This is the show for Digital Creators by digital Creators, hosted by me, Dylan Schmidt, a Los Angeles based content creator who loves to blend marketing, creativity, and business. Join in as we explore online entrepreneurship, creator best practices, and more. Each week, I'll bring you interviews with successful creators, tips and tricks for growing your online presence, and simple insights into the latest trends and strategies I'm seeing and using in the space. Welcome to digital, Podcaster. So let's talk about email newsletters. You might be signed up to my own email newsletter that I send out every Tuesday and Friday morning here. If you're in Los Angeles West Coast like I am, but there's probably less than a 50% chance that you are. But yeah, I send it out every Tuesday and Friday, and in it I include a variety of things and you probably notice an uptick in the amount of email newsletters you're seeing and being advertised. And they've gotten a lot popular these days because they're valuable. People are selling newsletters for a lot of money and it's becoming a good return on investment for creators and advertisers. Really? And why is that? Because email newsletters are personal to the people you're sending it to. You can include a bunch of links and they can be highly niched and the audience can be really interested in a specific subject. Like, my audience is mainly interested in podcasting, content creation, things like that. I don't take on any advertisers, but advertisers would see that as lucrative. Now, a problem most people have when it comes to their email newsletter is not always like, what did they say in the email newsletter? Although that is a problem, one of it is like, how do I get subscribers? Because moving people from social media to your email newsletter is if you've tried, it not as easy as it seems. Moving people from social media to absolutely anything else actually is not as easy as it seems. You can't just put up a link and just be like, hey, come follow me here or come sign up for my email newsletter. We get so much email every day. People aren't just willingly like, hey, I would love to just give you my email address and send me an email. Unless it's just the direct email, not a newsletter. So what I wanted to share with you quickly is how I've been able to increase the subscribers of my email newsletter without know, hoping that people move from social media to my newsletter. If you follow me on Instagram or TikTok, you'll see I don't really talk about my newsletter all that much, maybe a couple times a month, but it's nothing crazy. And I've really been utilizing paid ads to grow my email newsletter. There's a couple of things I've done, so one, before we get into paid ads, first thing I've done is I've replaced. If you go on Dylanschmidt.com, you can see that there's all these opt ins. On most of the pages that you can click on, it says currently, like the headline is Stay updated, stay Ahead, something like that, or Stay ahead, stay updated. And it's a call to action to join my newsletter. And that's worked pretty well. Over the last couple of months, I've gotten a few hundred sign ups from it and it's really simple, nothing crazy, it doesn't promise anybody anything. It's not like a lead magnet generator where it's like, sign up for this PDF blueprint of and you'll learn X number of things and then they sign up for my email newsletter. No, it's very straightforward. Like you'll get my newsletter and this is what you'll get when you sign up for my newsletter. I like that approach because if they're coming for one thing and you give them another, the relationship is just starting off on a weird foot. And sure, they might like your newsletter, but they didn't sign up specifically for your newsletter. Versus if someone just came into your world, they signed up for your newsletter and that's what they knew they were getting and that's what they got. You're going to have a much better relationship, right. Give the people what they ask for and what you told them that you would give them. And that's my approach with that. And I really like that. And I think a lot of people undervalue their newsletter because they think they have to fluff it up with all these different things. So that's one way I've been able to grow my newsletter by hundreds is just by simply adding opt in on the different pages of my website. You can go to Dylanschmidt.com to have an idea of that. You can also see if you opt in and you might have already done this is they get a welcome confirmation email. And because I'm staying consistent every Tuesday and Friday with my email newsletter, people are seeing it regularly. I send it out at the same time every Tuesday and Friday. It's reliable. And what the structure inside the email is, is reliable. The topics might change, but the format and how they find things, I want that to be reliable, but I also want it to have a little bit of a novelty factor. So I include a random fact at the very top, but that random fact is always at the very top. You don't have to look around for that, right? Those repeatable things make it easier for me to create. Yeah, because I know what goes in what spot, but it also just adds a level of predictableness that is good. When you're a reader, you want to know what's in there. I don't really like newsletters when I'm not a huge big fan of newsletters anyways, but I don't like when I don't know what's going on. It's like, oh, this was an ad here. Oh, this was an ad. And if you consume my stuff, you're probably like, wow, there's really not much. I don't even see ads. There is at the bottom where I say like, hey, here's how we could work together. But I keep it simple. And everyone has their own goal with that. But yeah, so that's my goal, is just building relationships. That's how I see email newsletters and make the invitation at the bottom if someone wants to work with me. So when it comes to growing my email newsletter, there's another thing I've been doing. And this was only about a week, a little bit of about a week ago, I have been doing this new strategy. I had a random idea. I got home from meeting with a client, and I was like, let's try this out. So I was telling my client, like, hey, I've grown my Instagram or not grown my Instagram. Yeah, well, kind of I reached because this client values reach on their Instagram. I'm like, I've reached 460,000 people on this Instagram account, one of my side accounts that only has like 315 followers in the last couple of months. Like this summer, I've reached like 460,000 people, 315 followers. And he was like, what? That's insane. And just his interest level, seeing that feedback in person. I was like, oh, I guess that is kind of crazy. And so when I got home, I was like, you know what, I should make a quick little workshop about it of me going through my Instagram account and why that's kind of crazy and what I think is the case. And just kind of my thoughts. Because when you achieve that level of reach on an Instagram account that doesn't have any followers or a targeted niche or anything is kind of crazy. And it's something that people would want to know about. And I could just put it in a YouTube video. I could just record it in a podcast here. But I wanted to make it a little bit more special in terms of presentation, in terms of relationship depth kind of thing. So I was like, you know what, let's just put this behind. Let's put it on a simple opt in landing page where you enter your name and email. That page will also say what I'm going to cover in there and add some anticipation about what they're going to learn. And then it will just go to a video. And then the video will be on the next page. And then it'll say, like, book a discovery call with me because I'm working with certain solopreneurs small businesses, helping them around their marketing, content creation, a lot of organic marketing these days. And so I would just add a link to Book a call with me and keep it really simple. And I made that video real fast because it didn't need a high production value. It's really just me setting the scene like who I am, because these people won't know who I am. And then breaking it down, sharing my screen and then that's me breaking it down. And that's something I really couldn't do on a podcast very well anyways. And also on YouTube, I feel like the editing needs to be tighter to make any real impact. So it doesn't really fit to me on YouTube. Well, or a podcast because it's visual and it's a little bit slower and it's like targeted. So made the video, recorded it here at my desk on Ecamm Live and then put it on Vimeo, put the Vimeo link on the website and then I was off to the races. Made up like a simple one two, like a confirmation email that they get right after they sign up and then they get a day later. I think it's another email. It's just like, hey, I hope you enjoyed that. And here's a little bit about who I am. Because adding a little bit of context of who I am, but also in a friendly and inspiring way I think is important because there's also not enough context these days. We just assume and we just go for know, ask for something and it's like, I don't know, I just want to build relationships. So I put it up and then I'm like, you know, I'm going to run ads. And former, previous guest on digital podcaster, John Loomer, who's like one of the top Facebook ad experts, he gave this awesome tip on his Instagram and he posts a video every day and I love him and John's a great guy and it was a tip about making the goal. I'm going to butcher this Facebook goal. But it was basically don't, don't make the campaign goal. Go for traffic and clicks for your Facebook ads. Go for some type of conversion goal. So what I did was I put the Facebook pixel on the page. That happens after the opt in, not on the opt in page and where the second page is after they've already filled out the info. And then I made that the goal. So basically people who opted in Facebook would find more of those people because if they got to the page and then didn't opt in, well, I don't want more of those, I want the people that opted in. So right away I started seeing an increase and I also set up using Zapier, an automation that linked people who signed up for this deep dive to also be added to my newsletter. So not only are they getting value through that, they'll be getting value through my newsletter as well. And there's a correlation there, right? Because I talk about social media and things like that in my newsletter. I also give news and stuff like that. So if you're interested in staying up to date on Instagram and things like that, which it's an Instagram deep dive in that workshop video. And if you want to see that, if you're listening to this right now, it's the link in my bio, I can't think of the URL, but if you go to Instagram, my Instagram digital podcaster, and you go to the link in my bio, you'll see it. It might not be up there by the time you hear this because I'm always testing things. But it's been working really well. And that's the goal of why I'm sharing this with you, is it's been working really well, is having the pixel be on the success page, the video page, and Facebook finding more people like that. They've been able to find a bunch of people like that, and it's grown. I think it's up to like 100 now, maybe in a week or so, but I've been spending like $10 or less a day. Nothing crazy, but enough that I've been able to see some results and I might start ramping it up. More people have been booking calls, which has been awesome. But I wanted to share that strategy with you because it's the little nuances, right? Previously, you know, I would only have the pixel on the main page, and then I would just go to Facebook and say and create a Facebook ad and be like, hey, I want people to go to this page and click on this page. But that distinction from John's video of like, put the pixel on the success page on the video page, and that isn't specifically what he said in the video, but for my situation, that's what worked. So that's what I did. And it's been fantastic. And the conversions have been much better and it's been money more well spent. And I start hopping on the calls this week with people who have booked a call from opting in from there. So we'll see how that goes. But that's been a really nice way for me to grow my newsletter and get discovery calls booked and not having to have spent a bunch of time creating this resource. I'm just sharing something that I've found success in with my own self. It's kind of like my own case study, in a way, and I'm sharing exactly what I've done to get exactly this certain result with screenshots, to back it up and keep it simple. There's nothing. It's just really low. Not low, I guess you could say, like a pretty low effort, but high reward, high value for the person consuming it, because I know I would want to consume that, would want to be like, what? How is this also he's not really selling me anything. This is not like some big sales pitch. If you want to book a discovery call, you can, and it's free, but you don't have to to get the value of everything I say in the video. So that's what I've been doing. And it's not the only way I grow my newsletter, right? But it's a way of that. I've added 100 subscribers in the last week, at least 100. It might have been more. I'm not keeping a super close eye on it other than I get a notification email each day with a recap of how many people have joined. Yeah, so that's what I've been doing. I also do run other ads to my Facebook or using Facebook to my newsletter that are just like that's just an ongoing thing that's using Facebook ads. I think it's called like leads or something like that, where they can opt in right from Instagram or Facebook has their information sometimes pre filled out. There is a little bit know discussion around how quality those leads are. And truth be told, only time will tell. I'm seeing pretty good opt in rates with that. But I think it's like a relationship thing. So we'll see over a longer term, like how many of those people stick around. There are a little bit more unsubscribes with probably those people because they opt in so fast. I've noticed a couple of people don't even know what they opted in for. They're like, I didn't mean to get this. And I'm like, I'm sorry I didn't sign you up for it. It's just they might have signed up, their info might have been pre filled, they're pocketed it, who knows? It wasn't a lot of those people, but it was a couple. So I don't really know. But quality is probably a little lower, but at the same time you're getting more of them. So I see it as probably worth it if those pan out. But yeah, that's what I've been doing for my newsletter. It's been working well. If I add in a new strategy that I think is worth sharing on here, I'll do that. Something I'm also wanting to do on this podcast is just a little bit more of stuff like this. What I'm doing, what's working, what's not working and what I'm doing to remedy that also, I guess, kind of make it like a Vlog a little bit while mixing in conversations with successful entrepreneurs, creators, people who are doing something that could help us all be better at what we're trying to do. So that's all I got for you this week. I hope you are doing great and I will see you in the next episode.