Grow Podcast Listens by Building an Email List

Email marketing is a great way to improve personal communication with the podcast’s host and its listeners, it also gives a chance for a faster audience growth and extends the relationship of both sides, the ones that host and the ones that listen. Email marketing isn’t as complicated as it may seem, though it is highly effective. Here we’ll give several reasons why it is the Email list that you need for your podcast and also how to set one up. Why is Email marketing that strategy you want to be using?

An effective way to communicate with your listeners on a personal level daily

The audience drives every aspect of the show’s further success after it is released, therefore you shall not miss this great opportunity to connect and communicate with your listeners. Including your potential listener in the email list encourages further communication by an act to show that there is a way to reach out. That allows you to get reviews and opinions, let your audience know about the upcoming episode, that is supposed to be something bigger or more exquisite. In such situations without the email list all you’re left with is usually your social media accounts, in which it hardly reaches half of the subscribers. Now to get an example of this, think about a situation where you get two notifications at the same time, one about a new email, that was just sent by a company or a show that you know well and the other about a new instagram story posted by the same company, promoting the same show, product etc. I believe that most of us would immediately check the email rather than the story, right? Well that is exactly why promoting and communicating is far more efficient with email lists.

A way to grow revenue

Email is a powerful tool and channel to use when in need to promote content, product or sponsorship. This statement speaks for itself “Between $32 and $44 are made for every $1 spent on email marketing” and this one as well “49% of consumers say they’re happy to receive promotional emails from the companies they like at least once a week.” and to make things even better “73% of millennials say email is their preferred business communication platform, and it’s the preferred platform compared to post, social media, texting, or phone calls” and there are many more. You can find these results appearing in each and every survey or research done on any type of promotion. We can use this as a chance to grow revenue by choosing the right channels to promote sponsorship or products, in this case the podcast.

Gather feedback, insights, suggestions from your audience

Now, this step may not seem important at first, but trust me it is. Gathering feedback and opinions not only shows your listeners that you care about their preferences, but it also helps you and your show improve along with it. This way you can see what the bigger part of subscribers prefer, how they feel about something new or unique and also what’s effective and what’s not.

Now that I hopefully got you convinced, let's take a look at how exactly you want to set up the email list.

Step 1 - Choose an email marketing provider

If you are going to build an email list and send emails from it you should not use your personal Gmail account. That way you are breaking email marketing laws and also taking a very ineffective step in trying to gain audience. However, it is not half as bad as it seems! Most email marketing providers are free and all there’s left to do is choose.

Step 2 - Create an opt- in form for your website

Now that you have your email marketing provider and the chance to build an email list, you must make sure to encourage people who stumble across to join. You need to make sure that you give the ability to sign up all the time to all the people, that means it has to pop up quickly. It should look nice to the eye and provide only a few boxes that need to be filled. The less words you ask to write the more efficient it is most likely to be.

Step 3 - Your first newsletter

Since the person who signed up already trusted you enough to give you his email address, as a response you should too. To not fail them you must ensure that they make progress, stay informed or entertained. But how exactly can you do that? One way is to subscribe to other companies and analyze their email. Notice what annoys you and what entertains, then write them down and make one yourself. Try to only get the best features. It is important to consider a few other factors as well, for example “How often will you send the emails?” “What exactly do you want to say in the email?”.

Step 4 - Start sending the emails and building the list

Now that you have come so far all there’s left to do is send the emails from time to time. It is best if you do that only when there is something you mean to inform or promote, otherwise the recievers will stop expecting useful information and as a consequence will no longer open and read them. Also do not forget to grow the list. That you can do by testing different colours of the opt-in, techniques and of course releasing constant quality content.

All and all making an email list only takes four steps to do, but is extremely efficient and inexpensive. It is also worth mentioning that it comes really handy when in need to spread the news about a new episode and promote your show. Since what you’re selling does not come at the expense to the buyer it becomes much easier to sell it through email. That leaves you no excuse to not do it, so go ahead and set one up!