✊ How bad (or even just mediocre) first impressions kill your podcast growth
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In an ideal world, every listener's first interaction with your show would go something like this:
The result—thanks to their friend—is that your new listener has just experienced the absolute best possible first impression of your show… Which makes it significantly more likely that they’ll not only complete their first episode but return for more. Unfortunately, most listeners don’t have such generous friends (with such good taste in podcasts, mind you). Instead, the typical first interaction with your show might look a lot more like this:
*Sigh* All that work to acquire a new listener for naught, simply because they picked the wrong first episode to listen to. Over the lifetime of your show, this experience will play out thousands of times. Which means thousands of your ideal listeners will start listening to your show… only to churn, simply because their first interaction with the show didn’t meet their expectations. For most shows, this is the norm. But it doesn’t have to be. And while you can’t count on every potential listener to have a friend willing to roll out the red carpet and curate a personalized onboarding experience for your show, you can replicate it yourself. How? Your email welcome sequence. Or, as I like to think of it, your Ignition Sequence. Your Ignition Sequence is one of the most powerful tools in your business because of how it allows you to “program in" the messaging, content, and experience each new subscriber will receive. Here are just a few of the options available to you. On the podcast front, you can deliver targeted episode recommendations and playlists, ensuring their first impression of the show is both highly relevant and highly satisfying, resulting in more first-time listeners becoming long-time listeners. But that’s just the start. Your Ignition Sequence also allows you to concisely communicate your key messages about who you are, what you do, your POV about your topic, and more. In doing so, you answer many of the questions your audience members need to have answered before buying from you, lowering the friction and increasing the efficiency and effectiveness of all future promotions or sales campaigns. From there, you can add one or more targeted product offers. Even if these aren’t hard pitches, these offers ensure every member of your audience now has awareness (the first step of any buyer’s journey) of your offerings planted in their minds, which your show now has the potential to nurture. The best part about the Ignition Sequence? Once you’ve set it up, it’s 100% automated. Which means each new audience member receives the best possible first impression (and the best possible chance of eventually buying) with zero ongoing input from you. Said differently: More listeners and more buyers with less effort. If you’re wondering how to design and install your own Ignition Sequence, you’ll want to check out my new product. It’s called The Email Engine. Inside, you’ll see how I designed the straightforward 3-part email system that has added 13,000+ highly-aligned subscribers and $750k to my business over the past few years. Based on nearly 10 years of email marketing experimentation—including 6 failed newsletters, countless non-converting lead magnets, and every email marketing mistake in the book—The Email Engine is my proprietary system for using email to work alongside your podcast to grow your business with as little ongoing maintenance as possible. Once The Email Engine launches, it will be a $500 product, minimum. During this week’s launch, however, you can get it for only $100—a whopping $400 discount. The deadline to grab this deal is this Friday, June 28th at midnight Eastern. Check out the details here: ​The Email Engine​
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