How to create a free printable for your mailing list.
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One of the quickest ways I’ve grown my mailing list is by offering free downloads. At first these have consisted of ebooks but one strategy I’ve found works better are printables. Printables are a lot less time intensive to create which means you can create them weekly or monthly. They’re also really easy to link to blog posts as you can simply find your most popular blog post, add a free printable download and hopefully convert your blog traffic into newsletter sign-ups. The next step is an engaging newsletter that either convert in terms of traffic or, depending on your business, sales.
Outsourcing your printable designs
If you’re new to Canva, I’d definitely recommend buying templates from places like Etsy; often these are fully designed-such as checklists, 30-day challenges or prompt cards, and you just add your text in. Once you get used to Canva, you can take around 10 minutes to design a printable! I also occasionally used Facebook groups where bloggers sell content. For example, I bought this ebook for my 7 day juicing challenge and just tweaked it for my own style. Every day I get sign-ups from it so it’s been worth it!
Design your own printables
If you want to design your own printables then Canva is your best bet. If you use their pro version, you can set your own brand colours and fonts which is perfect if you’re designing a lot of printables.
In their pro version, you can also import your own fonts which is perfect if you have a small business and want the same fonts on your printables as you do on your website or printed labels and physical packaging. Using a site like Font Bundles is great to source fonts that are a little bit more unique-you can buy bundles grouped by type of font such as Font Bundles graffiti fonts or font bundles that are handwritten.
Segmenting lists
One of the things I have only just started doing this year is proper workflows and segments. I found lots of people who are already signed up to The Bloglancer’s newsletter want my freebies so now I have created different workflows for different freebies so they also get a different sign up email. My next step is to set up a proper workflow. I use Flodesk for my newsletter and I’d definitely recommend it in terms of creating segments.
Converting to a paid printable
If your readers are happily downloading your free printables, it could suggest they are in the market to buy products from you too. Paid ebooks aren’t for everyone but if, for example, you notice lots of people are downloading a recipe planning cheatsheet could it be time to create a full recipe planner or ebook? I talk about this in my creating your first paid product ebook but it doesn’t have to be complicated. And, if for whatever reason it doesn’t sell, then you have a really great resource to offer as a free download in the future!
I hope this guide has been useful, do let me know what printables you plan to create below!