Are you worried about how you’ll get your summit attendees to stick around and turn into raving fans of your podcast? If you want to wow your new audience without sounding like a spammer face, then get ready because this snippet of a session from Sell With a Summit: Podcaster Edition is going to give you the foundations you need to get them opening their hearts – and wallets – to you without being gross and spammy. Let’s get going!
Jenn: I am psyched to introduce to the fantabulous Kate Doster, host of the awesome Inbox Besties Podcast – I’m a fan – and the Big Three Summit and creator of the jaw-dropping Love Your List. 2.0 course. I’m a student of Love Your List, and I just have to say that it’s kind of life-changing. Thank you so much for being here, Kate!
Kate Doster: Why thank you! We were just talking about how it wasn’t built as a course that one gets a gold star from watching start to finish, right? It is a resource library of, “Oh, I’m doing this thing now, like, I’m writing a sales page, let me go over and watch that lesson, grab the template and go.” Like, that’s what I had always envisioned that course to be because we need people to take action just like the summit. Like, you’ve had some amazing interviews and like a pile full of notes here, even as a speaker of things to do like, “Oh, I need to do this and that…”
Jenn: Yeah. Since… that’s the thing I love is the speakers are also podcasters and we get to take all the resources that are out there and… yeah, it’s great. And that’s definitely how I approach Love Your List too, is kind of use the different pieces to take action on them when I need, and that’s how we want you to use the summit too.
So a lot of folks hate emailing their list if they do have one, because they feel like they’re bothering them or spamming their inbox, and I know you have lots of thoughts on this. Before we dive into the details of how to wow their summit audience, can you give us kind of a quick overview of your whole philosophy around how to do that without sounding like a spammer face?
Kate Doster: Sure. So I am a firm believer that being on your email list, being in your presence, your energy, your summit, your creativity is a privilege. So being on your email list is a privilege. And if people want to leave, then let them go. We do not need them – bye, next, okay? It is the place where most people put a lot of their time and their effort and their spirit into and we want to make sure that the only people that straight up we’re allowing on our list – from our summits that we’re having, from our actual podcast episodes – are people that want to be there.
And when somebody raises their hand and they’re like, yes, I want this freebie, or yes, I really want to use this summit to help me get to that next thing that I’m trying to do with whatever topic you have – with vegan eating, with starting your business, with all of them – if they’re raising their hand and giving you their email address, then they’re going to want to hear about that.
Where that annoying factor comes in is if you are sending them things that are irrelevant or things that make no sense. So if I just started randomly emailing people about like vegan recipes and like, you know, bargains that I got an Aldi, it’s like, that would make no sense. Like I could use it as a story to talk more about marketing and communication and sales mindset, but if they’re like, wait, but I signed up to hear about email lists and now you’re talking to me about Instagram – which you would think those would be similar; they’re not, they’re different.
So you need to make sure from the get-go that you’re explaining to people like, this is the kind of stuff that we’re going to talk about. You already signed up for this freebie or the summit about that, so it sort of alleviates that pressure of like, “Oh, well, I’m only allowing people that are really interested and are taking this seriously, so how could I annoy them by helping them?” and when you go in with that intention that like, every time I send an email, it brightens up, somebody is day, then it’s going to work.
And here’s the other thing, Jenn, and this is a hard one for all of us: not everyone is going to read all of her emails. So even if you’re like, “Oh my goodness, I’ve emailed too much. I’ve emailed, you know, twice and five days,” chances are they have not been like feverishly refreshing their inbox for your email, so they might have missed the one that you sent on Tuesday. So now that it’s Friday, they’re happy that you popped back into their inbox because either they forgot to read it or they never saw it because they got other things. But they wanted to hear from you, they were looking for it and they’re like, “Oh yeah. I’m so glad she resent that. That’s so great.”
So we want to really take that mental approach of I’m just helping people. Like, I’m not spamming them – when you’re asking for money, if you do it in a way where you are… like, for example, selling your all-access pass, right, for this. When you’re looking at it now, and it’s like, “I need your money, I need your money. I need your money. The price is going up, you moron, buy it, buy it, buy it.” But really like, “Hey, I know that you really want to get ahead in business and I know that marketing has really been struggling with you, which is why we have this, which is why we have that. And hey, look, if you buy it before Monday, you’re going to save 50 bucks.”
So like, all of a sudden we’re leading with that sympathy, that empathy that we understand what’s going on – and we’re giving them a bonus if it’s a little bit off. And so people aren’t going to be annoyed by that is when you come in and you’re like, “it’s the me show! My course is here, everybody. You’re so lucky you can give me cash!” Like, yeah, technically it’s a privilege that I allow them to take their money, but we’re not going to lead with that. It’s not the me show. It’s not the thing show. It’s the them show, and you’re a supporting character. And so you can’t be annoying after that, guys. You just… it’s impossible. Impossible.
Jenn: Yeah. I completely agree. And yeah, it’s… if you kind of change your mindset, it changes everything else too! Like, yeah.
Alright, so how soon would you say that a podcast or should email their new subscribers after the summit is all wrapped up and over?
Kate Doster: So you want to make sure that after the summit is over, whether you are still selling your all-access pass or not, that you just sort of send them like, say if your summit ends on a Friday, because that’s when things traditionally end, maybe your all-access pass sales also end on that Friday, then you can show up as soon as like, Monday morning or Tuesday and like, remind them why they know you.
So it’s like, “Hey, like, you know, we had so much fun hanging out in the Facebook group.” Now, granted, maybe they didn’t join the Facebook group, but you know, “we had so much fun and talking on the 456 Summit, and I’m so excited and now we’re going to take all that knowledge and this is what we’re going to be talking about.”
So again, that way people aren’t like, “Whoa, all of this sort of stuff.” And you’re going to be making sure that you remind them of the name of your podcast, what you like to talk about, how you can help. If you’ve been at your topic for awhile, you usually kind of know the things that like, people are like the most excited about hearing, right? So you can make sure that say that second email after that one, we’re just like, here’s where we’re going. That it’s like, the most popular piece of content that you have.
And if you are brand new chances are, you know, the thing in your industry. So like, even though I talk a lot about sales mindset, I talk about copywriting – with a W, guys – and that’s actually writing words to make people slap buttons on the internet. That’s the way I describe it. I know that list building is like the thing that just like turns people’s crying. They’re just like, “Whoo, yeah, list building!” So I would make sure that one of the first emails that I’m going to send, even though that’s not where I spend the majority of my time, I’m going to make sure it’s about that topic because I know they’re going to open it.
So we call it the carrot and carrot cake. So now we’re gonna give them something sweet and then go ahead with a thing that you know is more substantial after.
Jenn: Yeah. I love that. ‘Cause once you get them in and you get them to like you and to know that you have the value, then they will follow that little carrot.
I love it. Perfect. So keeping all of that in mind, what would be a specific action step that a podcaster should take right away to make the most out of their new summit subscribers after the summit’s over so they can nurture them and get them excited about the podcast and everything else they have to offer?
Kate Doster: Excellent. So it would be literally like what we had just talked about: plan out those next three emails. Make sure that one of them is more of a transitional email where it’s like, “Hey, so you enjoyed the summit” – again, say its name, remind them of this thing – “you’re going to want to make sure that you’re listing to [name of your brand new podcast] where we’re going to help you do avoid/have” – those are usually fun sentence starters to use- “and we’re going to talk about this.”
And then if you already have your podcast episodes up and ready to go, those emails that we had talked about – the mistake ones, the story, once those sorts of things – instead, it can just be about the topics that your podcasts are going to be about.
So definitely have those three weeks worth of emails so that way you’ve got that downtime – done, written – they’re not going to take you that long because you know that being on your list is a privilege, because you are always thinking to yourself, how is… I hate using this term because it’s thrown around a lot, but how is this of service? What are you going to help them avoid? What are you going to help them accomplish? And then just go with it.
And even – again, don’t belittle if you’re like, well, I just talk about crafting or, well, my podcast is just about true crime television. Like, it’s okay if you want to talk about those things! How is it going to be entertaining? Like, people are always looking for an escape right now, so you’ve just gotta be like, how do I make this seem really enticing? And you can do it. I believe in you.
Jenn: You can definitely do it. And so I know that you have a little goodie with two years worth of free email…. well, two years worth of email ideas, that’s free to the folks who are watching.
So I love this one. This is really great because I always have trouble coming up with what the heck am I going to write this week? So can you tell everybody a little bit more about that?
Kate Doster: Sure. So we’ve gone ahead and we put a link down below. You can go ahead and slap the button. So it’s my two years’ worth of strategically planned out email ideas. Unfun name, I know, but it’s a really a great PDF.
So what I did is I actually broke it down by month – and don’t worry if you’re like watching this and you’re like, “Oh, it’s June” – because you bought the all-access pass and now you’re just rewatching, you know – “six months of this is bad.” January through May are going to come back again, so just use it for your other… like, it’s not a problem.
And so what it is, is I’ve mapped out little prompts to get your brain juices going. So some of them will be time-based like, hey, May is friendship month. It’s not, I’m just making that up, right? But some of them will just be like, making sure that like, you know, you share about an affiliate deal that you have, you talk about your most popular podcast episode, because sometimes we forget. It is, you know, sharing personal stories. It’s okay, send them a quick tip. So it’s just like, “Oh, okay.”
And now it’s a lot less intimidating because now it’s not like, “Oh, I have all these things that I have to email this month.” It’s, “Oh, I only really have to write four. Here are four sentence starters.” You can mix and match them.
Spoiler alert: if you don’t like May’s, go look at June’s. Like, you can go ahead. But it gives your brain instead of like, “Ah, all these things!” Just like, focus. It’s like, “Oh, I can share three resources I like. Let’s go ahead and do this.” And now all of the pressure’s off. Now you’re not going to ghost them. Now it doesn’t technically matter if your podcast episode didn’t come out that week, ’cause you can just do a prompt without telling them to go listen to a podcast episode after and you’re golden.
Jenn: Awesome. I love it. Yeah. I’ve used this in the past and it is so helpful because it’s so nice to take that… just gets the brain juices going.
Alright, awesome. Well, thank you so much for being here. Kate. I love talking about this ’cause email lists post-summit is so important, especially if you’re a podcaster and you’re trying to get people to listen, so I can’t wait to see how everybody takes action on this.
Kate Doster: So excited. Yay, fellow podcasters! We’re the best.
Want more strategies to help you grow and monetize your podcast through summits – without any sponsors? Join us and get access to all of the Sell With a Summit: Podcaster Edition sessions for FREE!
Get Kate’s 2 Years of Email Ideas: https://katedoster.lpages.co/2-years-ideas-new-2023/ and learn more about Kate at www.katedoster.com