SOCIALLY SPEAKING
THE PODCAST

0:00:00
Hey, and welcome back to another episode of Strategically Speaking. I'm Steph Paradiso, and I'm so happy you're here. This is episode two, although technically I guess it's episode three. But if we're starting from January 2024, this is the second episode that I'm recording for the podcast. And it was really cool to launch that first episode last week and share with you guys sort of what's been on my mind in terms of how this podcast actually came to be and what to expect and some of the things that I'm going to be talking about on here and the feedback was super positive and it was just all around I guess felt really good because it was something that I was trying to do for so long. So, thank you if you listen to that first episode. Um if not, I do think that it's a pretty insightful one.

0:00:52
And also, hopefully if you are someone that has been either putting a project off or just you didn't get to something last year and you kind of feel like it's too late, go and listen to it, because I do think that it will inspire you to take some action in this first part of the year. So today we're gonna get into some of the ways I am personally looking to grow my email list in 2024. Email list growth has always been a big priority for me. I also share this all the time with my clients and if somebody comes to me and they say, Steph, I really need help with my marketing, my first question is going to be, do you have an email list? And if they say no, that's where we're going to start. And if they say yes, we're going to dig into that. And if they're not using it strategically, or to the best of their ability, we are going to audit it and really dial up the strategy. So that way their email list works for them. And growing my email list by double what I have on there now is one of my main focuses for 2024. So I do have, you know, sort of like these internal goals, so goals for my business, goals for my marketing, but then I also have revenue goals and goals that I want to hit in terms of the clients that we're bringing in.

0:02:14
And so in that column of things that I want to work on internally, email really is at the top of that list. And while it's always been a priority for me and we're constantly growing with new subscribers, I really want to focus on some new ways that I have not really tried before to grow this coming year. And I want to share those with you. Hopefully you'll get inspired to grow your email list, but I also want to share that these strategies are a little bit out of the box and perhaps a little bit more advanced. If you don't have an email list right now and you just don't know where to start. I always say offering something of value for free, so whether you want to call that a freebie or a free download, that's going to be where you can start. And so I always say if you're product-based, the most classic example of this is offering email subscribers a percentage off of their purchase. And if you're service-based, very often a PDF or a guide or a checklist is the way to go.

0:03:14
And of course, it's going to vary based on your personal business and your goals, but that's a really good starting point. If you have an email list and you have been growing it, you want to try some new tactics. These are the things that I am going to try this coming year. Some of them I've sort of dabbled in already, and I can give you some insight into that. But I'm really curious to see at the end of this year how these specific tactics work for me, versus some of the things that I've been doing over the last two years, let's say. Let's get into it. First up, I am going to participate in more bundles.

0:03:53
Now, if you are in the digital product world, you might have heard the word or term bundles being thrown around a lot this past year. And it really is such a great way to grow an email list because it affords you the opportunity to essentially borrow other people's audiences. And now the audience that you are going to borrow has to also be aligned with your audience, meaning the person who you are collaborating with on a bundle or the persons, plural, audience members, customers that are similar to the type of customer and audience you would want to attract. And doing a bundle, and I'll explain how this works in just a second, but doing a bundle for me was actually very successful in December of 2023. So I ended the year, and actually the bundle that I did was still available through January, actually through today, and I was able to get quite a few new email subscribers.

0:04:55
And I'll explain how that works and how you can actually create this on your own if you wanted to try that. So the way that bundles have worked for me or the ways that I've seen this done in the past is that you can get together with a group of business owners. Typically, these are for digital products and everybody will come in and offer a paid product and it can be low ticket, it can be something that's like 17 bucks, 27 bucks, a paid product for free or at a highly discounted price inside of a bundle.

0:05:28
So for example, the one that I did this past December was there was an option for a free bundle and anybody that signed up for this, they called it a goodie bag, was able to get a ton of digital products for free with a free goodie bag or a free bundle. There was also a premium option where you could pay, I think it was like $97 for the bundle and get products, digital products that are worth just a little bit more. So typically around the 150 to $400 range. And so these are two different ways I've seen bundles happen, both free and paid. And I think that they're a really great way to grow your email list by 100, 200, even like a thousand people at one time, depending how many people are part of the bundle and how it's being promoted.

0:06:23
And so when you join a bundle, and there's lots of different communities that do this, but when you are part of a bundle or you put a bundle together, so a group of business owners together that you're facilitating, there are definitely some expectations. So when I was part of this bundle in December, I did have to share it on my Instagram, I believe twice, and send at least one email. And it's really not a huge undertaking. It was very easy for me to be able to do that, and I also wanted my audience to benefit from this too. So if everybody does promote the bundle, the theory here is that if I'm promoting it and then 10 other people are promoting it to their audience, I'm going to benefit from their audience and they're going to benefit from mine, in the sense that we will all collect email addresses because they are signing up for this free bundle or they are purchasing this paid bundle and giving their email address as part of that.

0:07:17
So it's a really cool, different way to grow. And it's also a very aligned way, right? Because you're partnering with other business owners that have similar products or they're in similar niches. So overall, and I'll actually check this in real time so I have a very updated number for you. But overall, in this bundle that I participated in, I was able to grow my email list by 928 subscribers in about a month's time. And my initial goal was a thousand new subscribers.

0:07:49
And so I got pretty close to that and I'm super happy with the end result. And so if you're looking to kind of experiment with bundles, there are Facebook groups, if you have a digital product where you can collaborate. So you can kind of just search bundles into the Facebook search bar, and there are different groups that will pop up. But you can also choose to collaborate with people that you know in the industry that have similar audiences and have them all bundle a very low ticket product for a free bundle, or have them bundle something that's normally, you know, 400, $500 on its own, but in this bundle of products, it becomes super discounted because essentially the buyer is now paying under a hundred bucks to access all of these digital products.

0:08:40
So I love this strategy. It was very successful for me. I'm very excited to try other types of bundles. One thing that I will say is that the bundle that I participated in for December was international. I'd like to find something that is solely US-based and kind of see the results from there. Not that I can't work with clients from all over the world, and I have, I just really am curious to see what the results will be like with a smaller bundle and also with the all US-based audience only. So that is something that's on my list for 2024.
0:09:18
And the goals that I'm setting are to participate in at least three bundles. So perhaps one a quarter, and then repeating the one that I had just did this December in quarter four. I think that that sounds like a really great plan. But if I could grow my subscriber list by a thousand subs every quarter of this year. I'll have 4,000 new subscribers which to me would feel incredible and also I think it would allow me to have a really warmed up audience by the time Black Friday rolls around and I start preparing for holiday. So definitely bundles, it was successful for me, I recommend it. A couple different things I will say.

0:10:02
Number one, you want to be part of a bundle where everybody is doing their part. Like people have to promote this if you want to see results. So there has to be a level of understanding that you need to promote this and there's ownership around that. And then I also do think you need to have a really good digital product. It has to be something that people would normally pay for on its own to motivate someone to either download this free bundle or pay for this collaborative bundle that's under a hundred bucks.

0:10:33
So definitely something that's juicy. We don't want to give them a lead magnet or a checklist that we would give away for free any day of the week. So a small course, a workshop, a masterclass, a template, which is what I did for this past bundle, anything that is a little bit juicier and of some more value. Now, if you're product-based, that first option might not be the best way to go for you, but number two, which is newsletter mentions, I think is really great for both product-based and service-based businesses.

0:11:09
So what I did in 2023 was that I secured a spot for a newsletter shout out from a really amazing woman. Her name is Ellen Yin. She has a media company, and she was offering a spot in a newsletter where I could share a freebie. And I really loved this. It was affordable, and it gave me really good placement in front of subscribers that I knew were very much my ideal client. So I did this and that went out I believe last Friday, so it's been less than a week, and I did not get what I was anticipating, the number of new subscribers, and I'll share the number in a second. I really thought that I would get closer to 100 new subscribers because of, you know, knowing that this brand that I was collaborating with had a sizable email list and also they did shout me out on their stories as well.

0:12:12
So I did get a couple of new followers on Instagram, which was really nice and a nice little bonus. But from the email, I collected 35 new email subscribers. So I had a newsletter mentioned in Ellen's email that went out to her entire list. I also had an Instagram story with a tag on there. And the end result was a handful of new Instagram followers and 35 new email subscribers. Now, when I look at cost per lead, it was about $7 per email address.

0:12:43
And while that might seem high, I really do think that it was worth it, although $7 is a little bit expensive for a single lead, but I do believe that these leads are very targeted and very much my ideal clientele. And so I was happy with the results, even though it was a little bit less than what I was projecting, but it was the first time that I had tried something like this and I actually really enjoyed it.

0:13:12
I would love to do more of this in the new year. And my goal, again, is once per quarter to either write a email that can be sponsored by another collaborator, so another business or brand or person that has a very similar audience to me. And so have that content sponsored in their newsletter or to have a dedicated blurb inside of a newsletter that they're already sending. And this is gonna require a little bit of digging from me and perhaps some pitching to find creators that offer a newsletter mention or sponsored newsletters, but it's definitely something that I'm open to exploring because I really felt like it is so aligned, right?

0:14:02
If you find the right person or the right brand, it just makes so much sense because you're getting a lot of visibility in the inbox that you might not necessarily get through organic social anymore. And it just felt really easy and really simple and also pretty affordable when it comes to like paid reach. So I liked that. I would try it again. I would do it again with this particular creator, but I also would be open to trying other newsletters.

0:14:29
So what would this look like for you if you applied this strategy to your business? Well, if you are a product-based business and I'll use one of my clients, she sells handmade headbands, she would be really fantastic for a paid placement or paid shout out or a sponsored area in a newsletter of a brand that has to do with hair care or hair styling. Like that would make perfect sense. And she has explored options like this before and I think it's a really great opportunity. Of course, whatever that paid sponsorship price point looks like, you also have to make sure that fits within your budget. And some newsletters, if they're much bigger and the email list is more robust, they will charge more, but don't discount newsletters that have a really great engagement rate, even if they're smaller.

0:15:22
Okay, small but mighty, I really think it's going to be something that we're gonna see more of in the next 12 months. It's going to be really important to recognize that just because somebody has a very large email list doesn't necessarily mean that they have the best, most engaged email list. And so if you're looking for a newsletter mention or an email collaboration, that's a great way to go about it. And you can you can really just pitch brands. If you get emails from brands that you love, you can ask them if they have paid sponsorship opportunities in their newsletters for you to be able to share your product or service. And I think that it is a strategy that's going to serve me well in 2024, and it's going to also align with that bundle strategy.

0:16:07
So I'm excited to see that. And I'm also really excited to write unique copy for some of these newsletters and to do like a sponsored email that's like dedicated to my brand, but shares like really insightful strategy or tips that is curated for that person's community exclusively. Like that seems like it would be a lot of fun. All right, so let's move on to number three. The third way that I am going to grow my email list in 2024 is through events.

0:16:35
Now I love events for so many different reasons, but I really do believe that they are the fast track to building trust and to getting in front of your audience and building community. So events actually serve a lot of purposes in my business. Number one, building community. That's like my main focus here. But events also provide opportunities for people that are already on my email list or already part of my community on Instagram to now show up in person and perhaps bring a friend, which introduces somebody new to my community as well.

0:17:09
And that is really fantastic, right? An email list is grown by one email after another. And so to me, even introducing one new person to my brand at an event and getting them on my email list so that way they can get future correspondence from me, that's so worth it. And so we've done a bunch of different things. If you're product-based, I really think doing product demos, launch events, customer appreciation and activation, those are so fantastic. And if you're service-based, I love things like workshops or something that's hands-on or maybe, you know, a class where attendees can lead with something tangible. That's really the style that I've been working with, this workshop style. And it's been awesome because not only does it allow my community to connect and meet new people, it gives me an opportunity to meet with my audience in real life, share some education, but they also leave feeling like they learned something and that's super important to me.

0:18:08
And of course we do drinks and food and swag and we make it really fun and a cool vibe environment where people wanna come back to. And so I started doing events last year and I'll continue to do that into this year on a very regular basis. So right now I'm trying to do one a month, but sometimes larger scale events might happen once a quarter. But those smaller, more intimate, like limited to 10 people type of events may happen once a month.

0:18:38
And it also excites me because I really enjoy it. And it's just a new, fun way to connect offline. And so if you want to learn more about event building and just figuring out ways to create community with your audience and your brand, I have a really special offer for you. Right now, I have this amazing masterclass that we actually just went live with last night inside of my membership, The Collective. And if you've ever thought about joining the membership or being part of that community, I really do think now is a perfect time.
0:19:14
At the start of the year, we always want to reassess our goals and look at where our business is going. If one of the things that you are prioritizing this year is to boost your sales, but also to become more known, that is going to be very much integrated with how well you build community. Community really is the heart of your business. It's the key to unlocking those massive sales, and it also is how you're gonna stand out in a very, very crowded space.

0:19:40
And we have this awesome masterclass that got such great feedback from our members last night. And I wanna share the opportunity with you to get that on demand instantly when you join the membership. I am going to leave the link to learn more and to join in the show notes. But what's really cool right now is that you can join for the Black Friday pricing. It is $199 for an entire year.

0:20:06
It makes it so affordable. It's like 54 cents a day. And the amount of education and information, tools and resources you can get inside this membership can make you that investment back almost instantly. Like there are so many things that you are going to learn. It is incredible. So go ahead and click the link in the show notes. I will leave that there and of course if you have any questions about the collective please feel free to shoot me a message on Instagram and if you also have feedback or thoughts about this episode I would love to know those as well. So I am @inspiredsocialco over on Instagram. You can also always send me an email hello at inspiredsocial.co. Alright that's it for this week.

0:20:50
I'm so glad you stuck with me and just really dug into this episode. I hope it was helpful, and I will see you back here next week with a new episode.