You’ve heard all about the importance of building an email list—and trust me I agree. So today, I’m sharing not only how I use my email list, but how I grow it through this podcast and other places with free downloadables!
Clocking In with Haylee Gaffin is produced and brought to you by Gaffin Creative, a podcast production company for creative entrepreneurs. Learn more about our services at Gaffincreative.com, plus you’ll also find resources, show notes, and more for the Clocking In Podcast.
Podcast Launch Kit (0:50)
Why Build Your Email List (1:55)
FloDesk (3:08)
Types Of Free Downloadables You Can Create (3:54)
Pair Downloadables with A Podcast Episode (4:16)
“I Don’t Have a Podcast”(5:23)
Haylee’s Examples (5:45)
Creating a Simple Design (6:33)
Step by Step of Setting Up Your Freebie (6:47)
Drip Sequences (9:50)
Repurpose What You’ve Created (10:15)
Review the Transcript:
You’ve heard all about the importance of building an email list—and trust me I agree. So today, I’m sharing not only how I use my email list, but how I grow it through this podcast and other places with free downloadables!
Hey y’all welcome to the clocking in podcast the podcast for entrepreneurs and professionals making their way in the working world i’m your host Haylee Gaffin this podcast is produced and brought to you by Gaffin Creative a podcast production company for creative entrepreneurs learn more about our services at Gaffincreative.com plus you’ll also find resources show notes and more for the clocking in podcast so let’s clock in and get to work.
Welcome back friends! Today’s episode is brought to you by my brand new podcast course, podcast launch kit. The podcast course for beginners and hopeful podcast host. If you’re exhausted from all of the Googling it takes to get every single step for launching a podcast, this is the course for you. I’m removing the information overwhelm by guiding you step-by-step through the podcast launch process I take all of my launch clients on! If you’re ready to sign up, head to today’s show notes at gaffincreative.com/037 or go to podcastlaunchkit.com to learn more.
Maybe you’re already on my email list, or maybe you’re not and you’re just looking for a way to grow your email list!
Today’s episode is perfect for you.
I am sharing how freebies and downloadables are the perfect way to grow your email list from your existing audience and a potential new audience. Plus, how I create downloadables to accompany my podcast episodes!
But before we get too far into this episode, I do want to highlight why I put in the effort to build my email list.
I know for me, that my podcast listenership isn’t always consistent. Not every single episode will resonate with my audience, therefore, they will not listen and won’t get the marketing of my products or services that I’m attempting to sell in a particular season.
So how am I supposed to market my products or services, or even new podcast episodes? Because one thing that Apple recently announced was that if your listeners haven’t downloaded a podcast episode of your’s in the last fourteen days or listened to the last 5 episodes, their not getting automatic downloads from your show.
This impacts podcasters, because if you’re not releasing consistent episodes, OR you take a break, they may not know when you come back. Your newsletter can help with that.
Now, additionally, I like to give my newsletter subscribers first access to new things, keep them informed when I want to do something special in my business, and just share educational content based on their interests.
I signed up for Flodesk a couple of years ago, when they first launched as a beta company. It’s been so easy to design and create emails with them, plus they’ve come really far in their segmenting and workflows, and I can’t wait to see how far they go.
If you want to give Flodesk a try, you can get 50% off with the code HAYLEEGAFFIN or you can use the affiliate link in the show notes. – https://flodesk.com/c/HAYLEEGAFFIN
Now, if the initial price is a little scary, I want to highlight that most other companies require you to pay more as your number of subscribers increases.. That’s not the case with flodesk.
If flodesk isn’t right for you or you’re not ready for the investment, you can check out the other programs out there, but do your research to make the best choice for you.
Now, let’s talk about what types of free downloadables you can make for your audience that will be helpful for your business or their’s depending on the audience you have..
You can create Worksheets, Checklists, Guides, Graphics, calendars, and more!
Based on your skillset and business, there are so many opportunities for you!
In this episode, I do want to walk you through my approach to pairing a free downloadable with a podcast episode. What I typically do is during my content planning phase, I look at each of the tangible, action based episodes that will guide a user to make moves in their business.
Once I have identified those and then get to the outlining phase of my podcast process, I’ll ask myself a few questions:
- Can I create an exercise for them to complete on a piece of paper?
- Am I asking them to brainstorm concepts that they need to document?
- Are there mantras or tips they should always keep in mind when it comes to this topic?
- Is there a resource I can create for them to use that is simple enough to be free?
You could potentially ask yourself a few more questions when it comes to creating these. Those are simply my starting point.
If I answered yes to any of those, then once I start outlining the episode, I’ll pull a piece of paper out and create a downloadable concept as I’m writing.
Essentially my script will guide the worksheet or guide, but you could always work the other way too… so if you already have a free worksheet, you can script an episode around it as well.
Now, maybe you’re thinking, but I don’t have a podcast. Easy, you can make this a blog post or even a social media post or multiple.
If you’re downloadable is best used in pairing with the directive episode or blog post, I always encourage you to drop that link directly on the worksheet so if you’re promoting it elsewhere, your subscriber can know where to get it from.
You can take a look at most of my freebies to see an example of this.
In episode XX, I walked through budgeting for a podcast and included a free podcast budgeting worksheet.
In episode XX, I shared all about the changes in apple podcast’s subscriptions and included a free worksheet on what language to use when referring to subscriptions vs follows if that is important to you and your audience.
Then in episode xx, I highlighted how to plan for your brand photoshoot as a podcast host.
Now, how do I create a simple design for these? If you’re not a designer, you can easily create them in Canva. There are plenty of templates that you can customize for your brand and style. If you are a designer, then you know all about photoshop and indesign.
Once you have your design, you’ll want to set up your landing page, form, and workflow for delivering your freebie.
So let me walk you through how I set this up… and you guessed it! I’ve created a free downloadable with step by step instructions on how to do this. You can grab that freebie in the show notes at gaffincreative.com/037
This first thing I do is I take my freebie, title the file the way I want it to download for a subscriber, then upload it to the media files in my wordpress website. This may look a little different for you, but your website should give you a url for your media file. You’ll want to copy this.
Next, I create a new page in WordPress. I start with a very simple design that I can embed a designed form into directly from flodesk… which we’ll get into shortly.
Within this page, I update the SEO, include a graphic as the featured image, and customize the url.
After that, I create a second page in wordpress that serves as a thank you page. On this page, I add a thank you message that encourages them to check their email for the download, along with a button that says DOWNLOAD NOW and links directly to that media file we copied to earlier. I hit publish on this page and copy the URL for it.
Then I head to flodesk and create a new inline form with one of the existing templates that they’ve provided. I update it to include the form fields I want, which is typically first name, last name, and email. And I update the copy to highlight what their downloading, along with changing the graphic.
Now, you can either use a thank you message in the form build OR you can redirect to a custom thank you page, like the one I build.. I don’t always use a custom thank you page, but for downloadables, I like to just so they have immediate access to the downloadable.
Additionally, you’ll want to create a segment or two for this form.. What I do for my forms is create a custom segment for that particular download so I know how they got on my list, but then I also add them to my overarching segment of podcast education.. You can create an overarching segment for your’s based on your industry.
Now, once your form is published, you’ll take the embed code and plug it into the first page you created using a code field.
Then you can publish that page.
We’re almost done, but we have one more step to complete.
We’re going to head back over to flodesk and create a workflow for when someone completes that particular form or is tagged with that download segment.
You’ll select your trigger, then set up an immediate action to send an email. You can use the templates to set up this email, include a thank you message, along with a button to download now…. The paste the media file url for your free download.
That is how I create and set up my downloadables for my podcast episodes. You can check out this exact workflow by heading to gaffincreative.com/037 and downloading this episode’s free downloadable in the show notes.. I’ve linked directly to the landing page form within the show notes.
If you wanted to take your marketing plan a little further, you can add a drip sequence to your workflow in Flodesk. I like to encourage you nurturing first with educational content related to what they downloaded, then move into a bigger sale. Additionally, you may want to edit that initial email to introduce yourself in case they’re not familiar with who you are and just stumbled up the episode or the freebie via another marketing avenue.
Now that you have your content, the free downloadable, and the form set up, it’s time to look at how you can repurpose what you’ve created.
You can create additional social media posts to promote the download without the episode, you can create pins for pinterest that link directly to the downloadable, and you can use it as a tripwire in bundles and giveaways!
When someone signs up for your free downloadable, they’re now entering your newsletter list.. Which allows you to nurture and sell to them anytime until they unsubscribe.
While I may only receive a handful of downloads when I release my episodes, I also get a ton of traffic from Pinterest.. In the last six months, I have tripled my newsletter list from Pinterest traffic to my free downloads. This also increased my podcast listeners for those who went from the worksheet to the episode to follow along, and in turn booked me one big project and two ongoing podcast production clients.
There are so many ways to measure the success of your free downloadables, whether you’re looking at subscribers, or paying clients…. There are a ton of goals you can set with these in hopes of growing your business!
Don’t forget to grab that free download fro today’s episode at gaffincreative.com/037 so you can start strategizing how to grow your email list with free downloadables!
And if you’re still in the idea stage of your podcast, but are ready to take the steps to launching, check out my new course, Podcast Launch Kit. In this podcast course for beginners, I’m walking you through the planning stages of your podcast from setting your goal to gathering your assets, then teaching you how to record and edit your episodes, and how to continue to produce quality content. If you think this course is the right fit for you, head over to podcastlaunchkit.com or I’ll link it in today’s show notes!
Until next week, friends, I’m clocking out.
This has been another episode of The clocking in podcast. You can find the show notes for this episode and more at Gaffincreative.com. Thank you so much for your listenership and support. If you love this episode, I’d be so honored if you leave me a review in Apple podcast app. Until next time, I’m your host Haylee Gaffin, clocking out.
