33. The Email Marketing Strategy High-Income Earning Podcasters Use (That Lower-Income Earners Don't)

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I remember when I started my very first business nine years ago, the dessert bar in Sydney called the Chocolate. I had no clue how to grow it. Absolutely no idea. So around four months in, I joined an entrepreneurship mastermind and coaching program. I was sitting at one of the middle tables.

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I remember this really, really clearly, and I was scribbling away furiously as the presenter was talking. This was back when I actually wrote notes in a notebook. I was scribbling away furiously because they were talking about concepts that sounded so cool and made so much sense. They mentioned some of the things that Dropbox and Hotmail had been doing, things that started the proliferation of what we call viral marketing now, and the main outcome of viral marketing to build an email list. This was something that was quite foreign to me, to this young, naive 20 something year old.

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They told me I had to build an email list when I started my own coaching business and invested in being mentored by Russell Brunson. It was the same message, just focus on building an email list. This has been the common thread in every successful business I've built, which is why I am so not surprised that this was the third marketing strategy that the improved podcast research highlighted that higher income earning podcasts are doing, that lower income earning podcast, podcasts are not. They have an email list. So in this episode, which is part three of three of this particular series, and the top three marketing strategies that higher income earning podcasts do, that lower income earning podcasters don't, I'm going to be covering how to grow your podcast email list.

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My name is Deirdre Tshien, CEO and cofounder of Capshow, the world's first AI powered podcast copywriter. And this is to grow my podcast show.

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Hey you. We are talking emails in today's episode and specifically how you can build your podcast email list. Now, why are we talking emails? For a few reasons. One, it is one of the top three marketing strategies that high income earning podcasters leverage, that lower income podcasters don't.

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Two, it is a fundamental skill to learn and resource to build. An email list is a list that you own. Social media is great, but anything you do on social media is you renting space and eyeballs because at any moment in time, the platform can decide to shut your account down or limit what it is that you can or can't say. But an email, that is something that cannot be taken away from you as long as you keep backing that list up, of course. And the best thing about email, you get to communicate directly with your community, with your people.

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I'm sure that many of you are listening to this episode right now because I emailed you about it, right? So think about that. If you can see as an end consumer your own behavior, you get an email from me you read the email, you're intrigued by the topic, you listen to the podcast, doesn't. It just makes sense that you should be doing the same thing too. This is why those high income earning podcasters are using email and you need to as well.

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So what we're going to do is we're going to take a quick ad break and when I come back, we're going to dive into how you can build an email list for your podcast. And by the way, this is not just about creating a lead magnet. No, siri. I'm going to assume that you know, the basics, the fundamentals on creating lead magnets. So instead, I'm going to share with you a couple more advanced strategies that you can use to quickly grow your email list.

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Sound good? Let's get into it when we're back.

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Hi. OK, so we are talking about how to grow your podcast email list. This is the asset you need to be focused on building. And I mentioned in episode 23 that I actually doubled the downloads on my podcast episode when some text stuff got ironed out and people actually started receiving my emails about my new podcast episode. Seriously you guys, it doubled.

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So yeah, it doesn't surprise me that building and email and emailing and email list, should I say building and emailing an email list is a marketing strategy that sets high income earning podcasts apart from the lower income earning podcasts. And by the way, side note, if you also want to know what to actually be emailing your list, then do please go back and listen to episode 23. It's called the Email hack for doubling your podcast downloads because I lay it all out on that episode. But let's get back to the topic on hand, which is all about building your podcast email list. And to help me, as always, I have my co founder Bona Rye here.

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She is the email queen. So I'm excited to be diving into it with her for sure. Welcome, welcome. Hello. The email, queen.

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That's a big title to live up to, but I'll try. Okay, so as I said, I'm assuming that you already know some of the more basic fundamentals of creating a lead magnet and building a list that way. In fact, if you do need a recap on how you can do this using your podcast, then check out episode 15, which is called the only way to monetize a podcast with a small audience because we actually touch on it with our show notes funnel. So this is not about building lead magnets, right? Bonner no, it is not.

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Okay, but what is it about? It's not about building lead magnets. It's all about leveraging other people's audiences.

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This particular strategy has proven to be the biggest builder of my list. And I've done it all. Like I've lead magnets, I spent time reaching out individually to people to see whether they would be interested in opting in for them. I spent a lot of money running ads to various lead magnus and challenges and webinars, but nothing has grown my list like collaborations. And so let's get into the three steps of how you can do this well so that you can build your list to promote your podcast too.

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Are you ready, Bara? I'm excited. I love this topic also. Okay, so step one excuse me, step one. It is all about mindset, the mindset for collaboration and giving.

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So this was a big one for me. I never really understood this until I noticed in myself the mindset shift that I made. And we're all guilty of it, right? When I first started out and I was like, oh yeah, you know, great way to build a list or to do anything is to collaborate. So I would think about, okay, how can I reach people, speak to people who maybe have more of a list than me, that I can borrow, that I can leverage.

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But it was all about me, right? Meaning, how can they help me? How can I pitch myself to them? And that honestly didn't get me very far.

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And until I made the mindset shift and now the way that I approach everything, every collaboration is I put so much thought and Bunny, you know this and maybe your own experience, I put so much thought before I even go out to someone, before I reach out to them, I'm always thinking, okay, what's in it for them? How can they build their email list? How can they make more money? Like, how can I structure this collaboration in a way that gets them almost more, if not the same or if not more than what I would be getting myself? Yes, and this is a very different I mean, I don't know if I'm already preaching to the choir or whatever, but this is actually really important because it's a fine line.

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There's a fine line between, yep, this is a strategy I want to go down, I want to collaborate with other people and I'm going to do it in a way that obviously is going to surf me because we need to have that top mine to then going over that too. But how can this help them? Yes, absolutely. And I think it's the whole year applying the what's in it for me? But from their perspective, and I do know that you put an extreme amount of preparation in that because it's not just knowing them and their audience, but what their priorities are right now and then really positioning a collaboration accordingly.

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And as you were also talking about that. One thing that popped to mind was and I've noticed. I guess just seeing you in action and I'm like. Okay. This is interesting because I know when we as Capshow get approached for collaborations.

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It's so obvious now where people are doing it from. Hey. This is what I need from it and also when they are positioning it as something that we're going to benefit from. Which is great. They're not specific enough.

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That's the other thing I find as well is that when you have the mindset for collaboration and giving and as you say, preparing it in a way that and structuring the collaboration in a way that they're going to get value, being really specific about that. For example, if you don't have a large audience, if that's not the draw card and saying, we have a really engaged audience, this is the kind of what we get. And this is why your service, your product, your brand makes sense to my people because this is how it would work. And just really getting them to see that I think that specificity is really important so that people can say, hey, this person is truly thinking about me and what I'm going to get from this collaboration. Totally.

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And as we'll go, we're going to go in step two, where we're going to actually dive into some of our favorite vehicles of how we structure these collaborations. But what you'll notice through them is that I think a lot of us as we're building same thing for capture is we probably don't have the biggest list of everyone. We don't have the biggest audience of everyone. But how do you get around that? So for me, and again, this is all a mindset thing, right?

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It was like literally when I started shifting our mindset, then I was like the light bulb went off and I was like, oh, this is how I can actually pitch it to them in a way that's like, this is what's in it for you. My superpower, and I would definitely recommend that you guys all work on this superpower as well, is building those relationships and building those connections. Because if you can go to someone and be like, oh, obviously I'm going to promote this thing, but not only will I promote it, but I've actually gathered together a community of these other people who collectively have way more big lists than I do. Maybe not even collectively, but individually that makes it so much more powerful, right? Then you have reach and you have authority.

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It's not your personal authority, but you're the one who brought it together. And that was a big, big shift for me because I always thought that I had to be the one that was, you know, that I had to bring that to the table, I had to bring a big audience, etc. To the table. And it's actually like, no, you don't have to. You just have to be a really, really good relationship builder networker.

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The way that you build that is through this mindset, this mindset for collaboration and giving because you're always thinking about them. You're always thinking about the people that you're building those relationships with. Not for you. I mean, I think we all know that ultimately you will get an outcome of it out of it. But really it's more it's them first and I could go on about this forever but it's just such a nuanced thing and I just really, really need this to land because if you do not have this, the others won't work.

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The other steps to work because then you end up blaming the collaboration of the vehicle when released. The mindset that was missing. Yes, totally. Okay, so that is step number one. You have to have the mindset for collaboration and giving and that is with anyone that you want to work with, especially if they are bigger, larger than you or they seem to be.

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You have to kind of swallow your pride even though you might be thinking that you're the best things in Slice, but I'm sure you are, you definitely are. But put that to the side and yeah, definitely approach it with that mindset give first. Okay, so then we get into step two which is to choose your collaboration vehicle.

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Hopefully this won't be too long, but we're going to dive into three particular vehicles that we've either been part of or that we've actually driven ourselves. So let's start with one that we were part of. So this is I just called it Bundles. So Bonnie, can you talk us through an example of the one that we were part of? Yeah.

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So lynne Neville. Hi Lynne, if you're listening, we were fortunate enough to be part of her Boost Your Business bundle. So it was my first time for sure. When it came up I was like this is a really cool way of doing it. And what we were a part of was my gosh, I think there was like in the end like 50 or 60 people who were part of this.

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But ultimately it was this really smart strategy she put in place where she was targeting obviously all of our mutual prospects and customers of people who needed all of these different aspects of marketing and business building. Everything from coming up with your message right through to what we help with, which is really helping people launch and grow their podcast. So it was a direction, put a lot of effort into bringing all of these people together. There was a really, really simple opt in page where everyone just kind of blasted out to say hey, the Boost Your Business bundle is live, go check it out. And it almost just felt like this candy store of free resources that, you know, from everything from like I talked about, you know, messaging right through SEO and podcasting that people could just really kind of in a really grouped way look at and say in a categorized ray and say this is what I need.

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And she really had set it up so that we would be able to position ourselves specifically in that big group and then people that were interested in what we were offering would then opt in, obviously into our, in this case, lead magnet, and we would get the lead. But it was coming from a place of extreme value and we had a really great I think we added almost 500 people to our list through that particular process and it was just the same lead Magnus we were putting out there ourselves. But because she had set it up in a way that was really contextualized, we got really, really good opt in rates. Crazy. And again, you can see why so many people would opt in because you've got 50 60 collaborators, everyone promoting all 50 60 collaborators promoting this thing, where again, as Bona said, it's extreme value.

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So why wouldn't someone go check it out and opt in to the things that they're interested in? So you guys, if you listen to this, and I know a lot of you are coaches, consultants, service providers, course creators, this would be so up your alley to start to think about pulling together. It is a lot of work. Just all of these, by the way, are a lot of work. But if you're really committed to growing your list, these strategies are seriously the fastest.

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Like we've grown out. We've like double, tripled forex our list just from doing these things. So it's worth it. OK, so bundle. And obviously if you want to be seen as the connector, as the person into your realm, being a thought leader and authority, you probably want to be organizing these as much as possible.

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Definitely contribute if you get approached or if you see someone putting something together, then definitely put your hand up for that. But ultimately you want to get to the point where you are actually organizing these yourself. So that's one of the vehicles is to create a bundle. The second one, which I'm a big fan of, is what we call Virtual Summits. And I don't know if any of you guys listen to this was part of our last one, which was in June of 2022.

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It was called Grammar Podcast summit. But this again, gosh, I don't know, I think this added about close to 1700, maybe close to 2000 people on our list. Crazy. It was a good one. I mean, the Summit was incredible.

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That obviously has to be the primary thing, like with everything. Like I said, this is a lot of work, it's a lot of organization, I think. DJ, you had lower back problems from all of the fitting and interviewing of our 33 speakers. Yes. So this is not for the faint of heart or the week of back.

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That is our first disclaimer. But it is also a ton of fun. And I think we're very proud of the Grammar Podcast Summit and we do it every year. We're super excited about the next one coming up as well because it is such an effective high value vehicle, because we branded ours around grow my podcast and that's essentially what it is. And we were able to pull in so many different expert speakers on very, very specific topics.

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So from a value perspective, a person is going, I'm learning about everything from how to find guests on my podcast right through to recording and editing in a way that's going to sound professional. It's a onestop shop or a three day shop if you will, because you do it over three days and it's extremely high value for the speakers going back to collaborations because they're going to be talking to a very captive audience of people that have already shown their interest in growing at their podcast and making it better. And it's just, it works so well because the other thing it also lends is it gives it a real sense of an event like something that I'm attending that I'm excited about, I'm looking forward to. And while you're nurturing your list, you can really make a big deal out. There's so many different things you can talk about and get them excited about.

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This is a genuine event and you can create that sense of excitement and scarcity as well. So I think that's why there's just a lot of things in the Virtual Summit structure, aside from it being a lot of work that really does actually make it extremely powerful. And the thing that this lets us do as well is be able to upsell people into backstage passes, which I think has been so powerful. So you can actually also, you know, we were able to add a lot of people to our list but also make quite a good amount of income on this because people will pay for this. People will tell you that they will pay for this content because it's so valuable.

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And one thing that we did really well as well I think was also making sure that our collaborators have everything that they needed to promote it as well. So again, it works really well because we've got now got 33 people speaking to their specific lists about this awesome event that's coming up. Yeah, totally. And by the way, it is a lot of work to have a bit of back pain from all the interviews, but it is so worth it. I think anyone.

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If you listen to this and you are podcaster. Obviously. And so. You know. The value of speaking and interviewing other people.

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Other experts. And it's not just. I mean. Learning from them is awesome. But the relationship that you build.

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That connection that you build. This by far has been one of the best ways that I've been able to connect and to people that I don't think I would have ever thought that I would be able to connect with because again. You're providing a stage for them and that's a very. Very powerful motivation for them to say yes to something like that. So definitely love Virtual Summits as a podcaster I would highly recommend that this is only one of the ones that you definitely want to be putting your mind to because you already know half of how to do it.

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You know how to record, you know how to interview. So yes, virtual summits. Love that. Okay. The third one is the vehicle that we wanted to talk about is contests.

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And so if any of you guys were part of our recent giant grammar podcast giveaway, then you would know what we're talking about. Now, a little bit of background to that. This is one of the ones I spent a lot of time agonizing around how I can make this really valuable to our collaboration partners. And essentially the way that we did it was like we all know as businesses that we need leads, right? Like I'm trying to build an email list and I know that everyone is trying to build an email list.

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So I was like, hey, how can I structure this in a way that actually gets our partners building a list as well. And so what we end up doing is if anyone was part of the contest called the Giveaway is you would have seen that you would have opted in for the giant Giveaway so that we had a major price and two minor prices. And then on the thank you page, we actually gave people the opportunity to opt into really, again, really valuable content, but that would essentially add them to our collaboration partners list. That was genius. That's a bad thing I did.

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It took a couple of weeks of me running, like literally running and doing some yoga and I think this is the thing. Yes. Is there anything else you want to share about the contest? Yeah, I think, I mean, the contest again was another extremely effectively gender for us. And the great thing that makes this a little bit different to other contest and giveaways that if you're listening, you may have been a part of is that it again, was an extremely qualified list of people.

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Now you're always, always going to have people that just subscribe for the freebie, hoping they win and they're not really a true sort of right lead for you. But because our prize is the other thing, when you do want to do this, you want to make sure the prize is very specific to your ideal customer. It was a very, very podcasting focus to the point that people didn't have a podcast, wouldn't really get much value out of the prize. But people who do this is like, this is extreme value. They were just blown away by the price that we put together.

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So I think that's the one thing around price strategy. But really I just want to kind of echo what you were saying around the additional step because obviously the reason was such a great lead builder, lead generation engine for our collaborators was because from the person who's entering from their perspective. They're like, wait, so I'm going to get into this prize. I'm going to opt in to potentially win this prize. But in the thank you page, you're also going to give me all of these amazing free resources.

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And for opting in for these free resources from these amazing thought leaders in this industry, I'm going to get more points towards my prize. Hit like no brainer, right? And everyone's winning, which is just that is the thing you want to create. There's very rare situations in life where everyone wins. There's always someone who maybe wins more or loses.

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But this was a literal winwin win for everyone. Because the reason we're getting such high optimistic people like, yes, I need that guide on how to audit my podcast. Yes, I need to learn more about how to get better guests on my podcast because I'm wasting my time with the wrong people. It was just yeses all around. And we actually had very, very minimal unsubscribed from this.

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And that really, I think, was a testament to the fact that we have the right people on the list. So a really well structured contest and giveaway like this can be such a boon for your business. Yes, love that. Okay, so just to recap, step one is to have that mindset for collaboration and giving. And you have to have that because again, you can't do any of these other these vehicles just don't want to work for you if you're just going into it, thinking about, what can I get out of it?

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And well, cooperation partners, are they going to help me get there? That's the wrong you need to be thinking about what is it that they can get out of it too. So that it's just going to be easier all around, even for you, to get a yes from them to even want to participate. OK, so that's the first step. Second step is to choose your vehicle.

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And we've given you three. You could do a bundle, you could do a virtual summit, you could do a contest, you could do all three. You could do two. It's really up to you. And there are plenty of other ways as well.

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But those are the three that we know and love, and so we're going to keep doing them. And then step number three is to make it stupidly simple for your partners. Like stupidly simple. Oh my gosh. Bonnie, can you talk to what it is that we did for our collaboration partners?

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Yes. This is the other part where it's not for the faint of heart because it is a lot of work. The great thing is, once you do it a couple of times, it can be a really systematic and repeatable process. But really for the summit and the giveaway. We followed a similar process whereby we had a very structured.

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Organized way where once youth locked in collaborators. You were like. Yeah. This is the person. This is the brand.

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This is what they're going to in a matter of the contest. What they're going to give away when it came to the Summit. What they're going to be talking about. And we had this structure to say, yep, recording has been done. So we had a full on workflow guy.

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So this is, again, this is the proper project plan. But the main part really about making it simple for them, aside from recording and giving the prize, is when it comes time to promote. So what we actually did was literally for every single person on the list, whether they're a speaker in the summit or a collaborator in the giveaway, we created specific promotional content for them. So they literally, for example, with the summit and the contest, they had unique links, URLs, everything was created where they didn't have to go to a list and find their link. It was all in their specific document.

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We created a folder system where everyone had their own folder of collateral. So all they tried to go into was click at once, copy and paste whatever was put in front of them. Obviously they had time to review this and give us feedback and then just send it to their list, put it onto their social media give, onto their social media managers, and it was just done. So the only thing that you guys never had to update was make sure that whatever email provider they were using, they had the right merge tag and to that level of just specificity and just making it literally stupid simple, because they do want to help. One thing you have to realize is your collaborators want to help and do everything that they can, but they're really busy.

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And if it's just going to take that extra few minutes, again, people want to do it, but it's going to get the better of them and they're just not going to have the time and they're going to miss that promotion window. We also told them very specifically, we gave them a promotion calendar to say, hey, it's going to be live for this amount of weeks. This is what we propose you do. And not everyone stuck to the exact script, but just having that plan for them means that they could just follow that and just make sure that they were executing at the time that they were told to or that they told their teams. So that works really, really well.

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And I know we had a lot of feedback as well saying, gosh, this has made it made life a lot easier and we were ultimately the winners out of it because we got the leads and so did they. So I think literally going to that level. I remember, DJ, you were reviewing some of this and you were like, bonnie, can we actually just remove that? Can we copy and paste this specific link rather than. Saying insert link.

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Because that's going to be that extra bit of friction for them. And I'm thinking, gosh, who are these people? Surely they can copy and paste. But if I put myself in their shoes, you're absolutely right, they might not have the time. And we've just potentially lost out on hundreds of leads just because we didn't copy and paste the link for them.

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So you need to go to that level of detail. And it really does pay off totally. Okay. So yes, it is a lot of work. We're not going to shy away from that.

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But it's so worth it because I think gosh, combined, we probably grow a list between running one virtual summit, one contest by over 5000. Do you think? Yes, we pretty much still so early in our list building exercise. And yes, we would have got that 5000 for sure. Yeah.

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And so this particular episode, why we're talking to you about all of this is because obviously you need to build an email list before you can even email them about your podcast, right? So a bonus step. So obviously, step one, go into any of these collaborations with the mindset of giving, choose your vehicle and make it so stupidly simple for them. Like, you guys seriously do not have them. Think about what to do.

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Going to multiple places to get things. No, one place, one document, copy and paste. Like that's it. And then the bonus. Because once you run it and you've built your list, now you can actually, actually have a list to promote to.

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And this is what it comes down to, right? This particular, you know, when we talk about high income earning podcasters using an email list, like, it's I know that a lot of people are like, get told to email, but I also know because I've been on the other side of it, it's like, well, that's great. I would be happy to send out an email if I had people to email.

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I didn't want to make this episode about what to email because we've already done that. You can go again, go back to episode 23 or episode even 26 where I interviewed Brittany Gardner about how she about her email strategy. So go and listen to that about what to actually email. But if you do not even have an email list, I know it's going to be hard to listen and implement that advice. So that's why we decided to do this episode about building your email list.

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You guys, you have to build your email list. Build it and then email them about your podcast. And I can pretty much hand on heart guarantee that you will see your downloads grow. You will see your podcast grow. All right?

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And if you don't, or if you do, please let us know. I think in our show Notes, we're going to have a particular link where you can leave us a message or comment about and we'd love to see the feedback. Was this helpful? Do you want us to go deeper into anything in particular? Let us know, because if you don't tell us, we don't know what we're talking about is useful for you.

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Yes, building email is this is the third marketing tactic that those higher income earning podcasts are doing. Okay? So again, if you need a recap of one and two, then go back to the last two episodes cause I recapped one and two. This is a third tactic. So go and start doing that.

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And if you want an easy way to actually, if you're like, I kind of built a bit of a list, but I've just been really lazy about actually emailing them. Then guess what? We have the solution for you. You just have to and you can try for free. Come to capshot.com.

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That's caps ho.com. We are helping podcasters like you amplify your message, get reach. And we do that by providing a promotional email that you get in under 10 minutes from uploading your episode file. So go and try it out. That's at capsha.com.

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It's Capsho.com. Alright you guys, that's it for us today. As always, stay awesome. Bye.