Why Email Marketing Remains Essential for Podcast Growth

Brett Johnson [: 00:00:02

Welcome to the Circle Sessions featuring the Circle of Experts. Each week, one of the Circle of Experts joins me to talk about critical aspects of growing your podcast. The Circle of Experts are Yasmine Robles and Izzy Dadosky from Rebel Marketing, Tonnisha English Amamoo of TJE Communications, and Don the Idea Guy. I'm Brett Johnson, My Podcast Guy from Circle 270 Media Podcast Consultants. This week, Tonnisha is here. Tonnisha's on a mission to help small businesses level the playing field through her digital marketing solutions. Tonnisha, thanks for joining me again today.

Tonnisha English-Amamoo [: 00:00:35

Yes, thanks for having me.

Brett Johnson [: 00:00:37

Sure. We talked a little bit before recording that. We've got a topic that we've addressed and addressed and addressed, but it's, but it's ever changing and it's, it's a topic that podcasters and marketers need to be reminded about is email marketing. And it's never going to go away because of some nuances that we'll get into. But it's that, don't forget that that's really one of the more important, maybe the most important marketing tool you'll have your podcast. So, yeah, let's, let's kick it off. It's like, why, you know, it's so old, you know, right? Marketing. It really is.

Tonnisha English-Amamoo [: 00:01:19

Yeah.

Brett Johnson [: 00:01:19

And even I'll give an example in my mind too that when I was in radio prior moving into podcasting some 10 years ago, I kind of poo pooed email marketing as well too. And it's one of those, oh, wow, now I really see what's going on with it in regards to how it's, it's such a strong marketing tool and moving into the podcasting realm. So, you know, let's, let's give a definition to email marketing first. Really establish what it is. So let's hear your definition of where we're going to go with this.

Tonnisha English-Amamoo [: 00:01:52

Yeah, so email marketing is essentially sending a mass message or a mass form of communication to an audience that has opted in to your communication. And so it's different from, you know, going into your Gmail and sending off an email, because email marketing, if you're using the proper platforms, will give you a ton of data that you can use to your advantage. And so we can see, you know, how many people open an email and even how many times they opened it. We can see what links they're clicking on. You know, typically once we are able to look at a click map. So essentially what that means is if you're looking at your email, it's going to show you all the hot zones where people are clicking, then we can kind of determine what information should go where because we are learning our audience and kind of what their behaviors are. And so I feel like a lot of times, not even just in podcasting, but I feel like with most industries, we focus a lot on social media, but the reality is that when it comes to social media, we don't own our audience in those spaces. I mean, we talked about the, the potential threat of TikTok being over forever.

Tonnisha English-Amamoo [: 00:03:08

It's still surviving and thriving right now, but we know that that's still something that's on the table. You know, people have complained about Instagram's algorithm, Facebook's algorithm, you know, Twitter changed over to X and now it feels like there's a ton of bots there. Right. So when you're on these different social media platforms, when I say own your audience, that means if any of these platforms choose to shut down or go away or disappear, you don't have those people's contact information. You don't have a way to keep in touch with them unless you are converting them from these social media platforms into another place. And the next place for them to go to from social media is your email marketing platform.

Brett Johnson [: 00:03:57

Yeah. A good example this morning as part of a meeting and an example was given about that they're using Facebook marketing and such, and they had done some research that they, on their own as well as some industry, you know, noted that only about 10% of your Facebook followers see your post in a timely fashion. I mean, it's probably fed over time.

Tonnisha English-Amamoo [: 00:04:23

Yeah.

Brett Johnson [: 00:04:23

You have a thousand followers compared to a thousand subscribers to your email marketing.

Tonnisha English-Amamoo [: 00:04:33

Exactly. And how many times have you gotten on LinkedIn and saw a post from two weeks ago?

Brett Johnson [: 00:04:38

Exactly. And it was time sensitive. Yeah, weeks ago. Frustrating as anything. And I understand the social media platforms, why they're doing it. They want you to boost a post. I, I get it.

Tonnisha English-Amamoo [: 00:04:50

Right. But.

Brett Johnson [: 00:04:51

But that is such a low percentage of on my end that I am specifically opting into follow somebody on a social media platform and I'm not receiving it in a timely manner.

Tonnisha English-Amamoo [: 00:05:02

Exactly.

Brett Johnson [: 00:05:03

As a user experience, that's frustrating compared to receiving an email marketing an email from somebody and opting in. And I'm seeing it in real time, I think. And we have to shift our mindset. Yes. Email marketing is not sexy compared to.

Tonnisha English-Amamoo [: 00:05:21

Right.

Brett Johnson [: 00:05:22

But you know what? You can make email marketing.

Tonnisha English-Amamoo [: 00:05:25

Yeah. You can make it fun. I mean, even, you know, I scheduled an email to go out where. So I've been doing webinars for nonprofit leaders. And I sent a bunch of resources and I saw that there were a handful of people that opened the email but didn't click on anything. And so the subject line was like, I see you looking. And in the email I was telling them like, you know, this is why email marketing is so amazing because you can see how people interact with your emails. So I can see that you opened this email multiple times, but you didn't click on any of the resources that I provided.

Tonnisha English-Amamoo [: 00:06:09

So I just wanted to send you a one more reminder that if you scroll down, there's resources for you to have for your non profit organization. Yeah, right there. That's, that's fun, right? Because. And then I sit like a little like gif of someone like giving the side eye and the email. So that's a fun way to engage with your audience and say, hey, like I saw that you were looking at my email, but maybe, you know, you didn't click on this episode or I saw that you clicked on this podcast episode, but not this other one. Here's why I think you should check it out. And these are things that you can set up in automation. And they're also things that you can just, you know, when you're sending out your monthly newsletter, your weekly newsletter, it's just nice information to have so you can know what is interest, what is in what people are interested in.

Tonnisha English-Amamoo [: 00:07:03

And so, you know, sometimes I know we saw this with the, with the Tribe Village chamber. At one point we were looking through our emails. I think you get that worry, like are people only clicking the links at the top? But we found that people were engaging with the entire email. So that shows that you have an engaged audience. On the flip side, if you find that people are only clicking whatever links are at the top, then you know that the most important information needs to go at the top, the most timely information because people may not scroll all the way down to the end. So there are definitely ways to make email fun and to, I think when it starts to get fun and when you start to get that engagement is when you try to get as personalized as possible.

Brett Johnson [: 00:07:49

Yeah. My wife sends out an email marketing campaign to support her business and she loves the analytics because she'll refresh it because her recipients open it up very quickly. So she loves these numbers like Brent, look, I 80, 80 open rate in the first, you know, 15 minutes. And she just loves, you know, that solidifies that they respect that they, you're sending them good stuff, they want to open it up. So you know, and again, if your open rate's not the same, don't worry about that. You're. You look at the analytics differently. That's.

Brett Johnson [: 00:08:25

But, but it's just, it's so fun to watch her just get it. That's cool. I love that. It's one of those, think about what it means and keep doing what you're doing. And that's great.

Tonnisha English-Amamoo [: 00:08:36

Exactly.

Brett Johnson [: 00:08:37

Let me ask you this, because I know we can talk about this subject of email marketing, but let's say you're starting from scratch and you have. You're creating a newsletter, or I don't even call it a newsletter, but an email marketing campaign. It's information, but you have no recipients, you have no database at all. How would you suggest starting that?

Tonnisha English-Amamoo [: 00:09:00

Yeah, building the, the database is probably the most questions that I get. And I think that we can do that a few different ways. So one sure way to get people to sign up for something is to offer them something. So for your podcast, if you already have maybe some episodes done or recorded, or maybe you're doing a series, maybe that series is being released week by week on your actual podcast. But if you already have that done, is there a way that you can give people on your mailing list maybe the ability to watch or listen to the whole series? Is there some information that you can provide? For example, if you have a podcast on, I don't know, maybe. Maybe you are a marketing agency and you have a podcast, and maybe we're talking about email marketing on, on this podcast, and maybe there's a freebie of email marketing resources that's breaking down the language around email marketing. So what is an open rate? What is a click rate? What's a hard bounce? What's a soft bounce? And maybe that freebie also includes platforms along with their pricing. If you have any, like, affiliate links or some codes that you can include for people that may want to try it out.

Tonnisha English-Amamoo [: 00:10:24

So thinking about, is there some sort of resource that you can attach to your podcast that would make sense for your audience? So that's one way that you can build up your audience. Another way that you could think about is, you know, looking at your, your podcast audience and just asking them at the end of an episode, hey, starting a newsletter. The link to subscribe is in the notes. Please check it out and subscribe. And something that I did early on to start building up my list was telling people that if you know somebody that could benefit from this information, forward this email to them or encourage them to sign up or subscribe so those are two ways that I think are probably low hanging frame group that you could start from to. To start building up your audience.

Brett Johnson [: 00:11:17

Yeah, I think there's some opportunity on social media too, I think to increase your database from there just. But delicately you definitely have to show the benefits of why to subscribe because we. How many, you know, emails, news. I'll call it a newsletter. There's got to be a better description. But just the marketing campaigns do we all subscribe to and kind of realize that's not what I signed up for or why. You know, so the benefits, the ro. Why.

Brett Johnson [: 00:11:44

Why spend the time reading. It definitely has to be right there in the forefront.

Tonnisha English-Amamoo [: 00:11:48

Yeah.

Brett Johnson [: 00:11:50

Whatever it might be. So kind of you're almost getting feedback from your listeners or why you're doing the podcast. This is an extension of the podcast.

Tonnisha English-Amamoo [: 00:12:01

Exactly.

Brett Johnson [: 00:12:02

It's not just a hey, I'm gonna let you know when new episodes are released.

Tonnisha English-Amamoo [: 00:12:06

Right.

Brett Johnson [: 00:12:07

That really doesn't do it anymore.

Tonnisha English-Amamoo [: 00:12:08

Yeah. Because if there's already subscribed on like Spotify or Apple, it's going to tell them when a new episode comes out anyway. Yeah.

Brett Johnson [: 00:12:16

We modified on a podcast I co host called Looking Forward our Way, we modified our email newsletter, I'm going to call it that. It does, yes, it talks about the upcoming episode but it gives some depth in regards to what we talk about. Plus we added links to new stories or of interest we were posting on Facebook but we just weren't getting any traction. So it's like let's just put it in a newsletter that we know people want to read these stories that we found and we'll post it on the website links, you know, give a credit and that sort of thing. We have found traffic go back to the website because of it. So our usage of the website is up. We know our click rate is up because they see the stories better, the recommended stories better in this email that they're receiving from us rather than a post on Facebook.

Tonnisha English-Amamoo [: 00:13:01

Yeah. And it's. And it's so important to give people context into the conversation because when you do that it may even make them want to go back and listen to the episode again now that they have some information or some facts or research that they can. Okay, now that I know this, I'm gonna go back. So actually I was just listening to yesterday. I think the New York Times just wanted to put out a feel good podcast because of all the drama that's going on in the world and for.

Brett Johnson [: 00:13:36

Their own sanity probably too.

Tonnisha English-Amamoo [: 00:13:37

That too, yeah. And so they put out an episode, because I guess they. They asked, like, they had 200,000 readers respond to a survey, which is crazy. And they were asking them what do they think their top 10 favorite movies of the 21st century were? And they also reached out to some very prominent actors and authors and directors like Stephen King and others, and asked them, like, what do you think the top 10 movies of the 21st century have been? And they compiled this list of like a hundred movies and they released them by the 20s. So, you know, the. The first, you know, 20, and kind of like working back to number one or up to number one. And that made me wanna one go actually see the full article of all the movies, because as they were talking, I was thinking about movies, and sometimes they would say a movie. And I'm like, oh, yeah, like, I forgot about that.

Brett Johnson [: 00:14:42

25 years. Well, 24, I guess you could say, 24 years into this century. Yeah, there was. That was released in 2001. Forgot about.

Tonnisha English-Amamoo [: 00:14:50

Right. Yeah, right. So I thought that was so cool because, you know, they were. They were giving context to or like, even just having, you know, the actors and, like, Molly Ringwald was, like, featured on the episode, you know, so it's like hearing that, it made me then want to go to the New York Times website to see the full list. And then I'm like, this is my winter movie binge list now. Because some of the movies that made the top 10, I had never heard of.

Brett Johnson [: 00:15:20

Wow.

Tonnisha English-Amamoo [: 00:15:21

But they made the top 10, you know, almost like unanimously for people. And so it's like, okay, I have some movies that I need to go, like, check out now. And then once I'm able to do that, the top 10 may make more sense to me. Like, okay, I get why this movie was top 10. So even something as simple as that, you know, they took an article based on, you know, for whatever reason, they wanted to know what the. What the top 100 movies were, but they were able to take that article include. I mean, if you could get Molly Ring podcast, I mean, that. That would be amazing.

Tonnisha English-Amamoo [: 00:15:58

But they were able to do that and then create a podcast episode to take. People who only listen to the podcast, like me, I don't really read the New York Times per se. If it comes across like my screen, I'll stop. But I'm not going to the New York Times website to read an article, but I am listening to the Daily every single day almost. So now you're taking people from the podcast to other places, and so thinking about how that overall fits into your Strategy, because the New York Times really wants people to subscribe to the New York Times. Right. So they are using all of their podcasts as a form of taking people who maybe don't have time to read articles, but they listen to podcasts. And you would subscribe to the New York Times because you like the podcast.

Tonnisha English-Amamoo [: 00:16:53

And so how can you think about your email marketing or even your website as a way to continuously build up your podcast listenership, but it also aligns with your overall strategy for your business or for your podcast.

Brett Johnson [: 00:17:11

Right. And we haven't talked about, in that, in that example, about any of your episodes, we talked about fun stuff that. Okay, you may not be able to do a poll of 200,000 people.

Tonnisha English-Amamoo [: 00:17:23

Right.

Brett Johnson [: 00:17:24

You use. I was doing some research. There was an article in the Columbus Dispatch well over a year ago about listing famous people that came from every Ohio county. So it's 88 famous people coming from. And I think it listed the famous person and then also second and third place. Okay, interesting, you know, article.

Tonnisha English-Amamoo [: 00:17:46

Yeah, it's a.

Brett Johnson [: 00:17:47

Well over a year old. If that's in line with your audience. That's example of, of somebody else did the work they did. They didn't go out and interview anyone, but they just. But it's, but it's there and it's kind of like fits who I think my audience would be interested in talking a little bit more about. Yeah, that's part of an email then. Yes. I'm like, hey, tell me your, your favorite.

Brett Johnson [: 00:18:09

Did you grow up in Champaign County? You know, how did they eat that kind of stuff?

Tonnisha English-Amamoo [: 00:18:12

Yeah.

Brett Johnson [: 00:18:13

Do you remember things being taught in your school about this person? You know, sort of thing. Lots of conversation starters, but thinking of your listener of why. And there's, and it doesn't have to be all the time with your email, but it's one. Do it occasionally to make it fun for yourself. And it's, it's extra content and, and it's also an incentive to want. It's to subscribe too.

Tonnisha English-Amamoo [: 00:18:36

Exactly, exactly.

Brett Johnson [: 00:18:37

And it's probably going to be shared. Don't, don't discount your current database sharing as well. Especially ask them to share that newsletter.

Tonnisha English-Amamoo [: 00:18:46

Right.

Brett Johnson [: 00:18:47

To do it. They will talk about, forward, boom, done.

Tonnisha English-Amamoo [: 00:18:53

And maybe there's some sort of, you know, incentive attached to that. Like, you know, if you have podcast merch. I know sometimes people have stickers or, you know, T shirts or maybe you just get a few printed just for the sake of building up your user engagement. And ask people like, hey, forward this episode to at least, or, you know, this email to at least three people reply and let us know that you did it, and we'll randomly pick someone to win, you know, some podcast swag.

Brett Johnson [: 00:19:26

Yeah, exactly. Exactly. Yeah. You know, we've gone over a lot of stuff. Yeah, we're gonna do a follow up on the, on the email because I think in here, because we, we can conquer and divide a lot of different things. We brought up some terminology we probably should dig deeper on in a future episode. And also the platforms that are out there that can accomplish certain things and, and are better than others, you know, get done with it. But in the meantime, if, if anyone, you know, if the listener has some questions about, hey, I love the ideas that you're coming up with, but I need a little bit more help, Tanisha.

Brett Johnson [: 00:19:57

How can they get a hold of you?

Tonnisha English-Amamoo [: 00:19:58

Yes, you can go to my website, www.tjecommunications.com. i offer free consultations. So if you want to talk through some of your ideas or you want to figure out how to get started, just go and schedule a call.

Brett Johnson [: 00:20:15

Yeah, and for me, go to my podcast guy.com, get on my calendar. We'll do, you know, analysis of your, of your podcast real quick. You know, that's where I think kind of we'll take a look at what you've done, where you're going with it, if it's just not doing what you wanted to do. And it could include some email. So, you know, it's one of those. We'll bring Tonnisha in. It's that there are so many different things to do to help you grow your podcast. You just have to kind of take one gulp at a time and, and figure out what's right.

Brett Johnson [: 00:20:43

So. But until next time, thanks for joining me, Tanisha.

Tonnisha English-Amamoo [: 00:20:46

Yes, anytime.