How to Grow Your Podcast’s Email List

Links

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• ⁠About Progress Podcast⁠
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Unedited transcript of the episode:

 Last week I shared why email is such a powerful part of your podcasting strategy. This week I’m helping you get more listeners onto your email list. Hi, I’m Andy Smiley, your friendly podcast guide and the podcast coach For women who want to grow their podcast without burning out. I share practical podcast tips, stories from my own journey and wisdom from some of the smartest podcasters out there.

So I’ve convinced you to try adding email to your marketing strategy. Well, let me just pat myself on the back because I am very proud of myself and also very proud of you. Email is so awesome and it’s gonna be a game changer for you.

But you don’t have very many listeners on your email list right now, and you’re a little bit worried about that. I hear you. That makes sense. But don’t worry. This whole episode is bursting with ideas on how to get people to join your email list. And at the end of this episode, I’ll share just one simple step you can take to move toward getting people on your email list.

But first, a quick story about the other major part of my marketing strategy. Pinterest this summer, I had a big aha moment around podcast marketing. I realized that I could go completely Instagram optional just by leaning into Pinterest, and it was a total game changer. I wasn’t stressed about posting and new listeners were still finding my show.

One Pin has more than 7,000 views, and it’s still sending new listeners my way every week. If you wanna find out if Pinterest could work for your show, I created a two minute Is Pinterest right for me? Checklist in two minutes or less, you’ll know if Pinterest is a good fit for you and your show once and for all.

Grab the checklist at the link in the show notes. Now let’s talk about how to actually get people on your email list. Your email list can become the easiest way to serve your listeners between episodes if you give them a reason to join that email list.

reason you want to have some sort of freebie or incentive for your listeners to join your email list is because that freebie can give listeners an immediate win while also getting them on your email list. It’s a win-win.

Your email list, freebie can be anything. Honestly, the sky’s the limit. If you have an idea for what a freebie could be for you, go for it. I will say, don’t spend a lot of time on this.

If it’s taking you more than an hour to create, then maybe it shouldn’t be free and you should be getting paid to do it. Yeah. Yes. If you’re having a hard time coming up with a freebie, here are some ideas. Your freebie could be as simple as a checklist like my is Pinterest, right? For me, checklist, it could be a quiz that gives quick personalized value.

That relates to your podcast and your listener,

or it could be the promise of a behind the scenes look, your audience can’t get anywhere else.

So those are a little bit more broad. Now I wanna give you some specific freebies that podcasters have used to get me on their email lists. So first we have about progress. About progress is a personal development podcast that helps recovering perfectionists live better lives.

Yeah, Monica is awesome. She’s the host and I just adore her.

At the end of every episode, she reminds you

that you can get progress pointers, which are the notes that she takes during the episode when she’s actually doing the interview or writing out her episode, if it’s a solo episode, and she sends them to all of her listeners that are on her email list. So it’s not something that she has to make ahead of time, and she’s already created it.

She just makes it, puts it in a pretty form in an email and sends it off every week. And I signed up for that so fast ’cause I hate taking notes when I’m listening to podcasts.

Another podcast with a freebie that I signed up for is Fantasy Fan Girls. They are a podcast that deep dives, romantic books. I am the biggest fantasy book nerd, and I love this podcast, and they are another one that they didn’t create a freebie. Per se. Um, but they have a monthly newsletter that goes out that gives you behind the scenes of what’s going on in the two hosts lives as well as like, what’s going on with a podcast.

And they’ll share news that they haven’t shared anywhere else on their email first. So it’s really fun to be on that email list because then, you know, you get the behind the scenes as well as, fun news about the podcast before anyone else does.

So those are two freebies that are ongoing and also something that you don’t really make ahead of time. You just tell your listeners that they can expect it and they can sign up for it.

One freebie that I made in the past and that was really successful is, before I pivoted and made my podcast. About helping women grow their podcast without burning out. Uh, my podcast was helping moms find podcasts for themselves and for their kids. So I created a kid podcast guide and that that freebie has

brought so many people to my email list. So many moms wanted a list of kid podcasts to try with their kids. And honestly, I think I spent 20 minutes putting it together on Canva because I already knew all of the kid podcasts that I wanted to put on there. I just had to make it look pretty and truly, I, I still get people joining my email list via that freebie.

It’s one of those things where I thought I took down all of the links for that guide, because that’s not really what my podcast is about anymore, but it’s up there somewhere and people still join in my email list sometimes through their ad. Luckily, like I have an email sequence that goes through to be like, Hey.

I’m so excited you wanted this guide. Here it is. Also, here’s what my podcast is about now, because I just could not find all of the links for that but that’s something we can talk about another time if we need to. We, whatever you end up deciding to use as your freebie, you want to make sure that it is super specific to your podcast topic or one of your listeners pain points.

So once you’ve figured out what your freebie is going to be, you need to talk about it a lot so that people know that it’s there and they want to get it. Your podcast is a great place to talk about your freebie.

In a perfect world, you should be trying to mention your freebie in each one of your episodes. Try and do it naturally like a friend sharing a resource. But don’t just say it in one episode and think that everyone’s gonna grab it. You’re gonna need to talk about it a lot to help people know that it exists and know what it’s about and get excited to grab it. Do you wanna hear what it could sound like in an episode? You could try something like, if you love this episode, grab my free guide in the show notes. It’ll help you take what we talked about today even further.

Something as simple as that can really help your listeners know that you have a freebie and get excited about it.

You’re also gonna wanna add your link to that freebie in your show notes. And if you make blog posts about your episodes, make sure to include the link there too. You’ll also wanna talk about your freebie beyond your podcast. You can share it on Pinterest, make pins about your freebie. I definitely do this quite a bit.

You can also talk about it in your Instagram stories or on threads.

You’ll also want to add it to your website and mention it whenever you’re a guest on someone else’s podcast.

 If this feels overwhelming, a great place to start is just spend 10 minutes brainstorming, freebie ideas. You know your listener best, so you’ll know what they’ll be excited to say yes to. Do you know a podcaster who wants to grow her show without adding more to her plate?

Will you send this episode her way? I think email will be a really good fit for her. Next week I’ll be talking about a taboo subject in the podcasting world, and that is websites. Thanks for being here, and I’ll see you next week.