How Email Marketing Can Expand Your Podcast

by Pat Safford | Apr 28, 2021 | Podcasting

At a time when there are over 1 million podcasts and more than 30 million podcast episodes, it’s easy to think “How can I compete?” when trying to get your podcast off the ground. Well…have you considered email marketing? Not only can email marketing help you keep current listeners up to date, but it can also help you grow your podcast and start reaching even more listeners. Learn more about podcast email marketing below!

Why You Should Use Email Marketing

Just like you would with a customer-oriented business, you need to establish a group of loyal customers—or in this case, listeners. Through email marketing, you can stay in contact with listeners and deliver all types of podcast-related content directly to them.

49% of consumers today don’t mind receiving emails from companies or brands they like once a week—and in most cases, they prefer it to social media! On top of that, email marketing can be a valuable promotion tactic with real ROI. Brands using email marketing today earn an average of $42 from every dollar spent on email marketing efforts.

How Email Marketing Can Grow Your Podcast

Email marketing is an effective tool for keeping your listeners engaged with your podcast. But that’s not all! Here are some other benefits using email marketing for your podcast…

Keep Less Active Listeners Engaged

One way that email marketing can help is that it can keep you in touch with casual listeners. If you’ve gotten them to sign up for email newsletters and other email updates, they can stay in the loop without feeling as though they have to listen to every episode to know what you’re covering. Not to mention, emails can be a great reminder for casual listeners who don’t think to check for new episode releases. With a simple email saying “Hey, we have a new episode out!” you might actually get them to tune in more.

Turn Listeners into Customers

Most of the conversations around podcast merchandise happen in podcast episodes. But what do you do if someone misses that announcement? Email marketing can help you there, too! By creating and pushing promotional emails featuring your merchandise, you might see more sales. Emails can be especially effective in pushing merch that’s on sale or part of a giveaway. Best of all, once you’ve had listeners pick up merch, they can instantly amplify your reach by walking around in public wearing your stuff, sharing what they got on social media, or by talking with friends and family about the podcast they love.

Drive Traffic to Your Website

If you have a dedicated podcast website, email marketing can be a great way to drive more traffic to your site. With more website traffic also comes an increased chance of showing up in relevant search results. Simply by adding links to your emails and having more subscribers clicking through to your website—whether clicking to listen to a new episode, read your blog, or even shop at your online store—you give your website a better chance of being discovered by new listeners, which can help expand your podcast’s online footprint.

How to Start Building Your Email Marketing List

If you haven’t already started using email marketing as a podcast outreach strategy, that’s okay! Getting started with it will first require you to start building an email list. Thankfully, building an email list isn’t as hard as it seems. There are several simple ways you can collect your listeners’ information, such as…

Add Email Signup Forms on Your Website

Put an email marketing signup form on your podcast website! Whether it’s a form in a sidebar, footer, popup, or on a specific landing page, you can collect listeners’ names and email addresses for your list. Just be sure that you include an explanation of what listeners will get by filling out the form so that they’re aware of why they should give you their personal information.

Ask for Emails When Buying Merch

For podcasts that sell merch, providing an email can be a requirement when making a purchase. This is an easy way to automatically sign up listeners and loyal fans for email newsletters and podcast updates. Again, make sure it’s clear to anyone buying merch that you’ll start sending them information after they’ve provided their email addresses—and definitely give them with a way to opt-out of email correspondence!

Use a Lead Magnet to Collect Emails

Looking to gather information from listeners without feeling pushy? Consider using a lead magnet! Simply put, lead magnets are ways of gathering listener information by offering something for free. Maybe that’s through downloadable content on your website or bonus podcast content. Regardless of what you’re giving listeners, you can ask them to provide an email address to gain access to this content.

Pitch Your Email Newsletter on Social Media

If you have a good podcast following on social media, promoting an email newsletter among your followers can be a great way to start building your email list. You can even create social media ads to target people who don’t currently listen to your podcast so that you can get your show in front of them and potentially direct them to an email newsletter signup page on a website.

Need help getting the word out about your podcast? Hurrdat Media can help you with our podcast production services and in-house media network. Get in touch with us today to learn more!