094: 5 Questions to Reframe Your View of Your Email List
Robby: The brand ad podcast with Robby
Fowler episode 94, 5 questions to
reframe your view of your email list.
Welcome to this episode, we're
going to do a little thought
experiment together to reframe how
we think or view our email list.
If you're a personal brand, you
know how important an email list is.
And let's start with how we typically
think about our view, our own email list.
So a typical view for us would be that
my audience is my potential customer.
And then my email list is composed
of a smaller subset of my audience
that usually includes warm leads.
My email list would include some
existing or past customers, and
hopefully my email list will include
what you might call some super fans.
So that's the typical
view of our email list.
We've got this broad audience when you
pulled together, social media, people
that may subscribe to your podcast.
That's your broad audience.
Then slightly more narrow
than that is your email list.
And if they're on your email list,
they're probably a warmer lead
than just if they've come across you
on social or seeing you on social.
Or if there may be a subscriber
to your podcast, if they're on
your email list, they're at least
as warm as a podcast subscriber.
And maybe even more so, and then
hopefully that email list includes
your customers or clients, and it
will even have some super fans.
So that's usually how
we view our email list.
And because of that, we know it
is the backbone of our business.
It is the place we often
turn to for revenue.
So if you have an offer, what do you do
with that offer where you're going to
push that offer out to your email list.
If you have a webinar.
Whereas one of the most effective
places to promote that webinar
it's to your email list.
So that's the typical way
we view our email list.
I want to give us a little thought
experiment today to freshen
up our view and think about.
If we change the paradigm.
Uh, of how we viewed our email list.
What that might do to.
Energize us and even energize
and transform the way we interact
or engage with our email list.
So here's a question I
want you to consider.
What would change if you
viewed yourself as a leader and
trusted with the real people?
That are on your email list.
What would change if you viewed
yourself as a leader and trusted with
the real people on your email list?
So let's.
Keep on with the.
Imagine this imaginary world.
And I want to imagine if.
The way that you received an email
list, the way you got an email
list was that some more experienced
personal brand business leader.
In a space or market that's similar
to the space or the market that, that
you're in this more experienced personal
brand business leader, watches you,
and they see your leadership in the
day in and day out the day to day stuff
of running your own business and life.
So they're just watching and observing.
And based on their observation of you.
They appoint you an email list.
I know that seems really strange
to us, but just play along
with me for a few minutes.
Just imagine if that's the
way you got an email list.
A more experienced personal
brand business leader watches.
Day in and day out.
And then based on that
appoints an email list to you.
So imagine it works like this.
You get a tap on the shoulder one day from
him or her, this more experienced personal
brand business leader in your space.
And they say, Hey, you're
a wise and faithful leader.
Go lead these 50 subscribers over there.
I imagine getting that
tap on the shoulder.
Hey, I've watched.
And I can see that as you're growing and
developing your wise and faithful leader,
go lead these 50 subscribers over there.
How would that perspective or
paradigm change the way that you view
and interact with your email list?
So here are five questions
to think about as we.
Play this imaginary game.
How might a shift?
From looking at your email
list through a lens that's.
Often, primarily transactional.
How would it shift if you
looked at your email list?
Not just as transactional,
but as relational.
So here's five questions to ask
yourself, as we play this imaginary
game together, if you were a leader
and you got tapped on the shoulder
and someone said, Hey, I've watched.
And go lead these 50 subscribers.
Go lead these 500.
Subscribers go over there.
Lead those 10,000 subscribers.
I'm going to have trust to you.
These 10,000 people.
Here are five questions to consider.
As we think about this paradigm, that's
different than the typical paradigm.
If that were true, your email list was a
group of people entrusted to you and you.
Are responsible in part to help lead them.
How would you approach your list?
How would you approach your
list that would change.
Question number two.
What would you do with your list?
If you're in town, if
they're entrusted to you.
And you play a leadership role and
their business and in their lives,
what would you do with your list?
Number three.
How interactive would
you be with your list?
If you viewed yourself?
As a leader and trusted with these people.
Rather than.
Potential buyers.
So how interactive would you pay?
With this different paradigm.
Question number four.
How frequently would you
reach out to your list?
If you've viewed yourself as
a leader, and these were folks
that were interested to you.
And then question number five.
What do you think that would
do to the ratio of a selling
or asking from your list versus
sharing or giving to your list?
I'm not suggesting that selling
or asking would go away.
I'm just asking you, if you thought
of yourself as a leader and the
subscribers were people that were
appointed to you so that you can.
Help lead them.
And be a part of the
leadership in their lives.
What would that do to the ratio
of what you're doing right now,
in terms of selling or asking
from your list versus sharing?
And giving to your list.
It's a fun thought experiment that
when we adopt a different paradigm
for our email list, a paradigm
of leadership, I'm a leader and
these are people entrusted to me.
It does transform and
change the way we think.
And engage with our email
list and certainly in an era.
Where it's very easy to
view email subscribers.
Like inanimate objects or
vending machines or potential
transactions or potential revenue.
Generators or a revenue engine.
. It's easy to fall into that trap,
particularly if we need cash.
Or if we want to generate some revenue
and there's absolutely nothing wrong with
generating revenue from your email list.
Like you, I do the same.
But I do wonder at times, What
would change if that weren't the
only paradigm I looked at my email
list through, if that weren't the
only lens, what if I was a leader?
And I viewed these subscribers
as real people, every one
of them is a real person.
And they are in part entrusted to me.
To exercise a sense of
leadership in their lives.
I hopefully that is.
At least entertaining
or intriguing to you.
But I hope that if you think about that
exercise, maybe you take a walk and
you just chew on those five questions.
That it would energize you, that it
would serve your email list better.
That it would broaden and expand
the way you think about and engage
with your email list in intern for
you and for every subscriber on
your email list, you would help.
That would be more life-giving.
Cause that's what we're about on this
podcast is to build a life giving brand.
Until the next episode,
thanks so much for joining me.
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a friend i so appreciate that until
next time go and build a life giving
brand
