Day 8: The List-Building Social Street Team®
If you want to grow your email list faster, you don't need to figure out Facebook ads or host a big gala.
You need a valuable-packed resource people genuinely want and the right people helping you spread the word about it. Because “join our newsletter” is rarely compelling. 😬
But a checklist, guide, toolkit, or question people are already searching for? That gets attention.
That’s where your Social Street Team® comes in.
My friend and fellow email marketing enthusiast Christina Edwards is coming in hot for day 8 of the Email Growth Challenge for Nonprofits.
Today she is going to teach you all about a Social Street Team® which is a small group of Audience Amplifiers™ who help share your resource with their own networks.
Instead of relying only on your organization’s audience, you multiply your reach through people whose communities already have natural alignment with your cause.
Here's how it works.
🛠️ Setting up your Street Team
Step 1: Choose a high-value resource to share
Your resource should answer a real question people are already Googling, struggling with, or curious about.
Examples:
A beginner’s guide to understanding your cause
The most common mistakes people make around your issue
A caregiver or family support toolkit
A checklist or quick reference guide
If it solves a problem or answers a question people already have, they’ll want it!
Step 2: Recruit a Social Street Team® of Audience Amplifiers™
These are people whose audiences naturally overlap with your mission.
Think:
Board members
Volunteers
Partner organizations
Creators or influencers aligned with your cause
You can be wildly successful with fewer than 10 amplifiers. You are simply borrowing trusted audiences that already exist. This strategy costs nothing. It’s a collaboration around shared impact.
Step 3: Make sharing easy
Provide your Social Street Team® with:
The signup link to your valuable resource
A short message they can copy and paste
A graphic
The easier you make it, the more likely people are to share.
Step 4: Launch together
Invite your Social Street Team® to share your resource during the same week. When several people share it at once, the momentum builds quickly.
Instead of whispering into the internet, your opt-in travels through multiple aligned communities at the same time, bringing new subscribers into your world.
💡 Why it works
Because people trust people.
We are influenced all day, every day. We click, buy, watch, follow, and sign up because someone we trust shared it first. It’s the same reason moms ask other moms for the name of a great pediatrician, or dog owners ask other dog lovers which vet they recommend.
That is the power of the creator economy and why influencer marketing has become such a force.
Nonprofits can use that same principle for good. When a supporter, partner, creator, or influencer shares your resource, it lands like a recommendation, not an ad. A Social Street Team® lets you borrow both reach and credibility.
Instead of trying to grow your list in isolation, you tap into communities that already exist and the trust that already lives there.
📊 Results
When nonprofits activate even a small Social Street Team®, their reach can expand quickly.
Just 5 to 10 Audience Amplifiers™ sharing a resource can introduce your organization to hundreds or even thousands of new people through their networks.
More importantly, those subscribers are often warmer leads because they found you through a trusted voice, not a cold ad.
🧰 Tools Needed
Your email service provider (ESP)
A simple signup form and
A resource people receive after joining
🗣️ Last thought
What I love about Christina's idea of using a social street team is that it combines two things I will never shut up about:
Providing something of value to current and potential subscribers and
Leaning on other people's audiences.
Channel your inner cheerleader and rally your Street Team to get LOUD 📣. You've got this. 💪
Be back in your inbox for Day 9.
The Social Street Team® Email List Starter Kit turns supporters into Audience Amplifiers™ who help grow your email list. This kit includes simple, copy-and-paste messages you can use to recruit a Social Street Team® and make it easy for supporters to spread your resource. Get the kit for free here!