Episode 071 | - 4 Reasons You Need an Email List to Have a Profitable Podcast

If you have a podcast, do you really need an email list? It's a bit like the question with if I've got social media and people hanging out with me here, do I really need an email list? Well, it's a pretty straightforward answer. Yes, yes. There are no two ways about it. You definitely still need an email list. And in today's episode, I'm going to share with you the four key benefits of still having an email list a alongside your primary platform, whether it be social media, podcasting, whatever that might be. So let's dive in and talk about how podcasting and email go hand in hand. Hi, I'm Viv Guy, seven figure business owner turned online mentor on a mission to help online course creators like you to navigate the roller coaster that is business so that you can attract dream clients and hit your enrollment and sales targets every single month to reach six figures and beyond. If you're ready to create a thriving and profitable podcast to accelerate your audience growth, engagement and sales in a way that's fun, makes you money, and allows you the freedom to thrive, join me here every week on podcast sales made easy. Now, I'm going to be honest here, hand on heart. When I started my podcast, my first podcast, I did have an email list already, but I did not connect really closely and did not really put enough focus on driving traffic to that email list. That's it. Like, in all honesty, I was like, I've got a podcast. It's great. People want to hear from me. And it was great. And it has been a foundational, fundamental tool in my marketing toolkit because I haven't been marketing on social media for two and a half years now. And everyone I spoke to had heard my podcast. They discovered my podcast, they knew about me and had listened to my podcast before they hopped on a sales call with me, which is awesome. So my podcast was doing the job. People were liking the content. However, was I using it strategically enough to drive traffic to my email list? No, I was not. I hoped people would join my email list. There were potentially calls to action, but I was still treating it as a much like people do with their social media, Instagram, Facebook, LinkedIn, all these platforms working in isolation. But ultimately, all these platforms need to have one objective, and that is to drive your audience to your pot of gold. Your pot of gold being your email list. Yeah, that's the reality. Your email list is your pot of gold in your business. And I'm going to talk more about this shortly. Now I just want to share something I'd read a while ago now about Amy Porterfield. She is a giant in the entrepreneurial world. I'm guessing if you're listening to this podcast, you have heard of Amy Porterfield. Now, she was interviewed, and as we know, she's got her very, very famous made easy podcast that airs twice a week. She's had it for many, many years now, and it's hugely, wildly successful. But Amy was interviewed and she was asked if she were to start her business again from scratch, what would she do? And she said this. She would start a podcast, and if she could, she'd release two episodes a week, but as a minimum one. And she would create an opt in, a freebie, a resource, and promote it in every single episode to drive traffic to her email list. And if you look at how she does this, very, very well. She generally has a freebie with every episode that she puts out there. And if you ever download her freebies, they're really pretty basic and simple. They're literally like, here's a template. Here's a few questions we ask. It's really simple, tacky. Moore does the same like get my free thing. And actually without the context behind a training or being in his program, yeah, there's some value in it. But actually, anyway, I digress. It's a way to hook people in and get them into your email list. So check her out. That's what she does very, very well. Why is this the strategy that she would choose? Because she said she learned the hard way. When she launched her first online course, it was a flop. She made less than$300. Not$300,300, but fast forward 18 months later and with her podcast and an email list, she made almost $1 million that year, and she's gone on to make like eight figures. Now, she has made crazy money in her business, and hats off. And kudos to Amy because she got onto this. She realized she hadn't started an email list. And as soon as she focused on that, which is what she's known for now, I mean, this is like list builder, whatever it's called society. This is what she teaches people really well, building an email list, what you need to do, and then obviously, how to use. She uses her podcast to drive traffic to that email list each and every time because she has such a good listener base, such a good audience with that podcast. So they go hand in hand. It's not like, hey, listen to my podcast, then come visit my website if you fancy it kind of thing. It is very much like, go and get this guide. She is using that podcast to drive people to her email list. And we're going to talk about why, why it's even necessary, because we talk about all the time here on the show. Podcasting is a superheaser. It really gets your audiences connect to you. You're able to go really deep with content, deeper than you ever could on a 400 word caption on social media. Deeper than you can on email, because, oh, my gosh, that would be one epically long email. We can go so much deeper, so it warms up our audiences, it connects them, it gets them on board with our point of view, our perspective, our philosophies, our way and our beliefs around doing things. Because for someone to buy from us, they have to buy into and believe that our philosophy, our way of doing things is the right way. So we have to shift beliefs. And usually the thing, or always the thing that is keeping someone stuck in a problem, in a pain point is they have a belief that is keeping them stuck there, and we need to challenge and shift that belief. So that's one of the things that we have to do within our podcast content. So that's all happening. That's working. And if you're on social media, you're doing the same things there, but it's taking you a lot, lot longer. So that's why I call podcasting the audience superheater, because that journey, that timeline, it just collapses timelines. It's crazy. It's amazing. It's crazily amazing. The reality is, though, as podcast hosts, we can get really tied up in the metrics of downloads. Like, that is the key thing that determines how great your show is, how many people are listening to it. And it is a really important metric, because if you are not increasing the number of downloads, well, that is an indicator that you're not bringing in new traffic, and we need to be bringing in new traffic all the time. Think about that funnel. Top of that funnel, you got to be bringing new people in all the time. Because if you're not, if it's empty, if nobody's coming in, well, you're not going to be making sales, because there is a direct correlation between leads in and sales out, as long as we have the right mechanisms and steps within our funnel, which is where our email is going to come in. So, yes, absolutely. I want you to be thinking and focusing on downloads as a metric. And I want you to be obviously really conscious about where those people are coming in from. Like how you're growing your audience, how you're bringing in new people every single episode, every single month. What is that strategy that you have? Because there should be a strategy, not just like, I've got a show, hopefully people will find it. I'll tell the OD person about it. I want you to have a real specific growth strategy, like reverse engineering. This is how many people I need in my audience every single month in order to make this number of sales. Okay, this is what I need. So what I'm going to be sharing with you is a calculator so you can work out, actually, how many downloads do I need to be getting every single month in order to get the sales that I need every month. So I'll link that in the show notes for you. So go grab that when you get a second. But here's the thing. We're bringing new traffic in. We're focused on downloads. Absolutely. We've got a plan, we've got a strategy. But the trap that so many content marketers, podcasters, people that are focused on social media fall into, the big trap is that we focus on one type of content we get really, really focused on as podcasters. Creating episodes, creating value, being able to have these conversations, go deep, do interviews, whatever it might be on social media, whether you love it or hate it, it is that case of we're focused on creating content. Value, value, how to tips, tricks, all of that kind of stuff to try and create that connection and get people buying into what we do. And this is problematic because we keep people trapped in this nurture bubble, which is lovely. It is lovely, but there's three types of content we need to produce within our businesses. Discovery contents. We've just talked about that a little bit. What is the strategy for bringing new traffic to your show, and how much do you need to bring in? Let's be strategic. We need to know what are our targets, what are our numbers? How do we know if we're being successful on a monthly basis? Like how much new traffic do we need to drive? So that's where the free calculator I'm giving you comes in. So plug in the numbers for your own business. Link is in the show notes. So that's number one. Discovery content. How are new people finding out about you nurture content, the stuff we're all really good at, the stuff where we like to spend our time, and then we want conversion content, that content that turns people into customers and that varies, workshops, webinars, blah, blah, blah, all of that kind of stuff. But what are the steps linking people from discovery content to nurture? How do we get them into there. How do we get them from nurture to conversion content? And that's where these calls to actions come in. Call to action to get people into your email list, because that conversion content, it pretty much sits within your email list. And we're going to talk about how that works in just a moment and why that predominantly sits in your email list. So we need to be thinking all the time within our podcasting, our social media, whatever our marketing is, that nurture content. How am I moving people into my email list? How do I get people to my email list? So we really want to think about that. So let's dive into these four reasons, four big drivers as to why you still need email, why we want to be driving our listeners to our email list. What is the benefit? How does this boost our sales? How does this improve our bottom line? Because that's what it's all coming down to here. Number one, you own it. Email. Email lists are often referred to as the pot of gold within your business. People check email several times a day. It is still the most checked app versus social media. In a morning, when people wake, they will check email before they check social media. 58% of people check their email while they're still in bed before social media, versus 14% of people who will check social media first. That's a big difference there. So if you think that getting listeners to tune into your new episodes is going to happen by sharing an audiogram or a graphic on social media, think again. Because like less than 3% of your audience on social media are seeing that content, 22 times more people will see that same content. That promotion on email versus social media, 22 times more people. It'll have 20 times, two times more reach, which is crazy. So this is the problem. When people start podcasts, they think, right, great, I can share that with my audience on social media, let them know new episodes out. And that's going to, a, make sure my existing listeners remember to tune in, and b, it's going to get new people tuning in from my audience who maybe haven't already tuned in. But as we said, less than 3% of people, if you got an audience of 100 people, three people, three people are going to see that content, if you're lucky, before it falls out of their feed and disappears forever. Whereas 22 times more people are going to see that in the email list. Okay, so that's a biggie. A, people check it. B, more people are going to see that. So it's going to drive more of your audience to tune into that's all around retention. And we want that because we want your audience. We've talked about the beauty tuning into your email list, because the beauty of when they do that is they get to go deep with you and people need to consume around 7 hours of your content, from discovering you to becoming a client, 7 hours before they're going to buy from you. And this is where podcasting really comes into its own. This is why it's a superheater and why it collapses the timelines for buyers journeys. Because say you record 30 minutes podcast episodes, 1430 minutes episodes, that's 7 hours of content. The alternative on social media, they've got to watch like 280 92nd reels before they got to buy from you. 280. That's a lot of reels and obviously a game. They've got to see it. And it's a case of like Wheel of Fortune. Are they going to see it before it's gone out of their feed or is something else going to have taken like precedence and it's gone. So you got to create a lot more than 280. Whereas we know that when people come in and listen to a podcast for the first time, they're likely to listen or they do. The stats show us that they listen to more than one episode at a given time. So that's a really big difference about how people are consuming. So we want to really ensure, we want people to be listening to those podcast episodes and tuning in. So email is a really great way to have that and to promote that content to your existing audience. To your email audience. And the other thing is when you share an episode, that week's topic to your email list, it may be really relevant for someone on your list who is not someone that is already subscribed and listening to your podcast. So it's a great way to bring in new traffic with your existing audience from your existing audience. It's two way with email. It's beautiful. It prompts your existing listeners to tune into an episode. It drives people who are in your email list who aren't already tuning in to go and listen to an episode, which gives you that opportunity to go really deep and nurture them and build that deeper connection. But it is also a great way then to build your email list from your podcast. So email, it's in their inbox for when they're ready to consume it. It's there. I have it myself. Like I get Amy Paulsfields, I get different people's emails and sharing their weekly podcast episode that's come out and I don't generally listen to it there and then. But do you know what? That email's there. And when I go and scroll in my email in my inbox, I go, oh, yes, there's that episode that I really wanted to listen to. So just remember, it's really powerful. Email is still where it's at. Now, a lot of people will say to me, but I don't like emailing people too much. It's like an intrusion, an imposition. People get annoyed. If people get annoyed, they will unsubscribe. If they do not want to hear from you, they will unsubscribe. I have emails I'm going to say every day, at least every other day, from sweaty Betty sportswear. Do I buy from them every day? No. Maybe once or twice a year. But here's the thing. I don't delete them because I get there. There's always offers, there's always things. And it reminds me that actually when I am ready to buy, oh, yeah, that's who I like to use. There's a place, I think it was called garden bargains. I want to say it's called garden bargains that I bought from God knows when. But I tell you why I keep them there. Because I won some subscribed and then I couldn't remember where. I got some nesting from my fruitcage. So it's there as that reminder. Do I read all their emails? No, I delete a lot of them. But that's okay because sometimes it'll grab me. There's an offer, there's something, or it's there as a prompt and a reminder that when I am ready, that's it. They're the people I want to go to because they did me. I had really great customer service or a really great experience with them before. So just step back, think about it. People will. If they don't want to hear from you, they will unsubscribe. They were never bothered. Doesn't matter. Move on. Get past that. Okay. Second thing here. It's a great way to have a dialogue with listeners. Email is a great way to have dialogue with listeners. We've talked about the metrics, the stats, the reach. Less than 3% of your social media audience are seeing that content disappears from their newsfeed stories, gone within 24 hours. Email, it's there. It's in their inbox. It's checked before social media in the morning. It's there for them to come back to. It's a great way to connect with people, to nurture, to go deeper still, not as deep as we can with our long form podcast content, but it's a great way to bring that content in. It's a great way to have a dialogue, though, to get feedback, to hear what they want to hear about. It's a great way to reach out to people. Now, Kelly Cookson has been on the podcast before, the old iteration of the podcast when it was marketing without social media, talking all about email marketing and the power of email marketing, which we know on here, if you've been here for a few years now, you know that email is the bee's knees. And that's what we're talking about here today. But Kelly did something really clever. Kelly looked at Instagram and kind of what really worked well on that platform, and she brought some of those features into email marketing. It was really clever when she did that a few years ago, and one of the things she brought in was polls. Polls. So, a, b or c? Are you a, b or c? And it was really, really effective and using it in more of an Instagram way. So here's what would happen, and here's how you would do this. You would say, hey, thinking of doing an episode? How to grow your email list. So these are the options. A, how to grow your email list. B how to get more. This is one we've had. How to get more yeses when you pitch as a podcast guest, how to get more sales from your podcast. Let's say that as an example, how to get more sales from your podcast. So we've got three examples there. A, b, or C. They could be poll options. You could have, are you a dog lover, a cat lover, a guinea pig lover? D, none don't like pets. And then what happens is these are clickable links. Literally so easy. You set up a landing page on your website, like a back end landing page that says, great. You answered a. Okay. You answered a. You're a dog lover. I love that. I'm a dog lover, too. Here's a picture of me and my dog connection. You answered a, you want something about, you want to hear more about audience building or your biggest struggle? So you could have, what's your biggest struggle? A. Audience building. B, low engagement with my content. C, plateaued sales. So a, B or c, which of these are you? And when people click on that, it takes them to this landing page. It says, oh, okay, I hear you're having a problem with audience building. Well, I've got just this episode from the podcast, or I've got just this training for $11 you think about what you want that to be where you want to drive people to. Okay, they're on your email list. I would say I want to drive them back to the podcast ideally, or I might want to drive them to a sale. So this is your decision. But this is great because you're connecting with people. You're hearing what they want to hear about. You can assess and analyze what the biggest problems that are coming up for your audience at this time are, and you can craft and then direct them to that next step. The small next step. Go check out this one podcast episode. Go get this little download. $9,$11 something small, low ticket. Come book a call with me. Think about that next step. So it is a great way to have dialogue with listeners, but then to give feedback at the same time. This is why email is so magical and beautiful. The third reason you should still have an email list. Sell, sell. This is the biggie. When you're in launch, when you're in a sales cycle, your email list will get your sales emails. It's a way to sell more directly. If you think about you put out a weekly or twice a week podcast episode, you can talk about your promotion. But we know when we're launching and things we need to have multiple emails going out because different emails, people won't necessarily read them all and there will be different subject lines and episodes that people see that resonate with people. So we want to be selling through email. So our podcast is all around driving people to email where we can connect, have dialogue, conversations with people and where then we can sell to those people that are ready to buy now. So this is what is beautiful. It's a way to sell more directly. People expect to be sold to in email. There was a survey that Optimonster did a few years ago and 60%, I think it was 60, 65% of people said they signed up to an organization's newsletter because they wanted to receive the offers and be kept up to date with all the latest offers. And they will buy. And I think it was twelve and a half percent of people were kind of inclined to buy from a call to action, like a buy and now call to action on social media. Big difference. Twelve and a half percent to 60%. So again, people expect to have sales emails coming out to them. And as I said, I get them every day. Sweaty betty garden bargains. It does not put me off and go, oh, I feel like I'm spammed. And a great thing to do is to have an opt out button on your email. They're not opting out of the entire email list, but saying, if you don't want to hear about this thing that I'm launching right now, fine, because maybe it's not the right time for them, maybe it's not the right offer. Fourth reason to have an email list. When an episode ends, the conversation stops and your listeners go away and they get on with their life, with their chores, cooking, exercise, taking the kids to dance classes, football, whatever. That's it. The conversation ends. You're out of sight, out of mind. Whereas email is a direct line to keep that conversation going. So we've talked about how it's a great way to have dialogue, but it's also a way to navigate them back to a relevant call to action. So if you had your podcast episode, and we know that people are generally on the go and doing something else when they are listening to a podcast episode, so they're not necessarily going to be clicking on the call to action or going into google and typing in the URL for that link. So this is where email is really important because we can say, hey, you, listen to the episode, don't forget to get your thing. Sign up for the workshop, download this free guide. And this is your reminder, guys. In the email that comes out, there will be a link to say, get your calculators so you can calculate how many downloads you need to be getting each month, how many you need to be increasing it by each month, how many of your listeners you need to be clicking through and taking action on that call to action, to getting to your email list, how many of your email subscribers you need to be getting onto sales calls on a weekly, monthly basis. So that's all in that calculator. So there's your call to action. Don't forget to go and grab that. It will be in there. And this is the beauty of an email list. And why is this relevant? Why does this even matter? Why is this relevant? Because they're already in our email list. Because it's all about moving them on that next step. Giving more value, moving them on, going deeper. Remember, 7 hours, 7 hours of content, giving value, giving people a taste of what you do, showing them where the gaps are. Oh my gosh. Like if your calculator tells you this, come and have a call with me. Let's figure out what we need to do to fix the problem. Think about that journey that you want to take people on. So just because they're already in your email list does not mean we don't want them to be taking action on those calls to action. So, as I said, when an episode ends, email allows us to keep that line of conversation going and then to navigate them back to relevant calls to action. Book a call. Da da da. So that then when we're ready to sell, we can sell. This is the beauty of email. So if you tuned in today thinking, I don't really think I need an email list. I suck at email. This was my bigger I suck at email. I always said I didn't feel like I was a great writer. People always like, oh, I love your emails, but I have always had this thing of, I'm not a great writer. It was probably something from when I was in high school. And I remember my english teacher saying to me, viv, if you waffle in your english lit a level, you are going to get a c. If you don't waffle, you'll get a b. Guess what? I got a c because I waffled. So I have this thing and I can jam 500 different points into one email. And I had a coach who used to be like, is this one point, viv? I see. I want to give so much. My brain works so fast. So if you're like me and you think, oh my God, I suck at writing emails. Okay, well, one, here's the thing. You can create your podcast, and then there is AI that you can use technology that will write the email for you. I don't use that, but it's really great at giving you the framework. I do use the AI, but I don't have it. Write the email for me. But it really does come up with some good ideas. And that can be maybe the foundation for your episode. And if you are one of these people, that's like, I just don't email. I don't want to email. It's there, it's done for you to prompt people to remind them, to remind them of the call to action to take. But I would encourage you use email. You can have your emails written if you suck at it. But you think I'm really good at just speaking, having conversations, literally, notes, section of your phone, use the microphone recording option where it transcribes. Just record the damn thing. This descript like software I used early on, descript literally will create your audio for your podcast. Or you can record video as a word document. Literally, if you can edit a Google Doc or a word document, you can edit your transcript. And there you go, you've got an email. Just talk it out. Make it conversational. So much easier. If you do not feel like you're a natural writer. So you can still send emails, you can do all the emails you need, your sales emails, your connection emails, your value emails, your perspective shift emails, your diagnosing emails, your value emails, all the different types of email content that you want to have. Your welcome email secret series. So just think about the ways. Don't be put off thinking I'm not a natural writer. There are so many ways that you can create Newsletter email content whilst being a shitty writer. That's okay. You do not have to be Wordsworth Shakespeare to do this kind of thing and be successful. But we do want an email list because here we've just talked about all the reasons. It is a pot of gold. It is such an important part of your business. And that's where we can create that conversion content, have those emails pointing to our conversion content. And again, yes, we can mention them on our podcast, but we can mention them multiple times within our email. It's hey, I've got a workshop coming up next week. Hey, you signed up for the workshop. Hey, did you sign up for the workshop? Hey, don't forget to come to the workshop. If you think about a workshop promotion to your existing list, three to five emails, reminder emails, two to three of those. You can't do that with your podcast. You can't do that. Well, you can do it potentially with your social media, but again, only one to 3% of people are seeing it. So we want to do it with our email. So I hope you've enjoyed this episode. As I said, don't forget to go and download your calculator. Okay? Your conversion calculator. So you know what metrics, what numbers you are aiming for each episode, each week, each month in order to make the sales that you want and need in order to create a sustainable business. And those numbers will change over time as you grow. But I want you to think about that now, because how do we measure success if we do need numbers? We have to look and how do we make improvements if we don't know where the gaps are? So track your numbers, use the calculator to figure out what you need. So once you've downloaded that and once you know your numbers, it's all about tracking, tracking that data, seeing what it's telling you and working and improving from that point onwards. So guys, look, if you love what you've heard today, I would love, love, love for you to connect with me on Instagram. I don't hang out there very often, but I do check in once a week at Viv guy. And I would love for you to share your biggest takeaway with me. And while you're at it, I know that nobody likes to take the time to do these things, but not many people realize how much your reviews help other people really struggling in their business right now to find this show. So if you really love what you've heard, it would mean the world to me. If you would take a moment, like I'm talking 15 seconds at the most, to get your phone out of your pocket, out of its holder, if you're running, exercising on your cooldown right now, and tap the five stars and write a sentence, and that's it. Look. And when you do, I'm going to enter you into a draw and you can win a free 90 minutes mentoring call with me, which I draw monthly. Just make sure you're signed up to our email list because that's where we announce the winner every single month. Coming up in the next episode, I'm talking all about how to rank in the Apple top 100 when you launch and whether that even matters. So, guys, thank you so much for joining me today. Let's get the needle moving in your business this week. Remember, dare do review. Go dare to try some new things. Experiment. Do the thing and review the results. Dare do review. Because I've got you.