Every time a new viewer watches your podcast. You’re taking a risk of whether Youtube will ever show them your channel again.
The subscribe button no longer guarantees they’ll see your content. And most first time viewers aren’t die hard fans who’ll search for your stuff.
Is there a way you can guarantee that viewer will hear from you again?
So you can engage them deeper, and move them up the pyramid of interest? Make them into such a die hard fan they’ll watch and buy all your stuff?
Graphic 1: Pyramid of interest. Which you have to move new viewers up to higher levels of interest.
Yes, that way is called an email list. And it uses a technique called email marketing.
In this article, I’ll explain why an email list can make you 10x the money your social media viewers can.
I’ll also cover how to start an email list for free, and tricks that’ll save you time on getting this right. So stay tuned.
Why you Should Care
Email Marketing’s a superpower for anyone who wants to persuade their audience.
Whether you’re asking them to watch your new podcast episode, try a sponsored product, or answer a survey.
The reason is because email condenses your viewers down to a core group who’ve shown interest in what you offer.
It then allows you to contact and provide value to them at your own time and pace. Allowing you to maintain, nurture and grow the relationship over time. Helping your viewers move up the pyramid of interest and engagement.
Graphic 2: Moving new viewers up the ‘pyramid of interest’, from un-engaged to deeply interested
To put some real numbers to this. Here’s the difference in performance I’ve gotten between social media posts and my mailing list.
A post aimed at getting people to try Podmate, my automatic podcast editing tool.
| Social Media | Email List |
| 1.3% Clicked | 10.7% Clicked |
| 0.1% Tried Podmate | 5.3% Tried Podmate |
You can see a 10% difference in the number of clicks I received. And a much larger number of those clicks translated into trying the app.
Email Marketing performs much better than social media across many industries. It just works, and it’s a powerful tool for a podcaster.
And now I’m gonna share how you can do this for free, and tricks that’ll save you time on getting this right.
Read More.
What you Need to Get Started
To start Email marketing you need:
- A way to collect emails
- You’ll collect emails on your website.
- You can setup a form to collect emails using whatever tool you built your site with (wordpress, wix, etc).
- An incentive to ‘squeeze’ the email from your visitors
- Email addresses are valuable. So viewers will only give them in exchange for something of value.
- You can offer an exclusive piece of content or access to a community. You can also give a special offer to a product, etc.
- Email addresses are valuable. So viewers will only give them in exchange for something of value.
- A way to send emails to your list
- You’ll want to use a ‘email marketing’ tool to do this. I use Convertkit, which is an easy to use tool that has a generous free tier.
- Tools like Convertkit can deliver your incentive to people when they sign up – which is helpful.
- Legally, you’ll need to give email subscribers an option to unsubscribe. Which most email marketing tools have built in.
- Analytics:
- Email marketing tools let you see what percent of your audience has ‘opened’ your emails.
- It also lets you know what percent ‘clicked’ on links inside the email.
- Both can be useful to tell how engaging your email was.
- You’ll want to use a ‘email marketing’ tool to do this. I use Convertkit, which is an easy to use tool that has a generous free tier.
Now that you have the basics setup, that brings the question. How do you grow your list and what exactly do you send them?
How to Create Quality Content for Email
Good content and promotions are the answers to both those questions.
You attract eyeballs on social media using good content, and promote your email list to them.
Once they’re on your email list, you send them good content, and occasional promotions.
Good content is extremely subjective. So I’ll clarify that. You want to send content your audience will find educational, entertaining or inspiring.
To make this written content you could transcribe parts or your podcast, or write it from scratch.
A secret I’ve found that helps me write good content is doing face to face interviews with my audience. I’ve done dozens of calls with podcasts and podcast producers/editors (my audience).
During these calls I learn about my audience’s goals, challenges and pain points. What are they really trying to achieve, and what’s standing in their way?
That goes from deep rooted needs like ‘making money’, all the way down to specific tactical goals.
I then mapped the things I’ve heard from many people into a tree/hierarchy.
Graphic 3: Audience’s hierarchy of needs surrounding their core goal
Whenever I’m searching for new ideas to write about. I start with my audience’s goals/needs and brainstorm from there.
To brainstorm quality content ideas, always aim for quantity. Like a Russian WW2 general said, “Quantity has a quality of its own”.
Aim to come up with at least 20 possible topics. Collect as many as you can in 15 mins. Enlist ChatGPT’s help. It’s great at generating ideas if you prompt it well.
Graphic 4: Picture of ChatGPT generating potential ideas
Then narrow that list down to 3-5 finalists. One of two of those finalists will resonate strongly with you.
Keep in mind you’re trying to create something that will catch your audience’s interest and deliver value. Not just something fun to write about.
Next think of a killer subject line. If your email is never clicked, it’ll never be read either.
Again, come up with 20 or more possible subject lines. Use ChatGPT to brainstorm ideas. Then narrow down to 3-5 high quality candidates.
One of the best ways to pick your final subject line is to send yourself fake emails with these subject lines. Which one would attract your attention and spike your curiosity?
Writing a good subject line is one of the most important things you’ll do.
No one can read an email they never opened. So make sure to give it some attention.
Tips to Get Yourself Writing
Actually writing the content can be a bit of a slog.
It helps to outline a hook which you’ll use to grab attention, explain the stakes and preview what’s in the article. Then write out a few bullet points of what you want to cover.
One of the best tricks I’ve found is to write out your thoughts by hand. I know this sounds crazy. But writing on pen and paper lets you be sloppy and get your ideas out as fast as possible. You can organize and clean up later.
Graphic 5: Picture of this article being written first by hand – excuse my handwriting 😉
It’s surprisingly hard to write clearly and concisely. What you wrote might actually be hard to read.
So once you’ve written your thoughts. Type it all into a word document. Then paste into HemingwayApp. Hemingway’s a free tool that shows where your writing’s hard to read.
It’ll highlight what parts are hard to understand. It also gives you the ‘grade level’ of your witing. You want to get that grade level down as much as you can.
Graphic 6: Picture of an article inside Hemingway app with hard to read sections in Red and Yellow.
That’s not because your audience can’t read big words. It’s because the simpler the language, the clearer it is. Clarity and simplicity are the same thing. So getting to a low grade level means that you’re communicating better.
Most US presidential candidates speak at a 6th grade level. And it’s their job to be as widely understood as possible. So get that grade level down as low as you can.
And use plenty of pictures to break up the text and illustrate your ideas.
Lastly but most importantly,
How often should you promote to your mailing list?
Whether you’re promoting a sponsor, or pushing your own products, you shouldn’t promote to your audience too often.
You want to build lots of goodwill and trust. Making every email into an Ad isn’t gonna do that.
A good rule of thumb is 80-20 between value and promotion. Or even 90-10 if you can. That means no more than every 3 or fourth email should be explicitly promotional. All the rest should be valuable content.
Another split you can try is making your emails have 80-90% valuable content, and a small promotion at the end.
Either way you wanna give a lot than you get in return.
Bonus points if you can make your promotions entertaining. That way you’re delivering value even as you promote.
By using these ideas, you can tap into the power and promotional benefits of email marketing. Good luck!
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