This is the second in a series of podcasts that I’m doing about what happens once you get people on your email list. And this is something that I think across the board universally we struggle with if we are podcasters and didn’t come to this game from a marketing paradigm.
Marketers tend to have this stuff down pat, and podcasters, we tend to provide value value, value, value, value, value value value, wait for someone to tap us on the shoulder and say, “Oh, okay, you can monetize now. You’re good enough or big enough or worthy enough.” And it’s actually not how it works at all.
So you know, also, if you’ve listened to any of my podcasts that we are not focused on download numbers. We recognize that download numbers are largely a vanity metric.
Now, I don’t mean that they’re not important. They can be important in some situations if you’re trying to monetize through sponsorships, which is probably one of the hardest ways to monetize if you ask me.
But you also have to realize that if a podcast has 40,000 downloads and they haven’t monetized and they haven’t collected email addresses, simply moving the bar from 40,000 downloads and now they have 60,000 downloads, but they’re still not collecting email addresses. They’re still not selling anything to that additional 20,000 people you gained on your platform got you nothing.
So that’s what we’re wanting to avoid. We’re wanting to avoid building a big platform where we have lots of traffic. Those are listeners, those are downloads, those are email opt ins, and then having nowhere to send them means basically, you’re not selling anything and you’re not giving your listeners a way to follow up with you.
So when you start a podcast, the very first thing you want to do is focus on collecting those email addresses. That should be more important than “how many downloads I got today”.
How many email opt-ins did I get today? I’m averaging right now about one a day which is fairly slow growth. And there are days there, there might be days I get five or 10. But if you average it all out, I can count on at least one or two email opt-ins a day.
I know a lot of the podcasts that I’ve worked with, many times it takes them months to get their first email opt-in. And part of it’s because the way they’ve set up their podcast and they don’t really have a focus on collecting email addresses.
But the bigger issue becomes, what do you do once you get people on your email list? I talk to people all the time, who have hundreds or even thousands of people on their email list, and they don’t really do anything with them. They don’t know what to do with them.
So today, I am going to give you some ideas about how to begin talking to your email list – how to begin nurturing that email list. Different people call these types of funnels or these types of nurturing sequences – they call them different things. They accomplish different purposes.
When somebody first comes into your world, and gets on your email list, and because they’ve taken an opt-in, or they’ve taken a bribe, they’ve taken a gift that you’ve offered in exchange for their email.
Many times, what happens is they get a thank you email for subscribing, along with the delivery of whatever that lead magnet was. And then it’s crickets.
They hear nothing from you. And then somehow, you know, maybe a year, maybe two years, maybe even further than that later, when you finally have your stuff together, and you finally have a product you finally have an offer, if you just go back to that email list and suddenly try to re-engage them around an offer, you’re going to find that you really sort of wasted your time and didn’t capitalize on the opportunity that that email is created.
Now, why are we creating an email list? We are creating an email list because it is the only thing you own out of your podcast. I mean, you own your content, but you don’t own your Facebook group. You don’t own your Twitter stream or whatever you want to call it – your Twitter feed. If you don’t own your Instagram, any of those platforms can kick you off at any time. And in a lot of ways, you don’t even own your website.
Sometimes if Google decides you’re too spammy, or you’re too suspicious, they shut you down. And they basically begin hiding you from all the search engines. And so in a lot of ways, the only thing you can have, the only way you can have as a lifeline to your actual customers is through that email list.
And the email list becomes sort of your most valuable asset. You hear people say “the money is in the list”. And the thing that’s hot today is not going to be hot tomorrow. But if you have these people on your email list that begins to add value to your business assets, so you want to acquire an email list, it’s the only way you can truly get in touch with your customers.
Listen to the full episode to learn what the first nurture sequence you should be planning is.
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