what? Why the hell would I respond to an offer like that? When you provide a specific legal service, to a specific type of person, now you have a focus point for your Information Product. Here’s an example of a law firm’s mission statement that provides a specific service to a specific niche: “We only represent fathers in divorce proceedings in Orange County.” Once you’ve narrowed your legal service to a specific audience (the more specific, the better) you can focus on the specific problems unique to your niche, and create an Information Product that solves those problems.
• Outline the Content for Your Information Product. The way you write content for your Info Product is to make a list of the top 5-10 most common questions (pain points) asked by your prospects. Think of the questions you get day in and day out from clients and prospects–about the law, about court procedure, about expected outcomes–whatever it is that seems to worry your niche the most. By the way, this is the same way you create content for your weekly Email Newsletter and for your Blog–it’s always a matter of determining what questions your niche has, then answering those questions generously, without holding back any pertinent information desired by your prospects.
• Package the Content in a Digestible Format, and Give it a Name. Once you’ve created an outline of content answering the top worries, fears, confusion, etc., next you “package” all of that content together as a cohesive solution that gets your prospects to digest and understand the content in an organized and logical way. You could package your content as a PDF E-book, an exclusive pre-recorded Youtube video, an exclusive blog post, a 5-Day Educational Email Course, a Recorded Q&A with someone in your office, a Template, a Checklist, a Guide, etc. Then give it a name. Using the family law example again, it might be named something like: “Divorced Dad’s Survival Guide” for example. It doesn’t really matter what you name it, but naming it is important to help your prospects understand it’s something of value that they are really going to want to consume.

How Your Information Product Improves Conversions

This is how your Information Product helps you convert more prospects:

• Sell through education. No one likes pushy sales people. The best way to sell is to use your Email List Builder to provide free education. Gone are the days of attorneys-as-gatekeepers of information. If you’re not giving prospects free, specific information that actually helps them (even before hiring you), I guarantee you have competitors who are doing so, and those competitors are the ones establishing themselves as the most competent attorneys on the subject.
• Qualifies Prospects. When you create an Information Product that gives a ton of upfront value, a knee-jerk reaction is to feel used or indignant about all of the prospects who are availing themselves of the free content you publish, with no intention of ever hiring you. But prospects often don’t even know what type of lawyer they need–maybe they think they need a family law attorney when in reality they need an estate planning attorney. Your Information Product will let them know if you’re the attorney for them. As for those who actually need your service, but are just looking for a freebie, don’t even concern yourself with this group of people. Eventually, the freebie-seekers will eff right off, and those prospects truly looking for legal help will be clamoring to be first in line to hire.
• Opens a Dialog with Prospects. After you create your Information Product, it won’t answer every single question your prospects have (although it will give you a great head start). But now that you’ve established yourself as a credible attorney, identified the prospect’s problem, explained the reason why he has that problem, and what he needs to do to fix it–for any unanswered questions he still has, he’s like to email you or call you to reach out and get his remaining questions answer. This process creates an excellent feedback loop for more content: every burning question a prospect has is an opportunity for you to provide more free education and entrench yourself more deeply in the prospect’s mind as the best attorney for the job. This ongoing engagement with your prospects will help you understand your niche better and better with each new question.
• Creates an Evergreen Asset. Once you’ve created your Information Product for your Email List Builder, you now own an evergreen asset that will continue to qualify and convert online prospects, forever. Set it, and forget it.

Email List Builder Step 2: Create an Email Collection Box that Hoards Emails

How to Face Your Tech Fears

Regardless of how “easy” or templated website technology has become, some attorneys just have a mental block about doing things online that involve tech, and this ends up (unfortunately) being the thing that keeps attorneys from availing themselves of the power of email marketing.

If this sounds like you, the best advice I have for you is to just push through the initial discomfort of learning something new.

Or–delegate it to someone else who knows how to get it done.

But I’m going to make it very easy for you, and show you exactly what I do.

It’s so easy, you don’t even need a website.

Choose an Email Software Company

The software company I use to collect email addresses, put them into a list, and then publish emails to that list, is called Kit (formerly ConvertKit).

Kit makes it super email to design an email collection box, and embed it on your website. You actually don’t even need a website, because Kit has some great customizable landing pages you can use as your email collection box.

You can create a Kit account here.

I’ve dabbled with a few others, and all have their pros and cons.

Here are a few others to consider:

• Mailchimp. This is one of the more robust-featured email software companies, and has been around for a long time. Each company has varying levels of subscriptions and free plans they offer, but overall Mailchimp is about mid-tier priced, compared with other companies. A con of Mailchimp (for me) is that is has too many features I will never use, and the number of options and settings makes the interface more complicated to navigate.
• Berserker Mail. A newer company, co-owned by an email marketing guru I’ve learned a lot from over the years named Ben Settle. A huge pro of Berserker Mail is it solves exactly the problem I mentioned with Mailchimp (too many features making it clunky and difficult to navigate): it’s extraordinarily simple. Very few features, highly focused on getting emails published, and that’s it. A con of Berserker Mail: last I checked it’s a little pricey.
• Mailerlite. Mailerlite is very affordable (it has a pretty robust free plan), with a fairly simplistic interface. It’s actually the company I was using just before I switched to Kit. The reason I switched to Kit from Mailerlite, is because I liked the interface of Kit much better, and I think the landing pages templates and ease of creating email sequences is much better than Mailerlite. That being said–many of these decisions come down to your personal preference.

*Important: whatever you do, do not waste time in ambivalence, endlessly comparing features or switching tools. The truth is that they all have their pros and cons, and all are capable of getting the job done for you.

The best thing to do is just pick one and move on.

Attorneys who get hung up on decisions like this are wasting precious time, and it’s not that important of a decision to warrant excessive analysis.

Email List Builder Step 3: Give Away Your Information Product for Free

My writing mentor who’s sold over 5 million dollars online of Information Products, said it this way: Education is free, execution is expensive.

Education is Free

The concept of giving away a free Information Product is not “new,” but underutilized by attorneys who still believe their role is the gatekeeper of information. On the contrary: your greatest value to your clients isn’t disclosing to them the top secret information you’ve been withholding from them until they’ve hired you. If all you’re doing as an attorney is giving information to clients, you’ll be quickly outshined by your colleagues who get the thing done for clients through execution.

Execution is Expensive

Remember: even if a prospect in theory could act in pro per on the free information you’ve given them, these aren’t the prospects you’re looking for anyway!

You want to get hired by the prospects who have consumed your Information Product, your emails, your blog posts, social media content, etc., and they know what to do from A-Z (because you’ve educated them), but after consuming all of that information still say, “Wow, I’m overwhelmed and scared shitless–I need to hire this attorney today!”

You simply tell your prospects: “This is how you get it done, and if you want me to do it for you, this is my fee.”

Simple as that.

Learn More About Making an Email List Builder

To learn how an Email List Builder works within a complete Digital Writing System, you may be interested in subscribing to our FREE Attorney’s Digital Writing Accelerator. Click here to learn more.