How to build a profitable podcast.
This article will give you tips in promoting your podcast to an email list...
Whether you’re launching a new podcast or want to differentiate your marketing strategy for an existing show, email marketing is a good idea. People check their emails on the fly nowadays and do it via smartphones and tablets – both of which can serve as their podcasting platforms.
According to published reports, the monthly podcast listener base has grown 61.5% in the past three years, with 28% of Americans being weekly podcast listeners in 2021. There is a market out there for any type of podcast, be it for personal development, business insight, or fiction and true crime among others.
With email, you can reach a new audience and nurture existing leads (in this case, listeners) more easily than you would through social media. Let’s discuss how you can promote your podcast through an email list and how you can go about the process to benefit from it.
There are different reasons why people listen to podcasts. According to statistical findings, 74% of listeners follow podcasts to learn something new, while 51% do so simply because they find the medium relaxing.
In the age where traditional radio stations aren’t as popular as they used to be, podcasts represent an on-demand radio show solution for many listeners. No matter the niche you want to fill or the topics you plan to cover, there is an audience out there for your content.
Promoting your show through email specifically is useful because it doesn’t intrude on the listener’s attention such as in the case of YouTube or social media ads. People open emails and read them at their own pace, and the same goes for engaging the content found therein. The reasons why you should keep your audience updated on your podcast via an email list are as follow:
1. Build a Solid Email List to Work With
The first thing you need to do to promote your podcast via email is to acquire or create an email list. Creating your email list is the safer option, as people don’t typically enjoy receiving content from brands they didn’t subscribe to personally. To acquire peoples’ email addresses, you will need to entice them into subscribing to your podcast newsletters in some way. There are different ways to collect listener emails, including but not limited to:
You will need to provide potential subscribers with enough incentive for them to subscribe to your emails. Brute force won’t work as you will send emails to keep listeners informed about your activities, send podcast updates, or send episode links their way. For someone to receive content, they need to be willing to – this is why using purchased email lists from other brands isn’t a good idea.
2. Create an Email Mix with Different Content Types
To keep your listeners entertained with the email content they receive, you need to diversify. What are the types of content you could send them considering your podcast’s theme and topics? Creating a variety of email types and mixing them up throughout the month will ensure that your audience is engaged and willing to stick around. The types of emails you can try creating include:
There is a multitude of other types of emails you can try out to promote your podcast effectively. The bigger the variety, the more interesting it will be for your listeners. Don’t box yourself into a single email type that you will spam and hope for the best – think outside the box instead.
3. Keep Things Casual and On-Point – Don’t Overstay Your Welcome
Once you start writing email content for your listeners, don’t try to create entire blog posts in each email. Instead, stick to a couple of sentences of text interspersed with some visuals and external links for people to follow up on.
Sharing short snippets of your upcoming episodes or trailers is also a good way to keep people engaged. Based on listener data, 62% of people would be inclined to share a podcast with social circles if they had access to a short trailer. No one wants to read long-form emails, especially not people who use mobile phones to read their mail.
Keep your writing short, actionable, and focused entirely on your podcast. If you do want to write blog posts for your subscribers, keep them on your website and link them instead. This will give people who want to read more an option to do so without being forced into anything. It will take less time to write shorter emails centered on specific outcomes or calls to action instead of writing a small essay every time.
4. Highlight Where People Can Listen to your Podcast
Once you’ve pitched your podcast to an email reader, you should also direct them to where they can listen to the said podcast. By not including where people can listen to it, you will leave them scratching their heads or lead to them being uninterested in your podcast. There are many podcast hosting options out there, and choosing the best one can make or break your show.
Using a reliable platform such as bCast to host your podcast will open up a plethora of possibilities for its future development. You can create a dedicated website for your show, including professional transcripts with each episode, and even integrate affiliate links into the podcast easily.
You can also convert podcast listeners into email subscribers and add them to your email list easily via bCast. Working with a convenient podcast hosting platform will ensure that you can focus on creating the actual content for each episode instead of micromanaging it.
5. Link your Social Media Pages in the Email’s Footer
You can achieve omnichannel digital marketing with your emails by including social media pages in your email footer. Whether you have pages on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, or some other social media platform, do share them. Your listeners will be glad to get more content from your brand if it is in regard to the podcast they enjoy listening to.
Likewise, you should promote your podcast on social media any chance you get to drive traffic to and from your website. Letting people know that your podcast exists on multiple channels, including email and social media, will make it more shareable. This will in turn lead to a greater reach for your content and it will bring more listeners to your podcast over time. And with the right social media report templates, you can track your results over time and check what acquisition channels and platforms worked best in your particular case.
6. Make Sure your Email Content is Well-Written and Formatted
The best way to represent your podcast via email is to ensure that no grammar or stylistic writing errors have gone unnoticed during writing. Even if your writing skills are admirable, you can never know when a spelling error might happen on accident.
This goes double if your podcast is centered on content creation or if you represent a writing company with its on-demand radio show. Promoting your podcast to students who are constantly facing academic assignments such as essays and research papers also requires you to be careful about proofreading. Students with the mindset of “I need help to write my essay for me” for example will be on the lookout for grammar and spelling errors.
These types of leads want to be confident in the customer service of whichever writing company they decided to reach out to. In regard to podcast emails, working with such a company, or an online writing tool for proofreading and formatting is essential for long-term lead nurturing.
After you’ve started building your email list and people have begun to receive your content, you shouldn’t take their trust for granted. People can unsubscribe from your podcast and emails in a heartbeat if you start spamming their emails or if you disrespect them in any way.
You must be true to your original podcast idea both in its content and the content you write for email marketing. Here are a few things you should avoid doing when promoting your podcast via email to keep your listeners happy and engaged:
You should focus on delivering a high-quality podcast to your listeners first and foremost. If your podcast is great, people will be inclined to subscribe to your email list to stay in touch with the latest news and updates. Once people do trust you with their email addresses, treat them with care and respect.
Schedule your emails to only be delivered in certain time intervals and that they provide tangible content for your followers. If you don’t have anything new to report or announce, skip a week and come back stronger in seven days. Use email marketing as a useful tool to stay connected to your listeners beyond the podcast itself, not as a box you need to check. Do that, and email marketing will pay off for your podcast in spades.
