Email Marketing: Should You Use Your Podcast To Build An Email List?

Want your podcast and videocast to be seen, heard, found and rewarded in this noisy digital world, you are not alone. Join the nonprofit community at Podcasters United and podcast industry experts Tom Hazard and Tracy Hazard as they debunk all that outdated and bad advice you've been getting from the podcast gurus and find out what actually works. Today, get ready to feed Feed your brand with smart cut tactics proven to cast your original voice to the world.

Hey everyone. Welcome back to feed you'd brand. I'm Tom Hazard along with my co host Tracy. Today we're going to talk about if you should use your podcast or a podcast to build an email list.

If is where we want to start with that, Tom. So I'm so glad you said that. So should you start an email list from your podcast? Should you start your podcast to build an email list? Like, these are all questions you might want to be asking yourself at the very beginning. But I think that if part like, is this the right thing for me? Should I be doing this is really a question because most people don't have the system set up to take advantage of an email list, even if they had one.

It's one of those things that just because you build it doesn't mean they're going to come right going back.

Or you build it.

Field of dream.

Yeah, or you build it, you get a list, but you don't know what to do with the list. Right. And so that's a common problem. There's also the common problem of, is that like, you build all these systems and processes and then you don't get any emails into your list too. So like, it does go both ways. So even if you don't want to spend the money or the time, because it does take a lot of time to build the email systems, believe me, I've done nothing but write emails. I mean, I think I've written a hundred emails in three months.

Various different campaigns that we're doing for.

Events, we're doing for announcements, we're doing for campaigns that we're doing that are actually like advertising email follow ups. I proof them, I've edited them on top of writing them. So it's a lot of work and it's not something you can completely subcontract out because you have to have input into it. So I'm going to hire a writer and they're going to write everything. It's going to sound generic if you don't add your flavor in there. So either you have to go in and edit them or you have to Spend time on the phone with them and getting through that so they understand you, so they can create a better email to begin with. So it's time consuming. So if you don't want to spend the time and the money at the beginning, at least understand what it's going to look like, how are you going to use it and what's the path going to be from the moment you get someone into your email list, what are you going to do with it?

That's a great point, Tracy. So I think to sort of add to your if, I mean, I personally believe and have experienced a podcast is a great way to build an email list if you have something of value to provide the listener in exchange for trading that email. If you just say, hey, join my email list, well, what's the email is going to be bringing them later? Why do they want to be a part of the email list? Or you can be a little sort of more cagey about it and say, hey, I'm giving you this thing of value. You just have to fill out this little form and then you can download it. And you're getting their name, their phone number, their email. You're just getting their contact information in general and they're opting in to be contacted by you. I mean, that can work too. But again, you got to think about either what is that thing of value? Do you have one? If you have one, great. If not, you got to create one that you're going to trade to get that contact information. Or you have something you're going to be doing on an ongoing basis in the future. You're going to be reaching out to them to provide them something of value, some information, something. What is that going to be?

And let's think of this through very carefully. It's like, it sounds so great to have an email list and wouldn't it be great if I had a 10,000? And people are always asking me, when you want to be a guest on a podcast, how big is your email list? Like, they want that reach. But the reality is, is I've had people who have hundreds of thousands of people on their email list and it's a useless list at the end of the day. The bigger it is, the worse the conversion rate is. And right now, email rates for conversion in 2021 are averaged at 1.2%. Like that's horrendously bad. That means one out of every hundred makes a contact point back with you. Now, granted, it might be a sale, if that's what you are offering. And that might Be worth it to do one out of every hundred. But for my efforts, I want to see at least 10x that I would.

Agree with you, Tracy. And I think those stats that you were sharing about conversion rates to an email list are really general conversion to a broad email list, an unqualified email list, more that you have an email list that is qualified. And here's where an email list that is derived from your podcast listeners might be a very qualified list that would have a higher conversion rate.

Many, many podcasters are not podcast listeners. So you don't have the perspective of what a subscriber and listener is. As a subscriber and a listener to a podcast, I don't need your email list because I've got auto notifications built in to the selection that I've made by choosing your podcast. I know when you're posting stuff, and if I listen to your episode, I know when there might be something on your website I want to go consume. So I've got all the notification I need there. There's very little incentive unless you create it for me to leave that passive subscription model and notification model. And why would I want to inundate my email? You know, I have to tell you that, like, when I subscribe to email lists out there, and I hope that people who I'm subscribed to don't really realize this. Like, I hope you're not listening right now, but they probably are. But I don't give you a real email address that I check all the time. Right. Like, I have one that's just for the newsletters, and I do that so that I can be informed if I choose to. But I put it all into an enrolled me, which Tom and I have talked about on the next little thing, so you could hear our episode about that specific tool. And we use that one because we want to make sure that we stay in the loop on these things. But I don't want to have to consume them and I don't want them to inundate my email list. So I'm not getting anything in a timely manner. I have to still choose to go in there. That's the way a lot of people treat their email. Right. It's just that I have an email address that I just give out to anyone because I wanted this one thing, and they're not really converting on it because they're not really seeing anything there. That's why we have such low open rates and such low conversion rates on emails.

And so that's why it's really important to have something of real value, to be able to trade that listener of your show to give you the real email address, their best contact email, the one where they want to be receiving your message.

So driving them off of the podcast and onto your website, where your email address is being captured, where the emails are being captured, is critically important, right? So what that is and what that's going to be. When we did our 3D print podcast, we used to send them to see videos they could only see in our website. And keep in mind that YouTube was not as big as it is now, so most people will just go to YouTube and check out the video. So that may not be a real driver, but we had exclusive content that was only on the website. They would come in and there'd be an email opt in there. Now the reality is we just captured email addresses. We didn't even like email. We didn't know what we were going to do with them. We didn't have any purpose for it. And they did come and subscribe, but we didn't have anything more for them. So they were subscribing anyway, which was really interesting to us. We didn't know why, because they could be subscribing on the podcast, but they were doing it. And so we never did really think through what we were going to do with them. And I still have a list today of over a thousand people on that list. Before I decided we were going to shut down the capture list because I didn't know what to do with it. It was in everybody's face when you came to the website. And so I was like, I don't want something that obtrusive. So we took it out, but that was it. So what are you going to do to drive them to that? Is there going to be something valuable? I recommend it. Something different every time because then you'll find out what's tracking for you. So if you're going to do an episode, make it episode related, topic related contextual to what's happening on that episode so that you're offering them something unique. You're like, I have a white paper on this topic. I have a video that might help explain this. I'm talking about some advanced things, but this is 101 for you. There's an explainer on the website in the blog post for this episode, which is the way we always say in the blog post for this episode. You'll find that way you're embedding it really clearly and distinctly. If you're doing something with a Guest, you might want to make offers from those guests. You could have the guest thing as your offer, which is also driving them to your website. Don't let them go to the guest's website to get it. Put it on your website as the download from your site.

Which actually makes sense because they're your listeners and the way you can pitch that to your guest is they trust you. They're more likely to engage and to trade their information for that thing of value on your website than to go to the guest website who they just heard for the first time on this episode.

Right. And you do need to be really clear. And if you're sharing this with that guest as well. So if you're going to share those emails, make sure you're disclosing that because by law you have to. So those are email who you're sharing with. If you're only sharing a particular thing, one thing, you can note that right above before there's the opt in for it. So you can note it right there in the blog post. So that's a great way. Making it contextual is more likely to get your subscribers to take action than if it's something repetitive again and again and again that they heard. Maybe they got it once and then they were like, yeah, but then there was nothing else after that. So you get them to realize you don't have enough value if you do it in that repetitive way. Another option is to not put it if you're offering the same thing, but not put it in every episode. Only offer it once a month in your episode. So once every four episodes. So keeping it down in what you're offering will help create this sort of eliteness to it, exclusivity to it, and drive more people to the website to actually get it at that time.

Now, some people who have a podcast that's obviously public and then also have a membership community on their website, some more exclusive content for people behind a gate, that can be another way obviously to capture people and get their email. They become a part of your community. But again, you've got to have that community built out first. And what is those things of value that are behind it?

Yeah. Are they enough value that your listeners will take the time to get off their app and move to you to go do? Right.

I love that. Get off your app. I was like, I thought you were saying something else.

No, but yeah, yeah. What do you have that is going to make them get off the app and join you? Get off your app. I love that. Yeah, I guess I said that. Okay, so here's the other thing that I do want to remind you that there are a lot of you out there who's using your guesting strategies, right? So you use guest interviews to track the right people that you want on your list. So here's what I do. So when someone is coming on my show as a guest, not only do I send them emails asking them to subscribe, review, and do all of that, but I send a reminder in there that they can't unsubscribe from this email because if they do, they won't get the notifications about future updates to their show. So in other words, I offer them an article, a buzzfeed mention, a future. They might be in my top best list when I do 100 episodes or 200 episodes or anything like that. So they stay subscribed to my list that is specifically for guests, right? So I have a sub list for guests. So I don't inundate them with emails. I make sure that I only send them the most important emails that are going out from the company as a whole. They're not funneled, but they're in there and they will get the biggest announcements. So when that happens, they're not unsubscribing from my list. They stay on my list for years because they want to make sure that the next time something happens and they get publicity or their episode gets mentioned along with my show, that they're getting that. And I do that because I drip it out over time. So I have them on my show, the show comes out, they get the guest notification email that says, you were on my show. Here's the link to the show here, the episode blog post, of course, because that's how we do it here. But you get all of that. Then about two to four weeks later, somewhere in there, they get an announcement that they were featured in Authority magazine. So now they're getting that second email again that says this. And I haven't sent them out any emails. There's like strict rules until the third email goes out, which tells them that they got a buzzfeed mention or they got in my top list, they made my favorites, something like that, until the third email goes out, they don't get any of the sort of more standard messages that might happen at any given time. And even then, they won't get more than one message a month at that point. So there's a restriction on how I use that list. But I can tell you they don't unsubscribe ever. And when I do reach out to them and mention something or tell them about something that they may not have heard of, make an announcement, they email back. And my open rate is well over 60% on that email. So that's a way to live high value service and make sure you keep that exclusivity and gentle treatment, which I believe is really important, like that high level, high value. I value you treatment to that particular segment of your email list. So that can be very valuable for you as well.

See, that's the real trick, isn't it, Tracy, is you really do have to figure out what's in it for the listener. What is the compelling reason they're going to want to give you their email to be added to your list, to trade that to get something of value. That's really what it's all about. So I know the title of this is should you use your podcast to build an email list? And that is true, it is. But what's really critical to that, it's less about building the list that's sort of mechanically the easy part. Having calls to action, offers of one kind or another, mentions in your podcast, sidebar, things in your blog post or on your website, pop ups, whatever. It's a number of different ways to actually mechanically get the list to be built. But what's that compelling why that people are going to want to do it and it's. They don't feel like they're being forced to. And then they're going to give you that junk email that you give for Fandango or whatever, right? Or people aren't going to the movies anymore for Netflix or whatever.

No, Netflix we use every day. I would say you really got to talk about the ones that you don't consume that you passively give one Spotify. Actually, I don't have my email address on Spotify because I want them to stop. I don't want them to monitor me. But that's a choice, right? That's a choice that you make for somebody that you don't think brings you value at the end of the day. Do I do that to good pods? Absolutely not, right? I love GoodPods, one of my favorite. They have my real email address and so when the messages come out, I actually see them.

And for those of you that don't remember, GoodPods is a podcast listening app.

Right, run by JJ Ramberg and her brother. And I absolutely love their mission. And their mission is around independent podcasters and they give independent podcasters exposure. So if you're not already on the app, which you should be, because if you're syndicated through us, or if you're syndicated to Apple, you should be on their app automatically. So, like, there isn't really any work there. But if you haven't gone to log in it, go ahead and do it. Because once you do, you can select yourself as an indie podcaster and you get more visibility for your show within their own app. So it's a really good, really good idea. But let's talk about the guesting side that I want to go back to again. So I have been on some shows that treat their show like a virtual summit where they cram all the interviews into a day. They do 10 minute interviews or less, and they're just cramming it in. What I can tell you is that I don't give those people my real email address either. And the reality is, is that there's very little rapport and service built in such a short period of time. This is not a way to get to that high elite level of connection with someone that is going to have them pay attention to what you're sending them, an email. It's not going to happen in that short period of time. So while I do hear podcasters talking about using it as a strategy or using their virtual summit, which they then turn into the podcast, and using it that way, it can backfire on you and have very little value. At the end of the day, you could do an international day like International Women's Day, International Podcast Day, International Social Media Day, but give everybody 30 minutes when you do it, don't shortchange them into the 10 minute model. And that gives everybody a good long period of time. But you can get a lot of email addresses and a lot of guests in a short period of time and create a lot of content. So I'm not saying that model of rapid fire creation is bad. I'm saying not giving it the time it deserves to build the rapport necessary to make sure they will open the emails later is the key factor there. The thing I want to say is like, look, if you decide that email lists aren't for you, that doesn't mean that you shouldn't be driving them back to your website. There's a whole lot of passive ways to gather email addresses and connections to people. So we use a program called Get Emails, which is a super simple program. It can get pricey if you end up with a lot of traffic to your site in terms of what it's gathering. But it's collecting emails, matching them up to social media. It's kind of like pixeling. So for those of you who hadn't heard, you create a code that you put on your website, it's called a pixel, and that allows you to track them from your website to Facebook and to other things. Now Apple's shutting a lot of that connection down and we've seen a big detriment to the connection traffic through to social media. So Facebook has seen a hit and Instagram has seen a hit and a couple of others. We haven't seen it in the numbers shown for LinkedIn and we haven't seen it for Twitter for some weird reason. I don't know why that is, but they haven't seen a negative effect on those. Even though there's lots of people who are on Twitter on Apple devices. But that has occurred. So keep that in mind that that is also decreasing in value, however it's there. So you can have a way to like have a more tracking and understanding of who your listeners are just from that standpoint. So think about it from this way. If I don't want to have an email program because I just don't think this is right for what I do and who I am and how I work, I might want to have something a Google style pixel, okay, on my website. So I'm tracking those emails, maybe through get emails, matching them up with their Google accounts, matching them up to find them so that I could then serve them YouTube ads that might be slightly longer, tail or recommend videos to them, do advertisements in other ways that are going to help get more viewers to my show and then eventually more listeners to my podcast or more business for my business. Right. So all of those methods could be good. It's passive gathering of those information. In other words, you're not building a list and then emailing out to those listeners. They should know they're being tracked if they don't, that they haven't figured out how to use the settings in their phone or on their computer. But they should know they're being tracked at all times. But what you're just doing is simply matching that email address up so that you can follow them other places around the Internet. We've all seen that happen when we Google something and then ads pop up to things that we just recently searched. Right. So that's a way you can also use it. But you still gotta drive them off your show and into your website in order for that to happen because their listening patterns don't make a difference. So for those of you who haven't started a show out There. I just want to make sure to get this through your head. There is no email addresses. There's no direct connection to any subscriber of your show from Apple, Spotify or any app, unless that app allows the direct interaction between the listener and you. Then there are a few, like we mentioned, good pods, they do allow that. But I have to subscribe to your show and then share your show or listen to one of your episodes and share that I'm listening in order for you to know that I'm doing that. So all of that requires an active step for all subscribers and listeners to interact with you. So in some way, shape or form, you got to give them some value to encourage them to do those active things.

Well, that's a great tip, Tracy. What else do we have here?

I think that was pretty much it. I mean, I think we really hashed out emails like, look, Tom and I, the bane of our business existence, right, is the fact that we have thousands of emails in our email inboxes, right? But that doesn't mean that there's not a valuable information conveyed that way. It's just how do I get up to the attention point of the person who's receiving that email so that they will open it so that they will interact with me and eventually activate into sales, into connections, into whatever it is that you're looking for? Compelling value has to be there. And if you don't know what that's going to be from the beginning, don't spend a ton of money setting up the systems. Try to figure it out, test, do things. That's the great part about a podcast. I can test one week a lead magnet, and the next week try something different.

That's true. And there is not a one size fits all solution for everybody.

That's right.

It really is different for everyone and what their specific podcasting goals or business goals are. Certainly we all want more listeners. Once we have them, we may want to have them in our list in our database. And they'd probably be very willing to be in your list if there was a compelling reason why.

So I've got a really great example there that I want to give you. So there's a woman who runs a podcast. She does it under an anonymous name and it is a podcast for alcoholics. So it's an alcohol anand style podcast. And so you're talking about addictions, you're talking about those things. All her guests are anonymous. She's anonymous. But what she has is that if you want more from her because she's got Thousands of episodes. If you want more from her, you can subscribe to her membership area for a very low $9 a month. And what she does is she organizes them. So if you're sort of new to the 12 step process, you can go in there and she gives you the top lists and she organizes all of her thousand episodes into these special playlists for different things that happen to you. There might be death in your family, the pandemic, like whatever those things are that are struggling, that you're struggling with your addiction. She's got the answer for you here. And it costs you $9 a month just to get it organized. Of course you can consume her podcast, but try to go through a thousand episodes and pick all the good ones. Right? She's just done it for, for you. And there's no way with a thousand episodes they could get through it in a month and then unsubscribe, right? They're gonna stay subscribed and then she brings them special meditations, pops in and gives them special videos, stuff that doesn't happen on her podcast. And she has great, great long term subscriber rate because of it because she's always bringing them value there and it wasn't a lot of effort to put together. It's simply a gated area that has a pay gate to it and an organizational tool once you're in there, like tabs, that's it. Super simple to create, super simple for her to maintain and add to, but high, high value to her listeners.

Well, that's a good example of a paid program that obviously when people are going to pay for something, you have to collect their email because you have to be able to contact your.

But you could do it unpaid too.

But yeah, you could do it as an unpaid, just value added thing if it's worth it to you to do it. If building that email list is more important than generating the revenue from people being a part of the membership site. There are so many different ways to do this and accomplish it. It depends more on your goals, your needs, what you're looking to do with that email list. It's really, I think, not that hard to build one as long as you've got the plan for how you're going to execute the value you're going to provide and you're going to follow up and deliver on that. So then, yeah, use your podcast. Use your podcast. Build a list. That's pretty straightforward.

Tom, this is a great time for us to say you can find us@potitize.com that's where the feed you'd brand podcast is located. Of course, there are the blog posts for every episode. There are links to everything we talked about here. So you'll be able to find out how to enroll with get emails or unroll me or any of those things that we mentioned on the show. There are going to be bullet points down at the bottom of the episode and you'll be able to scroll right down and connect onto those. We don't do any tracking on those things. Like we don't get any money from get emails or unreal me. We just recommend them to you because we know they work and we feel like more people could get use out of them. So that's kind of what we do.

We were speaking from experience with them and we mention those things. We use them.

Yeah. We don't mention anything we haven't tried without disclosing that to you or we.

Would tell you we haven't tried it.

We hear it's good, but we haven't done it ourselves. Yeah, I mean, our goal is to research and test things for you. So that's always where you can find everything. So if you want to find all of our episodes and in the potatoes.com website, that's what we're working towards. We're working towards segmenting this podcast, the future brand podcast, into five different mini shows within that that will be available over the website so that you'll be able to easily go to the area. Are you looking for marketing? Are you looking for guesting information? Are you looking for one on one because you want to start your show like they'll all be together? Because we muddle the thing in the podcast, like we record different things all the time, so there's variety for the listeners. But it might not be good if you're going to try to do one thing. So that's what we've got for you. And ours is free.

All right, well, hey, thanks for listening, everybody. We'll be back next time with another, we hope valuable episode. This has been Tom and Tracy Hazzard on feed.

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