SPI 869: Stop Renting Your Audience. Do This Instead.

SPI 869: Stop Renting Your Audience. Do This Instead.

Pat Flynn: I want you to imagine spending years building up an audience, building a lot of credibility and authority on Facebook. We’ll just use Facebook as an example, and you’re communicating with your audience. You are engaging with them, you’re making sales, and you wake up one morning and all of a sudden it’s gone.

You don’t have access to this community anymore. In fact, your account is completely gone. And when you reach out to Facebook to try to get some help and to try to recover this thing, they say, “Sorry, you’re out of luck, we can’t do anything.” Well, this is exactly what happened to me, and it wasn’t even my fault.

This is a little bit of a reason why I just have a very, very strong dislike toward Facebook. Facebook has not been helpful. I had an account that had for years been building a list and a following on a page and then in groups, and a lot of marketing was starting to be done through advertisements, and I had hired a company, I’m not gonna mention the name of the company.

You gotta be careful, do your due diligence is all. I’ll say, well, this company unfortunately didn’t have good security measures and a lot of their accounts were hacked through this company, through this agency. Mine included. And as a result, some other brand or company started using my account, my credit card to spend money on ads on Facebook for things that were against Facebook’s terms of service, and it violated their ad policy.

And as a result, my ad account got banned and flagged. It was blacklisted. So when I went to Facebook. I reached out to them and I’ve even gotten so high, is to talk to specific directors or regional directors, I don’t know, really, really higher up people at Facebook and told them the story that it wasn’t my fault that this was through a company that I hired.

I was, my accountant, was hacked, and yet they just say, sorry, nothing can happen. You have to start from scratch, years of effort put in to build credibility and build an audience. Just gone. So this is why, if you were ever wondering why you never see ads from SPI on your Facebook pages or Instagram, that is exactly the reason why. And we have a lot of missed opportunity because of that. Thankfully, I have built something on the side of this that has still allowed me to communicate with my audience. That has still allowed me to stay in close contact with them, especially during promotions, and almost treat it as if it’s my own ad platform.

And it’s one of the best platforms that you could ever have access to. I can speak to people directly. I can personalize things. I can also time things and automate them. It has accounted for millions of dollars in my business. What am I talking about? Well, I’m talking about email and if you catch that, that’s where I was going.

Yeah. Email marketing. I. It is still today the most important platform that you can have in your business for a number of reasons. Not just the reasons for selling and promotion, not even just for engagement and having direct conversations with who your target audience is, but as an insurance policy in case something like this happens, like what happened to me on Facebook, and this is not an uncommon case.

It has become so common, not just from Facebook, but getting banned on certain platforms that you are building a community on. From Facebook to TikTok to Instagram, to Threads to YouTube, overnight people’s accounts, just getting banned, algorithm changes, reducing reach, suspensions, platform policy changes, and sometimes even coordinated reporting or flagging attacks.

And I’m not here to try and scare you. I’m making a case for focusing on email or refocusing on it. I know it was a big thing back in the early 2010s, and then social media came on, and then everything from Pinterest to all these other things that I talked about have become front and center as far as growing.

And yes, it is still important to build on social. Social has, in my opinion, replaced search engine optimization for discoverability. But here is the phrase that changes everything. You must own what you’ve grown. You must own what you’ve grown because these things can happen to you. And I didn’t think it would happen to me, but it did.

And these things have become so common that there are now companies that exist that are there to help you get your accounts back. I’ve tried working with some and I’ve found out two things. Number one, at least for Facebook, it’s impossible to get your stuff back. So yeah, thanks Facebook. But secondly, this is so common that there are now scammer companies who just have bots on social media. When a person, for example, on X will say, and this is what happened to me. I say, Hey, my Facebook account was banned. I’ve been trying to get it back. They have keywords. These bots have keywords to look for people who are saying such things about their accounts being banned on all these other platforms.

They try to offer you a service, and more than half of them I’ve found, and I found this out, number one, through engaging with some of them, but also number two, from talking to a lot of people who’ve also been duped, that many of these companies just aren’t able to help. They’re just to kind of, as you are worried as you are in this mental state of, oh my gosh, I need to get my account back because I’ve been working for it for so long.

Or working on it for so long that they just take advantage of you and, and that’s not good. So beware of that in case your account ever does get banned for whatever reason. But it’s not just the banding, it’s the algorithm changes. Right. There have been a number of cases, and even some of my close friends whose accounts, they show me their graphs, where overnight it looks like just a cliff, their views or their reach just goes down immediately.

And then all this work starts to just feel like it was for nothing. It’s such a painful, painful situation. Algorithm changes that have stopped people, even sellers on Amazon. I had done an episode a long time ago when Amazon changed their affiliate program from earning upwards of eight to 10% in some categories, and then all, all of a sudden just overnight change again, almost without warning. 1% in 2%. I mean, some people’s whole livelihoods were built on the Amazon affiliate program who just overnight had to go get a job because they weren’t able to make up that cost from the change.

So I want to make a case for email marketing. This year and why this year and every year forward, it’s still going to be the most important thing that you can do because you have to again, own what you’ve grown.

You own your email list. I mean even more than a website. You own your email list. It’s a direct one-to-one communication channel with your audience and one to many as well. Yes, it’s a broadcast system, but I like it as a broad ask system to be able to ask people. Directly, what do you need help with? Or why didn’t you purchase my product?

And then you can get feedback directly so you can adjust and pivot. There really isn’t an algorithm determining who sees your content. Now, I say that with an asterisk because there is email deliverability, which is almost like search engine optimization for email inboxes. You have to write your emails and be on trustworthy servers and have a good “spam score”, meaning you want to have a healthy email list such that your emails actually do end up in a person’s inbox. So that’s sort of algorithm number one. The other algorithm, which is less a machine learning algorithm, but more a human algorithm is how do you cut through the noise of everybody else in a person’s inbox?

And so this is of course, the subject line and getting your email whitelisted, this is why having a person reply to your email. Especially when you’re just starting out, one of the best things you can do if you’re building your email list is have people be encouraged to reply to you, like have them realize that there’s another person on the other end.

Even if you’re sending broadcast emails out, having people reply helps that person’s email client like a Gmail or an Outlook or a Yahoo, or heavens forbid, a AOL or Hotmail or Y Mail. Right? Is it? Is was Y mail, Yahoo Mail. I dunno. It helps those clients understand, oh, this person who’s sending this email is worth.

Not just including in our inbox and not in our spam folder, but sometimes inboxes are algorithmic in that they surface importance. There’s a lot of AI related things happening in email. If you have a newer iPhone in your message, or excuse me, mail application, you’ll see that sometimes important messages are highlighted at the top based on your previous interactions with certain people or companies that send emails your way.

Emails have a much higher conversion rate, compared to social media. And it is platform independent and it’s future proof. Again, this is how you future proof your business. In 2013, when my website was hacked, email was the thing that helped me from going insane and thinking like I had lost everything.

My website was hacked. There was a DDoS attack on the website, and as a result, I wasn’t able to get access to my website and blog. And of course the blog was the most important platform back then. Now it’s not so much, but the website’s still obviously key. I had lost access to it, and it took two and a half weeks to get access back.

But during those two and a half weeks, I was still able to publish podcast episodes, send emails out to people saying that those episodes were published, and just let people know what was going on. If I didn’t have my email list built, which I started in 2010, that wouldn’t have happened. So hopefully by now 10 minutes into this episode, you’re convinced to either start an email list if you haven’t already.

Please do I recommend checking out Kit. If you haven’t, if you go to SmartPassiveIncome.com/kit, I am an advisor to Kit. We use Kit in our business and it can grow with you. It’s amazing. And the first 10,000 subscribers in your account are free. No other email service platform has that kind of a deal.

So SmartPassiveIncome.com/kit.

But for the next 10 or 15 minutes, let’s talk about the three key pillars of effective email marketing. Email marketing can go very, very deep. We have a course inside of our SPI community called Email Marketing Magic, and this is a course that if you are a member of the SPI community, you have access to, and I highly recommend you check it out.

You could build your email list in the way that we teach the smart way. And again, there are a million things that you can do. We teach you just what you need to know to grow. And I’m gonna go over three important pillars as you focus on email. And if you already have an email list, this is something to think about, or these are things to potentially incorporate into what it is that you’re doing.

And of course, a reminder of you to go back to some of these basics which you’ve probably left behind.

So key pillar number one for effective email marketing is number one, permission and relevance. Now, of course, anybody could go out and buy an email list. There are websites, unfortunately, that have databases of email lists that you could purchase.

But the problem with that, and I’ve never tried this because it just seems scummy to me anyway, but I know some people in this world who have, and every single time it’s treated as more of a, okay, let’s buy this huge list, let’s say for example, of a hundred thousand contacts. Ideally, if you were going to do something like that, you want it to be within the niche that you’re in, but let’s say best case scenario that it is.

Well, you didn’t get permission to send the emails to those a hundred thousand people. So when you do, it’s gonna do two things. Number one, you’re gonna get a ton of people who are like, who the heck are you? And they’re probably just, even without responding, going to either mark your email as spam. Which is going to increase your spam score and that’s going to decrease the number of times your emails, your legitimate emails go into a person’s inbox and it’s gonna be more likely they’ll go into the spam folder.

But number two, it’s just you’re gonna lose trust with people immediately and people will start to associate your brand with something that’s like, okay, just here to mass, kind of shout out something or sell something without really building a relationship first. Right. I have seen the email purchases work, the email list, purchasing work in a few rare scenarios, and that rare scenario is when there is a brand takeover, like an acquisition.

And of course in that regard, you’re also buying an email list, but it’s more formalized and there’s often a re grand opening, right? You know when you see like under new management, it’s something like that. And if you were to think of your brand acquiring another one, and you say, Hey, new companies, email list people, like we just acquired this company that you’re familiar with.

Here’s who we are. Let me introduce myself. Here’s what we hope to achieve together. And you’re having, again, this legitimate conversation. You’re building a relationship before. Any sort of selling or any promotions kind of happen. That’s where I’ve seen it work really, really well. And then I’ve seen some people who, you know, it’s not an acquisition, they purchase an email list and they go very heavy on building a relationship first by offering a ton of value upfront.

And we’ll talk about value a little bit later, but proper consent to send stuff and setting that expectation is key. So, if you are building an email list and you’re like, Hey everybody, come and join my exclusive newsletter every week, I’m gonna share a tip for you about X, Y, and Z. Great. And in the first couple emails, you’re just promoting stuff then?

Yeah. That’s not what they expected. They got something different than what they had signed up for. There are methods to the madness. Of course, yes, you can have people sign up for something for free and get exclusive newsletter tips and whatnot, and also learn how to promote and sell properly, but it’s not gonna happen from almost what seems like a bait and switch Sometimes in that scenario, you want to get people on your list, build a relationship with them, especially if they’re coming in for something free, like a lead magnet, a PDF file of access to a video, a mini course, or something like that.

Build that relationship, provide value, and then ask. Now, it might take seven days to build that relationship. It might take seven months. It depends on what it is that you are promoting and what it is that in general, how long might you have to build a relationship before the ask? How many dates do you have to go on before you ask for marriage, right?

It’s different for every product and every person, every niche, and industry. So proper consent is key. Set those expectations, and when you deliver more value, you’re able to sort of ask for more over time. Right? It’s the Gary Vaynerchuk. What he calls the jab, jab, jab, and then right hook, give, give, give, give, and then ask.

Secondly, when it comes to permission and relevance, especially that second term relevance, sending stuff that matters is going to be key. I made the mistake at one point of putting all of the same people onto my more general email list, and as somebody who is an entrepreneur who teaches a wide range of topics, I found that it wasn’t very helpful for people to receive emails that weren’t about the specific things that they were wanting to learn about, especially if I brought them into the newsletter about one thing and then started talking about something else.

For example, bringing people into the email list because of a podcast cheat sheet. And then now they go into this one bucket where I send sometimes stuff about search engine optimization. I might send stuff about setting up a website for the first time. I might send stuff about podcasting every once in a while, but not every email hits.

Therefore people will either unsubscribe or in a worst case scenario, they’ll see like, oh, this isn’t what I wanted, and hit the spam button. And that again, that’s not good. So the more honed in, you can be with the messages that you’re sending and to whom, the better it’s going to be. The more likely people are to open those emails, the more likely people are to respond, either by hitting reply or even just clicking on something.

And the more personalized that content can be, the better. So over time, and we talk about this in our course, email Marketing Magic over time, having segmentation, having the ability for you to send emails and messages that are specifically for certain people on your list and not sending them to others who those things might not be relevant for is really, really important.

And then finally, the idea of just respecting. Just common decency and respect of your audience’s inbox. The idea that you are not there to add more noise, but to provide something of value and to provide something relevant to them, right? Just I think that general understanding of respecting the audiences, not just their inbox, but just your audience in the human on the other end.

In general, remember every person that makes up those numbers of a hundred emails on your list, 200, 2000, 20,000 email lists, those are real people. Those are human beings who have their own inboxes. They sign in and your email is either going to just add more noise and just be immediately deleted or ignored, or it’s gonna be open, they’re gonna be excited about it, and it’s gonna feel like a gift to them. And that’s what I wanna have you understand. Every time you create a piece of content, if you can consider it as a potential gift for whoever’s consuming it, whether it’s an email or a piece of content on one of these social media platforms, or a video, or a podcast, or a blog post.

If you treat it like a gift, something that you know is going to be worth that person’s time, then great. You’ve already beat 90% of the people out there who are also creating content and very selfish about it. You can serve and sell at the same time.

Key pillar number two, a value first approach, which does relate to what we just talked about, value first.

These emails are a gift, so providing genuine utility in every email. Now, utility doesn’t necessarily mean, okay, here are some instructions in this email that I can now implement and we’ll get a result from. Although that is a smart thing to do, I like to do that, especially in nurture sequences. Early on in the nurture sequence, nurture sequence, if you don’t know, or an automation sequence are emails that you can write ahead of time just once.

They get dripped out to your audience. So if a person subscribes today, they might get email one today and email two next week. If a person subscribes next week, they’ll get email one that day and then email two a week after that. So you can build these rhythms in, which is really cool. But providing genuine utility.

Yes, make those first emails that come out more quick wins. As I like to say, the more that you can get a person to see and experience a quick win, meaning yes, here, go do this thing and get this result that you’ve probably been trying to get for a while. And here, look at how easy I’ve made it for you.

Genuine utility, actual result, they’re gonna be more likely to open those further emails, click on them, trust you, take your recommendations and purchase your stuff. So provide genuine utility, but that doesn’t necessarily mean always, like I said, step-by-step stuff. It might mean a story that connects. It might mean helping a person feel like they are a part of a community or that you can relate to what they’re going through.

This is all utility as well. Writing just to fill in space, I know some people when they are creating a nurture sequence, they’re like, okay, I need 10 emails. I’m just gonna randomly insert these filler emails in here so I can get the 10 emails specifically for the next 10 weeks. That’s not good. Don’t ever create filler stuff if you don’t need to send it, and it’s not gonna be a value.

Don’t send it. It’s more value to not put it in front of a person if it’s just going to be a waste of time. So provide genuine utility in all those different kinds of ways. Another key concept in the world of value first approach is the idea of balancing promotional content with valuable insights.

Again, part of the expectation of a person coming in is gonna be important with regards to that balance. For example, if you have a camera website and you let people know upfront, Hey, every email I send you is going to promote some new piece of camera equipment, then of course every email you write can do that.

People wouldn’t subscribe without knowing that if you position it upfront. But again, if you say, Hey, I’m going to give you tips and only tips, and I’m never gonna promote anything, and then you do, that’s not good either. There is a world in which you can do both. You can sell and serve at the same time.

So when it comes to your emails, the two types of emails there are, are broadcast emails. These are emails that are kind of written in real time. Some of them could be more promotional. If there’s something like a sale that’s happening or a promotion, there is an end date or a deadline to sign up by.

You want to use broadcast to supply information and let people know about that. Yes. But in your autoresponder series or your nurture sequence, looking at it almost like a flow chart, okay, day one, they get this email. Okay? I’m not gonna include promotional stuff, but I am going to introduce myself and really connect.

Email number two is gonna be this. This will be sent out a week later. It’s gonna be something that connects emotionally. I’m gonna tell more of my story in that one. A week later email number three, they’re going to hear about a story of one of my other students, not me, but my other student, and that way they can see they’re not alone and there’s other people in this community like them.

Email number four, I will talk about a program that I have. I’m not gonna sell it hard, but I will mention that it is available in case people at this point are curious about it. Email number five is gonna go into more logistical reasons why a person should sign up for this, da, da, da, da. Again, if you zoom out and see these emails that people get and the days in between them and what they’re about and how to approach them.

You’re going to be much, much better off because people will be going on this journey with you. They’ll be opening these emails, and over time you can look at these emails, see which ones are being opened more. You can adjust subject lines so that the ones that are less opened are open to more over time, you can see which ones people are clicking on.

People aren’t clicking on ones that have links, then you can swap the link out for something else or reposition it so that you can actually adjust things over time. Make them better, not just like, here’s my nurture sequence and then walk away and hope, but you’re constantly adjusting. That’s going to be really, really important as you go along.

A lot of these things that are more technical are talked about in the Email Marketing magic course inside of the community. So I don’t wanna go too deep into that here. But the final thing with Value First approach is really focusing on the storytelling. People are already able to get the information they need anywhere they want.

What they don’t get is the story and the relatability easily. That’s what you can offer them if they sign up. Not only does it help them realize they’re not alone, but it builds more trust and connective tissue to you. So use storytelling to create connection that’s gonna be key. So we talked about permission and relevance.

That’s the first key pillar. The second key pillar, having that value first approach. Utility in those emails by telling, yes, the step-by-step process, but also the storytelling and being able to think holistically about the promotional content versus the valuable insights and the storytelling. So that’s important.

Key pillar number three. This one is definitely really, really important, is consistency and being consistent. Showing up, but not just in the amount of emails and how often you send them out, but also in the messaging in how you show up in the language that you use, in how you connect with people. I think that’s going to be the cherry on top and where most email marketers fall short.

I cannot tell you how often I come across people who have an email list, who never send emails. Who aren’t consistently showing up. And if you aren’t consistently showing up, how can people consistently believe in what you’re saying? That’s just the truth. So building a sustainable email rhythm is going to be something that you need to commit to and stick with. And this is something that is helpful when you have that quote unquote weekly newsletter. Like we have the Unstuck Newsletter, which comes out weekly, but we also have consistency in how we follow up with certain things that you might take action with.

We have emails that consistently group together certain discussions that are happening in our community, and we send those out to the community so that they’re not missing a beat on what is happening inside of the forum. And that plus using the data as you are consistent, right? If you’re not consistent, you’re not consistently getting data that you can learn from.

That’s the other thing is analyzing the metrics to improve that engagement. Like I said, the subject lines, the open rates, which are, like I said, the subject lines and the click through rates within both your nurture sequences and autoresponders as well as your broadcast, you will see that data come in fairly quickly.

Having the ability to consciously go in and say, okay, what can I do better? This time is going to be really, really important. So if you are just getting started, here are a few things to consider. Number one, make sure you select the right email service provider. The most economical and the one that I trust, the one that I’ve used since 2014, that’s over a decade now and we’re still using it, is Kit.

If you go to SmartPassiveIncome.com/kit, you can get access to that and check out their starter plan, which has the first 10,000 email subscribers free for you. Which you really can’t beat. Create compelling lead magnets, a lead magnet, and just one really compelling one to start out with is gonna be key.

That is something that you create that is an incentive, a gift to offer those who are maybe on the fence or who just don’t know what they’re gonna get in return, right? Yes, you’re gonna send stuff over time, but what is the one thing they’re gonna get immediately that they’re going to get value from, so create that compelling lead magnet.

There are a million different kinds of lead magnets that you can create from the first chapter of your book, and giving that away to a video, to a mini course, to some one page PDF file. The one thing I’ll say about lead magnets is it’s not about how big A PDF file is or how long a video is. Actually, the opposite’s true.

It’s better if it’s shorter. If you can get a person to get that result faster, that’s better. It used to be different. I used to have a 73 page lead magnet and then come late 2010s, nobody was downloading it because people didn’t have the time or just wanted to get a 73 page ebook. And so we changed it up and we have these cheat sheets and these guides now that we offer as lead magnets for certain things.

We have multiple now, but the one thing you need to know is that. It’s not about the size of it. Bigger is actually going to work against you because of how heavy it might feel. If you can change a tire for somebody, what is more valuable, spending two hours to change it and tell a person exactly every step you’re doing or just literally change the tire in five minutes and leave, you are more valuable if you get to the result quicker.

So that’s lead magnets. Having a form or an effective signup process is key. Kit makes this easy both with landing pages that you can create. You don’t even need a website to start building your website now. Or you can go to forms that are put on a website that you already have. So have that be simple, have it be clear what people are getting.

Again, that expectation is really key. Practice writing great subject lines. Use ai. Like ChatGPT and Claude to come up with different examples. If you’ve written an email, actually plug that into AI and say, what are three to five different subject lines that would be clickable for my audience? And you can explain who your audience is as well, so that the AI can get into the heads of who it is that your target audience is and see which ones stand out to you.

The ideal situation, and I take this advice from those who are really big on YouTube, is to actually start with the title, or excuse me, start with the subject line. We’re talking about emails here, but for YouTube, the way to win on YouTube is start with the title first. ’cause that’s the first thing people see.

Same thing with email, because start with the subject line first and then write that email. That way you’re getting past that, the barrier of like, why would I even open this? Right? Because if people aren’t even opening your emails. Then there’s really no reason to write them. So start with the subject line that are worth opening, and then write that, and then finally over time, build those automated sequences that that help you do things right.

The most classic example of an automated sequences, once a person buys your product, then stop sending them emails about your product or to actually buy it. ’cause they’ve already bought it, right? You can have them switch over to the one that’s about using the product instead of buying it. And setting up those automations again is key for building these systems that just work for you.

It’s gonna be a slow start as far as that’s concerned. Right. And you don’t wanna go overboard with that either. You can build this spider web of stuff that just is absolutely mind-boggling and confuses you and actually works against you. I once had that. So simplifying is key, but building the most important automations is going to help you remove yourself from this process and just have things work for you so you can focus again on the things that you want to.

It is something that is not sexy, as they say. It’s not as fun as social media. I will just be upfront with that. But once you build these systems and once you understand how email works and can work for you, it is the most powerful platform that you can learn how to use. It will be the most peace of mind building thing that you can do in your business, especially once you have these larger audiences built across various social media platforms, you need to protect yourself.

’cause think about it, while different social media platforms have come and gone, email has remained consistently effective for decades and it will continue to be vital for years to come. So start building an email list now. SmartPassiveIncome.com/kit. Use these principles again. We talked about the three key pillars, permission and relevance.

Think about how people are perceiving what it is that they’re signing up for. That would be a great filter for you. If you already have an email list, what are people thinking they’re gonna get and do you actually deliver on that? And is it even worth signing up for? Number two, the value first approach.

How are you over time showing people that you’re not just. Talking the talk, but you’re walking the walk. You are providing something that’s not just additional information, but you’re connecting and using stories to be able to do that. And number three, are you actually sending emails out? Because this isn’t just about building the email list, it’s about using it and using those emails that you send out consistently to learn more and more about what gets a person to open and then click on things.

All right. Cool. We’ll keep up the good work. Look forward to seeing how email works for you, and hit subscribe because we got a lot more stuff coming your way, especially now as we head into a mid-year here for you and your business. And if you’re just starting out, especially, it might be worth your while to go to 100Emails.com.

100Emails.com is one of our lead magnets. If you wanna see how this might work. It’s a three day email sequence that is delivered in a challenge to help you get to 100 emails. If you haven’t yet built an email list to 100 email subscribers, go to 100Emails.com and take the challenge. It’s a 72 hour, three day, challenge to get your first a hundred emails.

You don’t even need to sign up for anything as far as like email service providers. You just register, wait for those emails to come in and do the work, and that’s how simple it could be. So thank you. I appreciate you and all the best.