Step 1_ Back load your email list with everyone in your contact list. We all have friends and family who will gladly support our endeavors. This is an obvious play but for some reason people tend to overlook it. Once you've assembled a list of your contacts send a simple short message that says something like_
Hi Friend,
Can you help me get my business kicked off by joining my mailing list? It would be a great help.
A key to this strategy is to avoid sending your contacts to a landing page in order to join your list. Simply manually add the people who respond to your list.
Step 2_ Now that you've invited your friends and family to join your mailing list. It's time to ask them to refer some of their friends. This should help add to your list pretty quickly. Here's a sample of an email you can send them.
Hi Friend,
Thanks for joining my mailing list, it means a lot! I'm excited to get this project going but before I do I have a quick question... Can you think of one or two friends who might be interested in my project as well? If you can refer them that would be great.
If you've followed these steps you should have at least 100 subscribers to your email list. You're now in a great position to drive traffic to your website by sending them valuable content. By asking your list to share that content on social media you'll be in a great position to add even more people to your list.
Step 3_ In the third and finally step you should add a form to your website that offers something of high perceived value in exchange for their contact information. This can be a free trial, a discount coupon, or maybe even a link to a valuable article. The sky's the limit.
You can easily create and manage a list complete with a form on your website by signing up and creating your website at WebStarts.com.