Your Complete Guide to Podcast Email Marketing

Podcast email marketing is, well, the use of email to promote your podcast. Sending out these emails to your email list to get people to listen to your podcast is beneficial for getting more ears and eyes on your content. It also enables you to build a relationship with your email list subscribers as you grow your audience. 

With new podcasts sent out daily and the increased demand for podcast content, it is more essential than ever for you to market your episodes right after starting a podcast.

In this article, we will take you through the steps you need to take to launch your podcast email marketing campaign successfully and harness the power of email marketing. 

1.    Build a strong email list

The first step in your podcast email marketing journey is to build and grow a solid email list. Convincing people to send you your email addresses is key to building this list.

There are a few ways you can use to get those email addresses:

• Create and use email lead magnets – Lead magnets  (also called magnet content) are what you offer your audience in exchange for their contact information, in this case, their email addresses. Lead magnets can be ebooks, training videos, free products, webinars, and bonus episode streams.

Colour Kristine Talks uses this strategy for email list building. Hair colorist and teacher Kristine, the podcast host, lets the audience listen to some of her episodes for free. Once you click the “listen for free” button, you are redirected to the website’s “sign up” portion. That is where she gets your email address and contact information to add to her email list. 

The free episode is the perfect example of a lead magnet for a podcast.

• Add a subscription box and popups to your website – These act as prompts for your audience to sign up for podcast email updates by keying in their email addresses.

• Include links in your podcast episodes – You can write these links in the podcast description of your newsletters to prompt people to sign up for your periodic emails. You can also use this email marketing tactic to link to your social media accounts.

A robust email list is the foundation of podcast email marketing. It is among the primary email marketing practices you should know. Build your list so you can form deeper connections with your audience.

2.    Create a custom landing page

A landing page is an optimized page related to your email marketing campaign to get people to take a specific action. Landing pages are very important. They can be aimed at getting people to subscribe to your podcast on various podcast hosting sites. They can also help give your listeners access to your lead magnet in exchange for their email addresses. 

Your landing page will help new listeners know they have reached the right content no matter where they have been redirected. You can use social media to get visitors to your landing page. We will talk more about social media in the following point. 

Consider including a call-to-action button on your podcast that leads readers directly to your dedicated landing page. This call-to-action button will promote your lead magnet, helping you grow your podcast by gaining more email addresses and listenership from interested audiences. Or the call to action can be for the visitor to listen to your podcast episode then and there.

Here’s an example of that kind of podcast landing page from Gary Vaynerchuk. If you saw an email from Gary, one look at this page, and you know you have found what you were looking for. When a reader opens the email and clicks on the link provided, the landing page helps them easily navigate to podcast episodes with a few clicks. 

Other tools that can help you create a custom landing page are website builders like Squarespace and WordPress. You could also consider using a landing page tool like Unbounce. These landing page tools provide helpful templates you can customize and create with just a couple of clicks. They even allow you to pick a color scheme that lines up with your brand.

Remember to keep your landing page short and to the point. Have a clear message and only ask for essential information from your audience. After all, your listeners do not want to spend a long time trying to fill out a never-ending form.

3.    Tap into social media

Social media is a great marketing tool to take your podcast to the next level. It allows listeners to instantly share your podcast with their friends and family. Social media also helps you reach a wide audience and gain new subscribers to your email list.

Make sure to include a prompt to get visitors to subscribe to your podcast newsletter in your social media posts so that you can get more email addresses. Include social media icons in your emails to your various digital channels. That will allow people to follow your social media pages with just a few clicks.

Logo Geek makes good use of social media for its podcast email marketing. Above is one of their social media posts on Facebook, where they offer new listeners a glimpse into their new episode. A click on the link takes you to their landing page on their website, where you can download the logo designers’ boxset for free. 

Click on the Logo Designers Boxset link, and you get to this page, where they ask for your email address in exchange for it, of course:

Social media is a powerful tool; you don’t have to be an email marketer to know how to use it. Include it in your digital marketing strategy, and you’ll get results.

4.    Always personalize your emails

Personalizing emails is where you tailor an email to suit each unique reader. Most guides to email podcast marketing will tell you the importance of personalization. One of the quickest and easiest ways of personalizing your emails is by using the listener’s first name in the greeting. That means that you may need to ask for their first name and email address on your sign-up page.

However, personalization does not only mean using the listener’s first name. It also means tailoring the content of the email to suit the listener’s unique interests. That means that you will have to segment your email audience to enable you to personalize the emails. Consequently, you will have to gather more information from your podcast listeners—age, gender, interests, and location data, among others—to help you in email list segmentation.

The email above, for example, was sent to specific individuals who have an interest in trucking as a business. In other words, it’s personalized.

Ask your subscribers to update their personal preferences to learn more about them. You can also use surveys for this exact purpose. Encourage your followers to fill out forms by offering exclusive podcast episodes, and freebies, among others. Personalization is key to creating a connection with subscribers and boosting email deliverability.

5.    Use newsletters 

Every podcaster needs an email newsletter which they release periodically to their audience. You could send the newsletters monthly or weekly, according to your preference. Begin by creating a master email template you will reuse for every newsletter, new episode, and other updates. The template allows you to customize its content without worrying about the email design for each newsletter.

Sara’s podcast has a newsletter subscription page where she has written a brief description of what to expect once you sign up. In this way, a listener can decide whether or not those are topics they would like to get updates on. A perfect podcast description is instrumental in getting listeners to click the subscribe button.

This practice saves the marketing team time while creating a relatable template for your podcast email newsletter. Your audience can get used to this branding and relate it to your emails.

You can inform subscribers about your new podcast episodes in your newsletter and even notify them about your new written content offerings. That’s another way to get traffic after you optimize a blog for SEO, for example. 

Email newsletters keep you top of mind. Since we live in a competitive world, we constantly have to remind our subscribers that we exist and care about them. It is a brilliant aspect to incorporate in your podcast email marketing to keep in touch with your audience.

6.    Automate your welcome emails

There is nothing like getting a warm welcome when you first get to a new place. A welcome email is great for kick-starting your relationship with new subscribers.

Automating your podcast email marketing means that your email marketing tool will send a welcome email immediately after a new subscriber signs up to join your email list. Welcome emails allow you to introduce yourself and your podcast to your new subscribers.

You can send the welcome emails manually, of course, but, chances are, you’ll get the welcome email to them only weeks after they sign up. They most probably will not remember who you are by that time. That could ruin your chances of getting them to join your email list.

An excellent welcome email has these elements:

• A welcome note
• What to expect from your newsletter
• The guests you will have on the podcast
• When you usually release new episodes
• Links to some of your podcast episodes

Remember to include your social media platforms at the bottom and thank them for subscribing. Having an email tracking tool will also go a long way in accomplishing the goals of your podcast email marketing strategy. 

7.    Track your performance

Metrics are essential for the success of every marketing endeavor, including your podcast email marketing. Tracking your performance gives you more knowledge to improve your future campaigns.

Look out for important factors like the best days to send emails out, which subject lines get more people to open emails, the content or images that convert better or bring new listeners, and the calls-to-action that get the best results. Also, check out relevant metrics such as the customer journey, open or conversion rate, and click-through rate, among others, that will allow you to make adjustments to your campaigns for improved results.

For example, if you notice a low open or conversion rate, it could mean that your subject line is ineffective in hooking readers in and needs a few tweaks. If your clickthrough rate is low, it could mean your email copy needs some adjustments.

Monitoring these metrics will help you improve engagement in your emails and understand what is working and what might need improvement moving forward.

Final Thoughts: Podcast Email Marketing

Podcast email marketing is a way to reach more people while forming invaluable relationships with your existing subscribers. There is, however, a right way to do this.

Build a solid email list. Create a lead magnet and add a subscription box and pop-ups on your website to encourage the submission of email addresses. Create a custom landing page where people can access your lead magnet in exchange for their email addresses or link your email to a landing page that encourages them to subscribe to your podcast.

Leverage email marketing services and social media to get people to sign up for your email list. Automate your warm welcome to new sign-ups, too. Send out personalized emails and monitor performance metrics and other factors to improve your email marketing campaigns.

Follow these tips, and your podcast email marketing efforts will yield the best results.

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