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AWeber

From:
AWeber
Subject:

Welcome to Drama School

Well hello there friend.

I'm so grateful that you've signed up for Drama School. I've included the getting started checklist below, but first I wanted to commit to doing my best to make sure that we're sharing ideas, data, prompts, tutorials and conversations to help you grow your audience and turn them into as engaged a community as possible.

Along the way, I have two asks for you:

  • Reply to me. If you have a question, if you've come up with an idea, if you think we've gotten something wrong, or if you want to partner up on something, please email me. You have my address.
  • Share your podcast with me! I'm a serious audio fiction/drama fan and am always looking for great shows. We'll showcase some of our favorites to our community.

Now, like I promised, here's your up-and-running checklist

1. Sign Up for an Email Provider.

The company I work for, AWeber, has a free plan for up to 500 subscribers that I'm pretty partial to, but there are other tools out there as well.

2. Create a Landing Page.

The purpose of your landing page is to communicate what additional benefits and content your podcast audience will get from your email. This could be anything from whole new story content, to behind the scenes commentary, to fan art.

Some best practices:

  • Clarity is key. When you're first starting out, make sure you have a clear value proposition (what special value are people going to get from your email that they can't get anywhere else?), and call to action.
  • Try to keep your signup form "above the fold." Although many people will scroll, you can ensure that people who love you and just want to sign up can do so as easily as possible.
  • Make your signup call to action button interesting. Instead of "Sign up" why not "Join the community" or something that plays off an inside joke your listeners would know.
  • If you have them, include positive testimonials and good vibe comments from your email listeners and subscribers.
  • Make sure you have your social sharing imagery set so Twitter, Facebook, etc create cards that look attractive and professional.

Note: You can create as many as you want on AWeber.

3. Create a welcome message or series.

Your welcome message is probably going to be one of your most opened and engaged messages you ever send. This is because everyone who signs up gets the message immediately after signing up, so you know they're already excited to hear from you.

Welcome messages and series are a fantastic way to show your audience what they can expect from you, ask for feedback, and cross-promote.

This email you're reading right now is my welcome email from my onboarding campaign.

Note: To make it as easy as possible to get started, we made a fill-in-the-blanks style welcome campaign for you to import into your account if you use AWeber. If you need help or use another email platform, just reach out and I'll be there to help!

4. Share Your Page with Your Audience.

So far you have a landing page for people to join your list and a welcome campaign that will automatically start a conversation with them once they join.

Now it's time to share! Here are a couple suggestions on how to promote your signup (remember to communicate what extra benefits they'll get by signing up):

  • Ask people to sign up on your show.
  • Share a post on on social media.
  • Put a link on your podcast website.
  • Talk to your super fans and ask them to share.
  • Add to your social media profiles.

Chris Vasquez

Podcast Listener and Email Maker