Robby: The brand ad podcast with Robby Fowler episode 94, 5 questions to
reframe your view of your email list.
Welcome to this episode, we're going to do a little thought
experiment together to reframe how we think or view our email list.
If you're a personal brand, you know how important an email list is.
And let's start with how we typically think about our view, our own email list.
So a typical view for us would be that my audience is my potential customer.
And then my email list is composed of a smaller subset of my audience
that usually includes warm leads.
My email list would include some existing or past customers, and
hopefully my email list will include what you might call some super fans.
So that's the typical view of our email list.
We've got this broad audience when you pulled together, social media, people
that may subscribe to your podcast.
That's your broad audience.
Then slightly more narrow than that is your email list.
And if they're on your email list, they're probably a warmer lead
than just if they've come across you on social or seeing you on social.
Or if there may be a subscriber to your podcast, if they're on
your email list, they're at least as warm as a podcast subscriber.
And maybe even more so, and then hopefully that email list includes
your customers or clients, and it will even have some super fans.
So that's usually how we view our email list.
And because of that, we know it is the backbone of our business.
It is the place we often turn to for revenue.
So if you have an offer, what do you do with that offer where you're going to
push that offer out to your email list.
If you have a webinar.
Whereas one of the most effective places to promote that webinar
it's to your email list.
So that's the typical way we view our email list.
I want to give us a little thought experiment today to freshen
up our view and think about.
If we change the paradigm.
Uh, of how we viewed our email list.
What that might do to.
Energize us and even energize and transform the way we interact
or engage with our email list.
So here's a question I want you to consider.
What would change if you viewed yourself as a leader and
trusted with the real people?
That are on your email list.
What would change if you viewed yourself as a leader and trusted with
the real people on your email list?
So let's.
Keep on with the.
Imagine this imaginary world.
And I want to imagine if.
The way that you received an email list, the way you got an email
list was that some more experienced personal brand business leader.
In a space or market that's similar to the space or the market that, that
you're in this more experienced personal brand business leader, watches you,
and they see your leadership in the day in and day out the day to day stuff
of running your own business and life.
So they're just watching and observing.
And based on their observation of you.
They appoint you an email list.
I know that seems really strange to us, but just play along
with me for a few minutes.
Just imagine if that's the way you got an email list.
A more experienced personal brand business leader watches.
Day in and day out.
And then based on that appoints an email list to you.
So imagine it works like this.
You get a tap on the shoulder one day from him or her, this more experienced personal
brand business leader in your space.
And they say, Hey, you're a wise and faithful leader.
Go lead these 50 subscribers over there.
I imagine getting that tap on the shoulder.
Hey, I've watched.
And I can see that as you're growing and developing your wise and faithful leader,
go lead these 50 subscribers over there.
How would that perspective or paradigm change the way that you view
and interact with your email list?
So here are five questions to think about as we.
Play this imaginary game.
How might a shift?
From looking at your email list through a lens that's.
Often, primarily transactional.
How would it shift if you looked at your email list?
Not just as transactional, but as relational.
So here's five questions to ask yourself, as we play this imaginary
game together, if you were a leader and you got tapped on the shoulder
and someone said, Hey, I've watched.
And go lead these 50 subscribers.
Go lead these 500.
Subscribers go over there.
Lead those 10,000 subscribers.
I'm going to have trust to you.
These 10,000 people.
Here are five questions to consider.
As we think about this paradigm, that's different than the typical paradigm.
If that were true, your email list was a group of people entrusted to you and you.
Are responsible in part to help lead them.
How would you approach your list?
How would you approach your list that would change.
Question number two.
What would you do with your list?
If you're in town, if they're entrusted to you.
And you play a leadership role and their business and in their lives,
what would you do with your list?
Number three.
How interactive would you be with your list?
If you viewed yourself?
As a leader and trusted with these people.
Rather than.
Potential buyers.
So how interactive would you pay?
With this different paradigm.
Question number four.
How frequently would you reach out to your list?
If you've viewed yourself as a leader, and these were folks
that were interested to you.
And then question number five.
What do you think that would do to the ratio of a selling
or asking from your list versus sharing or giving to your list?
I'm not suggesting that selling or asking would go away.
I'm just asking you, if you thought of yourself as a leader and the
subscribers were people that were appointed to you so that you can.
Help lead them.
And be a part of the leadership in their lives.
What would that do to the ratio of what you're doing right now,
in terms of selling or asking from your list versus sharing?
And giving to your list.
It's a fun thought experiment that when we adopt a different paradigm
for our email list, a paradigm of leadership, I'm a leader and
these are people entrusted to me.
It does transform and change the way we think.
And engage with our email list and certainly in an era.
Where it's very easy to view email subscribers.
Like inanimate objects or vending machines or potential
transactions or potential revenue.
Generators or a revenue engine.
. It's easy to fall into that trap, particularly if we need cash.
Or if we want to generate some revenue and there's absolutely nothing wrong with
generating revenue from your email list.
Like you, I do the same.
But I do wonder at times, What would change if that weren't the
only paradigm I looked at my email list through, if that weren't the
only lens, what if I was a leader?
And I viewed these subscribers as real people, every one
of them is a real person.
And they are in part entrusted to me.
To exercise a sense of leadership in their lives.
I hopefully that is.
At least entertaining or intriguing to you.
But I hope that if you think about that exercise, maybe you take a walk and
you just chew on those five questions.
That it would energize you, that it would serve your email list better.
That it would broaden and expand the way you think about and engage
with your email list in intern for you and for every subscriber on
your email list, you would help.
That would be more life-giving.
Cause that's what we're about on this podcast is to build a life giving brand.
Until the next episode, thanks so much for joining me.
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a friend i so appreciate that until next time go and build a life giving
brand