139. Should I Be Sending a Weekly Email About My Podcast?

Sara Whittaker 0:01

Your Podcast is a powerful tool that serves your audience and your business. But how do you manage it all bring in new listeners, and convert those listeners into customers. That's what this show is all about. Welcome to podcasting for educators. I'm Sara Whitaker, classroom teacher turn podcast manager, and I'm here to help you get the most out of your show, all while making an impact on other educators. Should I be sending out a weekly email that talks about my podcast? And if so, how should I go about doing that? This is a question I get a lot from our clients and from listeners of this podcast.

So let's talk about it. To get straight to the point in regards to the first question of whether or not you should be sending a weekly email about your podcast. The answer is yes. 100%. Absolutely. Truthfully, I think this is a non negotiable and really should be at the top of your list when it comes to Episode promotion. For lots of listeners, they have a solid routine of listening to specific podcasts each and every week. And they don't need the reminder that comes with your email. However, there are other people who might be on your email list who are subscribed to your show. But maybe they saw your latest episode and didn't resonate with the title so they skipped it. Your email can serve as a way to show them why it's worth listening to. You might also have people on your email list who listened to your show on occasion, or even regularly every week. But maybe they haven't been listening to podcast that specific week because they've been extra busy. And so they do need that reminder. And lastly, I promise you that there are people on your email list who still don't know that you have a podcast, no matter how much you talk about it. So keep on keepin on, you need to be sharing about it every week. Talking about your podcast in a weekly email really shows people that it's an important part of your business and is worth listening to. It also helps to convert email subscribers to podcast listeners. In Episode 136, we talked about how important it is to create traffic loops between your podcast email and social media. So definitely check out that episode, if you haven't already to hear more about that. And also in Episode 83. We talked about converting email subscribers and social media followers into podcast listeners. So if you want to hear more on that topic, check out those episodes. But this idea of sending a weekly email that talks about your podcast is a great way to just continue building awareness around your podcast and continue letting people who are on your email list know that you are a podcast host and that you have this great resource for them. Then there's a second part of this question, which is how do I do this? Well, how do I share about my podcast in my emails in a way that makes people actually care. Maybe you've tried sharing about your podcast, and then you go into your analytics inside your email marketing provider and you see that people aren't clicking that listen now button in your email. And so you freak out and you say it's not worth it to even continue emailing about your podcast. If this is you, here are a couple of thoughts that I have on that. Number one, how you talk about your podcast in your emails is really going to play a huge role in whether or not people take action. If you've tried the same line of Here's this week's podcast episode, you can listen here done and done. It's just not something that's going to work in most cases. It's just like I always talk about on on this podcast about sharing your episodes on social media, if you just use that same template over and over saying New episode with the episode number and title and that's the only thing you do to share about your episodes, people are just going to skim right past it, it's going to feel dull, it's gonna feel repetitive, and it's not showing them why they should take the time to listen. Number two, if your emails have 75 Different call to actions, and your podcast episode is kind of buried in all of these. That's not going to work either. I've heard this from clients a lot. And I totally get it. It's tough. You have lots of things that you want to share about in one email every single week. But the truth is, is that that's just not going to be effective in most cases. Because that just tends to kind of put people in, put your subscribers into like analysis paralysis mode of, oh my gosh, there's 50 links in this email. I don't even know what I should click on and so they're not going to click on anything. If this is you one option that you have is doing a second weekly email that is just about your podcast. It's worth trying out and seeing how it goes different people's audiences respond differently to this. But if you wanted to try this, you could always send this email to your whole list and then at the bottom of these emails you can Have a soft opt out, that gives people and out if they don't want to receive that additional email per week, and it could say something like, don't want to receive these emails about my podcast, no problem, click here to opt out, don't worry, you'll still receive my other emails, or something along those lines that lets people know, hey, no hard feelings, I get it, your inbox is full. Maybe they're not podcast listeners, or maybe they're dedicated listeners, and they just don't need this additional email in their inbox, because they're gonna listen to your episodes Anyway, whatever the case may be, you're giving people that option. And since you're giving people that option, don't feel bad about sending a second email, okay. And the third point I want to touch on here, and we talked about this in Episode 136, that I mentioned a minute ago. But remember where people are in their day on each platform, if they are checking email, there's a really good chance that they might be working on their computer, or they're skimming through their email, while they're sitting in the doctor's office or something like think about all of these scenarios when somebody would be checking their email, seeing information about your latest podcast episode might not cause them to stop what they are doing and listen to a podcast episode, right then in there, because it might not make sense for them to. But it acts as a reminder and an awareness builder around your episode, they might add it to their phone and listen to it later. It is very, very difficult to get people to do what I've always called, I don't know if this is an official term or not. But to platform jump, which is to leave a specific platform and go to a different one to do something else, like going from your email to listening to a podcast episode. Like right then in there, we're talking like in real time, or go from listening to your podcast, to signing up for your freebie. Okay, again, because when people are listening, they're also probably multitasking. So we have to think about the situations that people are in on each of these individual platforms. And that will really determine the action that we're asking them to take or that we're building up this expectation of in our mind. Same thing with Instagram, you could be sharing about something awesome on your Instagram stories about your latest podcast episode. But if somebody's in scroll mode, are they really going to leave Instagram to go and listen to that episode right then in there? Probably not. And that's fine, they now know about it, okay, and they can do it on their time. So all that to say, if you aren't getting many clicks on your podcast emails right now, that doesn't necessarily mean that people aren't listening. It just means, like I said a second ago, it could mean that you've entice them to listen by reading your email, and then they're going to go listen when they have time. And if you are really curious about whether or not emailing your audience makes a difference for your specific audience, I would do like a four to six week test where you don't send an email about your latest episode, and track that data. If you were to do that, you'd want to look at your podcast numbers per episode. Okay, so if you usually send out an email once a week that talks about your latest podcast episode, stop doing that for a few weeks, and track those download numbers per episode and see if it makes a difference? Do your numbers go down when you don't send an email? Or do they not? Does it not really make a difference, you really have to test things for your audience. And same goes with like you could do that test of just not sending an email at all, or you could do a test of okay, I'm gonna structure this in a different way. I'm going to share about my podcast episode in a way that I haven't done before. And I'm going to do that for four to six weeks and see if it makes a difference. You really have to if you're going to experiment, you really have to give it time, you have to be consistent with whatever it is you're trying and give it enough time to actually gather that data and see if it makes a difference. Okay, so we just touched on a bunch of things that you should not do. So what should you do? Really, when it comes to sharing, you need to show why people should listen, that's really what it comes down to. So skip that generic new episode alert type of prompt that you might be putting in all of your emails week after week, and opt for something else that really piques people's curiosity. Pull a couple of teaching points that offer value pull a really engaging quote, ask a question that corresponds with the episode tell a story that your guests shared on the interview that you're promoting. Give people a reason to Listen, give them a reason to hit play sooner rather than later. And I totally, completely understand that. That takes work. And it takes thought, and I get that. But most things that actually pay off, do take work and do take thought. And there's not always a template for everything. And a simple solution, especially when all of our businesses are different, all of our content is different. So just kind of having this conversation in your mind, think about how will you switch things up for the upcoming months, maybe you're going to test some things out, like we talked about, maybe you need to start actually emailing your list consistently, period, like maybe you're not emailing your list right now, I do believe that, if at all possible, we should be aiming for a weekly email. Okay. I think that that's a really great way to stay top of mind for people and to continue nurturing people. So that when it is time to send those sales emails, you feel good about it, and you feel like you've offered a lot of value. And a lot of touch points to people. And it just makes that process a little bit easier. Or maybe you just need to change the way that you are doing things you need to change the way that you're sharing about your episodes. And if you're really curious about learning more about how you can leverage your emails in general, to convert more people into podcast listeners, definitely grab my brand new podcast playlist toolkit. It includes ideas on how you can utilize podcast playlists in your emails, to increase your downloads and bring some new listeners into your show. It's a really fun strategy. It's a really simple strategy. Most importantly, and you can use the code podcast to grab it for only $17. I'm gonna leave the link for that in the show notes in case you want to check that out. Get out there, start emailing or switch up how you've been doing it. I am always cheering you on and I'll catch you here next week.

Thanks so much for listening to today's episode. To keep this conversation going connect with me on Instagram at podcasting for educators. I'm always looking for an excuse to talk about podcasting. If you're looking for support and launching, managing or growing your podcast, check out my online course the podcasting for educators prep school at podcasting for educators.com/prep school. I'll see you here next time.

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