I'm willing to bet that 1 of the hardest parts about promoting your podcast is trying to figure out where you should actually be doing it. Where will your audience be the most receptive to learning about your latest episode and actually clicking through to listen to it? Because podcast listeners are habitual. Whether we notice it or not, most of the time, we're listening to a podcast on a regimented schedule. So what does it look like to get someone to listen to a podcast that's out of their normal routine?
Morgan Franklin:Over the past 2 months, I've gone into the trenches of list building and email marketing for my podcast to see if I can answer this very question. How do we get listeners to convert and add our podcast into their regularly scheduled In this episode, I'm gonna walk you through how I've implemented weekly emails to double my new episode downloads, how I'm building my email list with an engaged listener base, and how to write an email that people will actually open and will convert to a listen. Hello, and welcome to Podcast for Profit. My name is Morgan Franklin. I'm a podcast producer, strategist, and educator.
Morgan Franklin:This podcast will help you create and grow a podcast that cuts through the noise of social media and speaks directly to your target audience. If you're ready to create a podcast that will align you with the experts in your industry, position yourself as a trusted leader, and create another source of revenue for your business, you're in the right place. I really truly wish I could explain to you how much I've been avoiding building an email list in my life up content creation content creation, photography, videography, website development, podcast production. But despite figuring out all of that, building an email list made me wanna throw my laptop out the window and just start a life off the grid. And maybe you feel the same way.
Morgan Franklin:That's pretty much how every podcaster and business owner feels about building an email list. We know it could be a game changer once it's up and rolling, but getting it up and rolling, that part seems like way too much of a hassle.
Morgan Franklin:One of the podcasts I produce is a podcast about long term care. So basically nursing homes and all the terrible difficult conversations no 1 wants to have about getting older in the United States. It's not your fun, happy go lucky podcast, and building an audience for that podcast has taken careful work on our part.
Morgan Franklin:About a year ago, we got a really big break with a guest. He was the director of a state aging program of a state that's trying to revolutionize how we pay for long term care. So just trust me, it was a big deal. At the end of the episode, he recommended a guest to us and told us that she was like a lecturer on senior care and that we might like her. So of course, me being me, I look her up and she really has no social media.
Morgan Franklin:She's been quoted in a few larger publications. I think it was the New York Times and The Wall Street Journal. So, I mean, obviously, that was impressive, but she had no social media or online presence that I could find at all. I ended up asking her to come on the podcast even though she didn't have an online presence that I could see, which as a producer who's trying to grow a show, that's always kind of a tough call. The episode recording was great.
Morgan Franklin:We put everything together and the week that I launched, I sent her a message and I was like, hi, your episode is launched, blah, blah, blah. Here's all the links. Thank you so much for coming on. At the time that I sent her this email, it was in the morning, it probably had about 100 downloads, let's say. By that night, when I looked at my downloads for that episode, it had gone up to 30, 000 downloads.
Morgan Franklin:And I'm thinking what is going on? Is the host website broken? What can explain this? So I look in my email and I was added to the guest's newsletter. And I realized while she didn't have a social media presence that I could find, she had a huge newsletter and following through her email list.
Morgan Franklin:And I was absolutely blown away. This is the most impact I've ever seen from a podcast guest sharing a podcast. And for those of you who have podcasts and your guests share them, you know, like it will get you a little bump, it will get you a little something, but it's not usually 30, 000 extra downloads. So I learned 2 really important things here. The first being, if you have an incredible guest who gives you a recommendation for another guest, take it.
Morgan Franklin:And the second 1 is that having an email list is 1000% worth the effort. Later on this year, I'm gonna make a series on how to build an email list to grow your podcast and walk you through every single little tiny part of building an email list and the strategies you can use for your own podcast. But this episode, I'm just going to be walking you through generally an overview of everything I've done over the past 2 months to grow my email list and how it's impacted my podcast.
Morgan Franklin:Alright, so step 1 is going to be finding where you're going to collect your emails and start building your list. I have experience with both Klaviyo and ConvertKit, they've now rebranded it to just kit, But I use ConvertKit because it's integrated with my website provider and that's Showit and Klavio is not.
Morgan Franklin:If you're new to list building, you might be familiar with a host called Mailchimp. Everyone and their brother has used Mailchimp, and they're probably gonna be the first website that pops up when you search for email list hosting, but I wouldn't necessarily recommend to them. They just don't have nearly as many features or capabilities as some of the other email services that I'm about to get into. And overall, I just think that there's a lot better options for you and your email list, even though they have just dominated the marketing. And like I said, they'll probably be the 1st person that pops up when you search it.
Morgan Franklin:But I'd recommend either Klaviyo or ConvertKit. They're highly comparable. If you want a free account with up to a 1, 000 subscribers and unlimited outbound messages on ConvertKit, I have an affiliate code in the show notes. This episode is not sponsored by ConvertKit or Klaviyo, even though I'd be happy if it was. I've just used both of them.
Morgan Franklin:And I think that they have a great service for both business owners and podcasters. Once you've picked out your email host and you're in there and you're clicking around and you realize, okay, I have no subscribers. What am I going to do? How do I get subscribers? I'm going to be honest, I feel like this is something the mega digital marketing gurus and podcasters can make sound a little bit too easy, because most of them make it sound like you're just gonna wake up a month after sending your first email and you're gonna have 1, 000 subscribers, when normally, this is not the case.
Morgan Franklin:And, sure, there are tons of ways to get email addresses, but we don't just want any email address. We want email addresses of people who actually wanna receive our emails. So if you're thinking about starting an email list from day 1, actually before day 1, the most important thing you need to be thinking about right now is how you're going to bring people into that list. I don't think this is talked about enough. Normally, it's called a lead magnet.
Morgan Franklin:That's how you're going to be getting people onto your list. If you've ever heard that term before lead magnet, that's what they're talking about. It's the way that you draw in and capture the people who might be interested in joining your email list. And there are so many ways to do this. It could be a discount or a freebie or a checklist or a PDF or an instructional video, a private podcast episode, or a live webinar or class.
Morgan Franklin:There are endless ways to do this. Currently, I have 5 different lead magnets for my email list. I'll share the landing pages in my show notes if you're interested or if you just want to take a look. But I'll tell you a little bit about each 1 of them and the percentage of my list that each 1 of them has brought in. So my first 1 is a chat GPT prompt to help you start your podcast That's brought in 10% of my email list.
Morgan Franklin:I have a podcast launch checklist that's brought in 5%. I have a self audit podcast checklist that's brought in 40%. I have a monthly podcast progress tracker, that's hard to say, that's brought in 20%. And I have a 10 question pre interview guest questionnaire, which is brought in about 25% of my list. I don't want you to hear this and be overwhelmed by it.
Morgan Franklin:There is nothing wrong with only having 1 good lead magnet. I have several because I'm trying to figure out what my audience wants and how I can best serve them. I'm also testing out what part of the podcasting journey my audience is at. Are they looking for a starter podcast checklist? Are they looking for a chat GPT prompt to help them start a podcast?
Morgan Franklin:Or are they a little bit further along in their journey and they're looking for a monthly progress tracker or a self audit checklist or the 10 questions for podcast guests. Numbers don't lie. And the more information you have to look at about what your audience wants, the better you can serve them. But on the same side of that coin is making a genuinely good lead magnet. Because people are a lot pickier with giving out their email address these days.
Morgan Franklin:So if it takes all of your time and energy just to make 1 really good lead magnet, that is okay. Start small, start with what you have and go from there. Don't try to overextend yourself by making 5 lead magnets, just because you wanna test out different things and not making a quality enough lead magnet that anyone wants to actually give you their email address. All of my lead magnets I share on social media, my website and of course, my podcast episodes. Make sure you're putting your lead magnets in the description and show notes of your episodes.
Morgan Franklin:That way, if someone just listened to your episode, and they want more information, they can just go ahead and sign up for your freebie. Do not ever make your listeners have to work to sign up for your email list. Make sure it is everywhere and I mean everywhere. This information needs to be on every podcast episode and every single page of your website. Alright, so once you have your email host and you get your lead magnet set up, you're ready to start sending out emails.
Morgan Franklin:For me, this was 1 of the most intimidating parts, because for a while my only subscribers were my dad, my best friend, and then my lonely 1, quote, unquote, real subscriber. And if you only have 1 real subscriber, I hope that you are so proud of yourself. Also, I hope that you are serving that 1 subscriber like the future of your list depends on it because it does. Once you have that 1st subscriber, you need to send out an email every week. And that brings me into my next discussion, which is consistency.
Morgan Franklin:You need to be consistent, you need to commit yourself to sending out an email every week. And why would you not unlike so many other creators and influencers and business owners, if you have a podcast that's coming out every week, you have email content that's already made for you. That's why I am just truly baffled by any podcaster that does not have an email list. The content is made for you. The hardest part of serving an email list, which is thinking of topics, is already done.
Morgan Franklin:You are leaving so much money and so many downloads on the table if you have a podcast and not an email list, And here's why. Like I said, in the very beginning of the episode, you have to know when your listeners will be the most receptive to clicking through and actually listening to the episode. Think about when you're on social media and you're scrolling around, are you normally ready to click through and listen to a 30 minute podcast? No. You're scrolling, you're browsing, and the Internet dopamine is flowing.
Morgan Franklin:However, most of the time when you're in your email, you mean business. You have a different objective. Or if you aren't in the mood to read a message, you'll just leave it there and come back. Instagram isn't like that. LinkedIn isn't like that.
Morgan Franklin:People come to their inbox to find the next thing to do, and we want that thing to be that they are listening to your podcast. I can't tell you the number of podcast episodes I've clicked through and listened to from my inbox. I read a little snip about it and I thought, oh my gosh. Yeah. I wanna listen to that.
Morgan Franklin:But I can definitely tell you it's about 95% higher than any social media. Like I said, when I'm scrolling around on social media, it is very, very, very rare that I would ever click through to listen to a podcast because I'm not in that zone, and then I've already forgot about it. And of course, I can't make an episode about why you need to grow your email list with your podcast without mentioning that only 10% of your followers see what you post on social media. I know you're so tired of me saying this, but it's true. Having an email list is going to break the dependency that we have on the algorithm to tell people about our podcast.
Morgan Franklin:And just praying that Mark Zuckerberg will show our post is not enough. And for us podcasters, I think that this is even more important because you can spend all day making posts and creating content. But if you're putting that time and energy into making the content, what about the time and energy you need to make the podcast? We only have so much time in the day, and I don't want you to waste it on a post that only 10% of your audience will ever see. The last thing I wanna talk to you about before I wrap it up and get off of my email soapbox is creating an email that people will actually want to open.
Morgan Franklin:I'm looking at my stats right now. And over the past 90 days of all the emails I've sent, 82% of them have been opened and 43% of them have had a click through, which compared to social media standards is absolutely insane. So basically to break this down of every 100 emails I've sent, 82 of them were opened and 42 resulted in a click or action of some kind. So someone going off the email and doing what I want them to do. That's great.
Morgan Franklin:So how do you do this? For my emails, the main objective is normally sharing info about the episode. For example, the title for the email I'll send out for this episode might be something like how I doubled my podcast downloads with an email, or how I've grown my podcast through my email list, something like that. Very direct. I'm telling you exactly what you're getting out of this message.
Morgan Franklin:Next, I'll have a graphic about the episode, I'll have a short paragraph or 2, and maybe a few highlights in a list form. And of course, some buttons for people to click through to listen to the episode. So I usually include Apple, Spotify and my website. Like I said, it's direct, it's simple, and most importantly, it guides the reader on what to do next. Never, ever, never send someone an email without a call to action.
Morgan Franklin:Sometimes I'll sign up for these email lists and start getting them, and they're like terrible length emails with seemingly no direction of what I'm supposed to do. And I'm like, why would you send this? Why would you take the time to write and send out an email with no call to action? And I'm talking about for anything, for your podcast, for your brand, for your business, why would you do it? Like I said, while I normally center my email content around my podcast episode for the week, I'm still taking that opportunity to sell.
Morgan Franklin:Whether it's my own products, an affiliate I think my audience might benefit from, or a referral to another podcaster product, you can serve free value based content first and also make money in the same piece of content. There is absolutely nothing wrong with that. My best advice is to keep it simple. When you're designing your email content, keep the text to image ratio about 75% text and 25% images, so that your email doesn't go to spam. In the beginning, of course, I wanted everything to look perfect and be so super curated.
Morgan Franklin:And so I put it all in an image and email hosts do not like that. I had a 100% image, 0 text ratio, and that is a big red flag and will get you in the spam folder so quick. So you wanna have at least 70% of your email to be written in text, especially while your account is new. And be strategic with your links. I try to never send more than 5 to 7 links in a page long email because, again, that is a great way to get in the spam folder and you will never get out.
Morgan Franklin:You don't just want a podcast. You want a podcast that people listen to. You want a podcast that makes an impact on your audience. Promoting your podcast is part of that mission. Because if you don't promote it, no 1 will know about it and no 1 will listen to it.
Morgan Franklin:So take some time and think about your lead magnet. Think about how you can work a weekly email into your schedule. And as always, I can't wait to listen to your podcast. Hey. Thank you so much for joining me on this episode.
Morgan Franklin:If you enjoyed the podcast and you'd like to hear more episodes like this one, go ahead and subscribe to the show. New episodes air every Monday morning. And if you found this episode valuable and you wanna help other business owners and podcasters, will you leave me a 5 star review? It helps the show rank higher in the charts and brings more entrepreneurs the information they need to start making money on their podcast.