Beginners Guide To Podcast Email Marketing

For every $1 you spend on email marketing, you can expect an average return of $42. Caveats aside, this presents a massive opportunity for podcast email marketing.

Email marketing for podcasters remains one of the most reliable and effective ways to promote your show. You can use email marketing in many different ways to help you achieve various goals that can grow your podcast. 

In this guide, we’ll take a dive into podcast email marketing, explain how it works, and what you can achieve with this trusted marketing channel. 

What Is Podcast Email Marketing? 

Podcast email marketing is the process of using email as a channel to promote your podcast. While this sounds relatively straightforward, there are many different ways that podcasters can use email to attract new listeners, keep their current audience engaged, and run various campaigns.

You can use podcast email marketing to achieve the following: 

• Send out the new podcast episodes to your mailing list 
• Build a community around your podcast and develop stronger relationships with your listeners
• Send out more in-depth content to your audience that elaborates on your podcast topics
• Ask your audience for feedback and insights
• Re-engage with “lost” listeners through re-engagement, or win-back, email campaigns
• Use your email marketing content and lead magnets as a way to attract new listeners
• Create automated email campaigns to nurture and engage new listeners
• Use your email marketing channel as an additional source of revenue for advertising and paid partnerships 

What Are The Benefits Of Podcast Email Marketing? 

Email remains one of the most reliable marketing channels for any business. When used correctly, email marketing also offers excellent ROI.

The main benefit of using email marketing for podcasts is that it provides a direct line of communication between your brand and your audience. 

You can use email to send personalized messages to your subscribers, you can access insightful email marketing metrics to evaluate the success of your campaigns, and you can run a wide variety of campaigns to help you achieve different goals. 

How To Create A Podcast Email Marketing Campaign 

Here are some effective strategies that you can use to run successful podcast email marketing campaigns. Assuming you have a good email list service.

Define Your Goal

Start your podcast email marketing strategy by understanding exactly what you want to achieve with each campaign. 

Each email you send should be focused on achieving a clear goal. This could be to boost the number of listens on a certain episode, it could be to attract new followers on your streaming platform, or it could be to send traffic to your podcast website, and so on. 

Make sure this goal is measurable so that you can monitor the success of your podcast email marketing campaigns and adjust them where necessary. 

It’s important to note that the emails you send out should be directed towards a clear action that you want your audience to take. Or Call To Actions.

Use the Right Email Marketing Platform

Email marketing is only possible if you use a dedicated email marketing platform. This is what allows you to send mass emails out to your mailing list. 

Different email marketing software platforms offer slightly different features. But the main ones include features like the ability to set up automated drip campaigns, lead generation tools, engagement metrics, email templates, and more. 

Make sure you choose a platform that aligns with your campaign goals.

Build Your Email List

You can’t run podcast email marketing campaigns without having a list of subscribers to alert about your show.

The best way to get more email subscribers is to offer useful content in exchange for an email address. If people are going to give you their contact details, they will want something of value in return. 

A gated lead generation offer, like an eBook on your podcast topic, is a good idea. Of course, the most obvious offer you can provide is access to your podcasts in exchange for an email.

However, if your podcasts are freely available on platforms like Spotify, then you’ll need to attract subscribers with “bonus” content, like PDF guides or unlisted interviews that you will send to them. 

Personalize Your Emails

The first step to personalization is adding the subscriber’s first name in your greeting and subject lines. 

This is effective but you can do better.

The best approach is to segment your mailing list depending on your subscribers, their demographics, and their interaction with your content.

For example, you could have a list of new subscribers, a list of subscribers older than a year, and a list of unengaged subscribers. This lets you target each list with more relevant content, which will help you improve your engagement. 

Send Valuable Content

Successful podcast email marketing comes down to how valuable your content is to your audience. 

The first step is to send updates about your new podcast episodes to your audience. Beyond this, there are many other options for email content that you can send. 

This includes:

• After-show content that dives deeper into the episode topic
• Invites to live events and webinars that you host
• Sending related content and further reading material based on your podcast
• Sharing content on your other marketing channels, like your blog or social media
• Sending exclusive email content, like interviews with podcast guests or “behind the scenes” recordings

The more valuable, unique content you send in your marketing emails, the more interested and engaged your audience will be.

Conclusion 

Gaining high levels of engagement, open rates, and clicks on email marketing campaigns is achievable with the right approach. 

And, this can have a big impact on your podcast downloads and popularity. 

The bottom line is that email remains an effective way to attract, engage, and grow your audience. It’s an often overlooked marketing channel for podcasters where you can share valuable information about your podcast and brand to connect directly with your listeners.