SHOW TRANSCRIPT

This transcript is automatically generated by Descript.  Any errors or omissions are unintentional.

[00:00:00] Jeff Sieh: Hello folks. Welcome to Creator News Live. I’m Jeff C and you’re not.

[00:00:10] Conor Brown: And I’m Connor Brown, and this is a show that keeps you up to date on what’s happening in the world of the creator economy and so much more.

[00:00:17] Jeff Sieh: You ever wondered what it takes to grow an email newsletter that people can’t wait to open? Maybe you’re trying to figure out how some creators. Turn simple emails into thriving businesses, or maybe you’re looking for a smarter way to grow your list without chasing every new tactic that comes along. If that sounds like you, well, today’s episode is one you won’t wanna miss.

[00:00:38] Conor Brown: We’re excited to welcome Chanel Baio, founder of Growth in Reverse, where she studies how the best newsletters on the internet actually grow and make money. She’s analyzed hundreds of real world strategies, built her own audience to more than 40,000 subscribers, and helped creators think more strategically about email as a [00:01:00] primary growth.

[00:01:01] Conor Brown: Engine today, she’s breaking down what’s working, what’s not, and how to build a newsletter that becomes a real business.

[00:01:09] Jeff Sieh: So sit back, clear your schedule. Clear your mind to get ready for this week’s episode of Creator News Live.

[00:01:42] Jeff Sieh: There we go. Chanel, how are you doing today?

[00:01:45] Chenell Basilio: That was epic. I feel like I’m on family guy with that music.

[00:01:49] Jeff Sieh: yeah. It’s, it’s, it’s so much fun to do. That’s one of my, I tell people that’s one of my favorite things, I do every week. ’cause it’s, it’s fun to do it we use Suno for that, so it’s a lot of fun to put that together. Yeah. [00:02:00] So let’s just dive in because we’re gonna be talking about like email all day, but you are, you do this deep dive and, and we kind of teased at this, the front of the show.

[00:02:08] Jeff Sieh: the, the growth in reverse and. I’m a big reader and you like spend like 40 hours or something on these deep dives of these creators and kind of reverse engineer how they’re growing their email lists. Chanel just first of all, what made you have that idea and tell people where they can sign up because it is amazing.

[00:02:25] Chenell Basilio: it’s just growth and reverse.com and thanks. I appreciate the kind words. I actually came up with the idea through my own curiosity. So I found this guy named Mario Gabrieli and he was making, like 300 grand with his newsletter in his first year. And I was like, what? Email? What writing just by yourself making 300 grand.

[00:02:46] Chenell Basilio: And so I went down the rabbit hole and I spent, I think on that one, I spent like 60 hours and I listened to all the podcast episodes he had been on. I went through all of his tweets and figured out what he was writing and why it grew. and then I put together, like you said, this really long [00:03:00] form, like three to 4,000 word article.

[00:03:02] Chenell Basilio: and I had built WordPress sites in the. In the past, and I was like, you know what, I’m just gonna throw this up on a, a new domain and see what happens. And um, I was like, maybe I’ll just send it out to an email list that I don’t have. so that first edition, it went out to four people, and one of those newsletters or one of those email addresses was my own So small humble beginnings.

[00:03:21] Jeff Sieh: Well, it’s, it is so awesome because it really does do a great job of breaking down, and it’s one of those, there aren’t a lot of newsletters that I look forward to getting, and that’s one of them because it’s, it’s, it’s so in depth. It, it’s not fluff and it really teaches you something every time. So once again, guys, go to growth and reverse.com and, sign up for that because you will be glad that you did.

[00:03:41] Jeff Sieh: but I wanted to ask our audience before we kind of get into this. If you guys have a a newsletter, like where is most of your newsletter growth coming from right now? Is it like content that you’re putting out? Is it if people sign up, oh, I really want to get, you know, Connor Brown’s newsletter.

[00:03:54] Jeff Sieh: Is it collaborations? Is it something that you’re partnering with and you’re doing like maybe the recommendation, recommendation. [00:04:00] Engine on kit, or is it just you’re just hoping the algorithms send them your way? I wanna know down below where you guys are getting growth with your newsletter. I think it’ll be fascinating to find that out.

[00:04:09] Jeff Sieh: So let us know in the comments. but Chanel, I wanted to, for this first question, ask you, you know, you’ve analyzed like hundreds of newsletter and so when growth stalls, when you see, when somebody talks about like when they kind of plateaued or when it’s stalling, what’s usually missing and how quickly can someone like.

[00:04:26] Jeff Sieh: See that problem and then diagnose it to fix it.

[00:04:29] Chenell Basilio: It’s a good question. I think honestly, most of the time the biggest growth lever that you can implement is just making better content. And that sounds like very, I dunno, boring and bland, but. After researching all of these creators, it’s just like, that is the thing that stands out. Like if you want someone to share your newsletter, you want them to, you know, promote it in their own newsletter.

[00:04:51] Chenell Basilio: It’s gonna come down to like having something really, really good that they’re gonna share. I call it insanely valuable content because I think it’s just. It kind of hits home this, [00:05:00] this phrase of like, it has to be insanely valuable for someone to actually want to share it. So I think that that is probably the hidden growth lever.

[00:05:06] Chenell Basilio: And sadly, it’s not what, what people wanna hear. Like they wanna hear, oh, go do this hack, go do this thing. But all of those things work better when you have better content. So, if you can spend more time on your content, I think that’s, that’s a better use of your time.

[00:05:18] Jeff Sieh: Very cool.

[00:05:19] Conor Brown: So when it comes to that and to kind of dovetail into it, then how do creators know, or how can they decide to help grow their newsletter? if they need like more content, they need more promotion or they need more relationships, like, Chanel, you mentioned people sharing their own, your newsletter, in their newsletter, those sorts of things.

[00:05:41] Conor Brown: So if your content is really, really good, it’s really, really, really robust, what’s the next kind of thing to focus on? Is it more content rolling out, more promotion, better relationships?

[00:05:50] Chenell Basilio: Yeah, I think, the next thing once you have that down is like, go on again. People hate talking about social media. Oh, I don’t wanna be on social media. But it really is a [00:06:00] good place to start, not only for people to learn about your content, but really to get that momentum going of like building relationships with other creators and being able to do more collaborations like. When you come into a new space and you start something fresh, it’s like you don’t really have that clout built up in the space necessarily. And so by using social media, commenting on other people’s posts, having a good discussion, like that’s how you start. Building those relationships. And it might not seem like a big thing in the beginning because it’s probably not going to lead to subscribers, but over time you’re gonna start to see like those people come back and be like, Hey, you know, I’m doing this summit or I’m doing this thing.

[00:06:37] Chenell Basilio: Do you wanna collaborate on it? And so that’s really kind of a big deal in this space. Like most of the growth that I’ve seen. Has come from collaborations, guest podcasting, writing, guest posts, those kinds of things. So when you can build those relationships, it can really benefit your your newsletter too.

[00:06:54] Jeff Sieh: we’ve got some great comments coming in. Um, Sean is like, actually. Writing his newsletter right now, [00:07:00] like, okay, pay attention, Sean. Okay. and then, Paul says, uh, from the beginning you had insanely killer content. So important. Uh, Paul was also at,craft and commerce, with me. And so, yeah.

[00:07:10] Jeff Sieh: and you talked a lot about it. I mean, I would say even your, your entire talk was about that insanely valuable content. Do you think, and this is kind of a rabbit trail, but do you think the rise of AI and people using those tools has helped or hurt people who are trying to grow their list

[00:07:26] Chenell Basilio: That’s a good question. I think, In the short term, it might hurt them because there’s gonna be so many more people coming out with content or different ways to do things. But over time, like we’re gonna start, I think we’re already starting to see it of like, you can tell who’s using AI to write their content, and that’s like really degrading trust of your audience.

[00:07:43] Chenell Basilio: And so I think if you can keep your content like fresh on, like in your voice. Your context, like all of the, the things that make you, you. I think if you can keep that and hold strong, like it’s gonna come back around and be like, oh, all those people that started these newsletters grew pretty [00:08:00] quickly is clearly ai.

[00:08:01] Chenell Basilio: It’s like, I don’t wanna read that anymore. Like I wanna hear from a specific person about their specific take on something. So yes, AI can definitely help with certain things, but I think, I think we went way too deep into it for content. Creation in a sense. And and now I’m seeing that come back already.

[00:08:18] Jeff Sieh: It is funny. One of the best compliments I ever got on my newsletter was that this is so weird that I know AI couldn’t have written it. So I was like, okay, that works. I’ll take it. I’ll take

[00:08:27] Jeff Sieh: it.

[00:08:28] Jeff Sieh: Yeah. Yeah. So, just be weird, uh, and people will, will keep coming. so, we ask a question where people are getting their growth.

[00:08:35] Jeff Sieh: Zach Brown says from now it’s the props he’s put on social media. and Sean says, it I’m just begging people and they sign up. And Paul, who’s got a monstrous, list, he says, my newest growth area is using the first comment on Facebook post to put in the landing page link over a hundred new subscribers in the last, two weeks from this.

[00:08:53] Jeff Sieh: And then Amy Keys says, lead magnets is how she’s getting her growth. So that’s really interesting. one of the things you mentioned, [00:09:00] Chanel, is that. you’ve kinda shown how masterminds and peer groups kind of accelerate the growth. and you and I like are in Jay Klaus’s, creator Lab. It’s amazing.

[00:09:10] Jeff Sieh: His uh, group. I lurk in there a lot, but just reading the great posts are amazing that are every week. But for people who don’t have like access to maybe that level of circles, so how can they build their own like a hundred K club like you mentioned.

[00:09:25] Chenell Basilio: Yeah, that’s a good call out. so for context, the a hundred k collab was a group of people like Sahil Bloom, Sam Par, Greg Eisenberg. I’m trying to remember who else was in there. Maybe Sean Purry. and they, you know, they started with, some of them had 10,000 followers on Twitter. Some of them had like 30,000.

[00:09:44] Chenell Basilio: And they were like, you know what, we wanna get to a hundred K. And so they created a WhatsApp group and they were just like holding each other accountable to post every day. they were commenting on each other’s stuff and that kind of thing. So. That was a free group. Like you don’t have to necessarily pay for that.

[00:09:57] Chenell Basilio: Sure. Now those names are [00:10:00] huge, but at the time, like they didn’t have a huge audience. It was like a intermediate size audience. So, I think, I think a lot of us look at things like that and we’re like, well, I can’t be a part of that. I’m not that big. But everyone starts somewhere. And I was actually going back through my, Twitter account the other day.

[00:10:17] Chenell Basilio: Like from way back when my first month, I was going so hard on commenting on people’s stuff and I don’t even think I realized it at the time. I was just very excited about the content and about seeing other people like do things with newsletters and some of those names I’m still talking to today, and that was like over three years ago.

[00:10:35] Chenell Basilio: And so. It just kind of goes to show you, like if you put yourself out there, start engaging on posts on Twitter or Facebook or LinkedIn or wherever the, the platform you’re using is. I think there is something impactful about that and you can just like grow relationships that way.

[00:10:51] Jeff Sieh: Yeah. I love it. I love it.

[00:10:53] Conor Brown: I do love that too, because I think that’s what sets email apart too. Like even though you have a a list and you want it to be [00:11:00] big and stuff, it’s still one-to-one. Right. Asking for for people’s replies, and you’re still sending it directly to them, and that’s that. Personal relationship that makes email so great.

[00:11:11] Conor Brown: But it’s also cool to hear, like, also have to create relationships in real life, right to to work this, Chanel commented a couple times already about, you know, just commenting on, on things in social, building those relationships, reaching out to people, so when it comes time to actually partner with someone and maybe do a guest post, or maybe have a share, something like that.

[00:11:36] Conor Brown: What’s the right way to make that ask? Especially if it’s maybe someone you haven’t met, like in real life without it feeling transactional, especially when you’re starting out and you don’t have a lot of leverage or a big list yourself to, to kind of swap content with. What, what’s your ideas around that?

[00:11:54] Chenell Basilio: Yeah, I think building off what we were just talking about, like go to that person’s content, maybe reply to their newsletter, that is [00:12:00] one of the most underrated things I see.

[00:12:02] Chenell Basilio: And that’s something I actually use to get on the radar of some of the, the bigger creators in the early days is just like reply to their newsletter.

[00:12:08] Chenell Basilio: Sure, you might go on LinkedIn and see they have like hundreds of replies to their posts, but I guarantee you they have less than that replies to their emails. So reply to their newsletter, say something valuable, get on their radar, and then maybe in a couple weeks, like do it again and then ask eventually.

[00:12:25] Chenell Basilio: And I think making the ask comes down to like. Is this valuable for their audience? Number one, because that’s, they’ve built this trust with their audience. That’s what they’re trying to grow on a daily basis. And so if you can come in and be like, Hey, I noticed you haven’t talked about this thing in this way, I would love to come in, help your audience, whether it’s being on the podcast or sharing a guest post, and make sure they take guest posts or they have guests on their podcast.

[00:12:50] Chenell Basilio: ’cause otherwise that’s just like a waste of your time. but if they do. I think you can just make the ask and make sure it’s you’re leading with value for their audience and show that you actually did research and [00:13:00] this wasn’t like, Hey, AI pulled your name out of a hat, and I just like sent you an email because that’s very obvious anymore.

[00:13:06] Jeff Sieh: Yeah, and I think we all, if you have a podcast, and I know you get this all the time, Chanel is, you can, you can tell it’s like, Hey, insert name here, da dah dah da. I loved you on da dah da. And you’re like, okay, you haven’t even listened to anything that I’ve put out.

[00:13:18] Chenell Basilio: Yeah. It’s pretty bad.

[00:13:19] Jeff Sieh: yeah. One, one of the things, and I, I’ve talked about this before, but I can trace, you know, you talked about having relationships and commenting on posts or responding to emails I can trace.

[00:13:28] Jeff Sieh: So I, we’ve been doing Guy Kawasaki’s, podcast, producing it for over five years now. For me started, and I can trace that back to when I made. On Google Plus many, many years ago, a comment on p Fitzpatrick’s Post who was running his social at the time. And so that just has developed that relationship.

[00:13:47] Jeff Sieh: And now I’m producing his podcast, right? Like that happened all the way back from just engaging, and even meeting you, I remember it was at, craft and Commerce. you and Jay had a meetup and I went and I knew nobody [00:14:00] and it was awkward and weird It introduced people and you start getting FaceTime and people recognize you.

[00:14:06] Jeff Sieh: So put yourself out there. It’s gonna be awkward and weird maybe at first, like even if you’re responding to an email, but it does make a difference. And you can, and you can trace that stuff, back.

[00:14:16] Chenell Basilio: And building off that. So the one thing, the one secret I will give you is that like I would estimate that probably 80% of creators or people that go to those conferences are introverts. So if you are feeling awkward, they’re probably feeling awkward too. And so just kind of like. You’re essentially doing them a favor by walking up and asking them a question or talking to them because they’re probably standing there like, who am I gonna talk to next?

[00:14:39] Chenell Basilio: Because I’m awkward too, and like, I don’t wanna go up to a random stranger. So if you can make that first move, you actually kind of do them a favor.

[00:14:46] Jeff Sieh: Yeah. It’s funny and, and I think creators. They love getting response to email. I mean, I talked to Paul and like I sent a message, you had him on your show not too long ago, and he’s been on this one, Joe Casia. he’s an amazing guy about systems and putting stuff together [00:15:00] and I just sent him, Hey man, I really liked that last email.

[00:15:02] Jeff Sieh: I really connected with the rest part of it. You know, thanks for sharing that. And then he responded back and you could tell that made his day. You know, that that stuff really, if you’re not being spammy, it really does help connect people together. So, like you said, people just don’t realize how important that is, for creators.

[00:15:16] Jeff Sieh: So, have you seen an example of like, you mentioned collaborations, like, you know, guest posting or, somebody taking over your, your newsletter for a, a section or something like that. Have you seen examples where like that single collaboration changed the entire trajectory of a a, of a newsletter and, and what actually made it work with that?

[00:15:34] Chenell Basilio: Oh, that’s a good question. yeah, I mean, I think, I think for my own, honestly, I, I. Was writing, and I was doing this for like four months and thankfully I had kind of an in with Jay because we, I was in the lab already, so I think he had to like, trust me a little bit more than the average person. But he had me on his show and that was a huge boost in people finding me, learning about me.

[00:15:57] Chenell Basilio: and just I feel like from there it kind of like [00:16:00] really. Accelerated. And so that’s definitely one that helped. so he’s been a huge supporter of, of my work and I really appreciate that. and since then I’ve been able to like pay it back and like refer him subscribers and all of that stuff. So, that one’s really helped.

[00:16:13] Chenell Basilio: But I think totally, and one thing people get not wrong, but like there’s another benefit to social media and being consistent there, everybody hates that word consistency, but. the bigger creators who like have already built trust, they’ve built an audience and they’re like very protective of that, right?

[00:16:28] Chenell Basilio: And so you might look at someone and be jealous that they got on somebody else’s show, but what you don’t see is that, that that bigger creator saw them being consistent. Month after month after month, a year after year. And then they were like, okay, now I trust you. You’re gonna be around in the next three years.

[00:16:45] Chenell Basilio: Why don’t you come on my show and talk to me about what you’re doing? And so that’s just another benefit of being on social, talking to people, sharing your work is like the bigger creators who might not comment, they might not do anything, but they’re, they probably are noticing what you’re [00:17:00] doing. And that it’s just like giving them more trust and, confidence that they could, you know, promote you in their own thing.

[00:17:05] Chenell Basilio: And. It’ll be good for their audience, so it’s just another benefit.

[00:17:09] Jeff Sieh: Yeah, I totally agree. really quickly, I, I, I forgot to do this at the top of the show, but we’ve been talking about building trust and one of the best ways to build trust that I think is coming up with all this rise of AI is doing what we’re doing, live video and also, you know, just putting your face out there with video.

[00:17:24] Jeff Sieh: And the great way to do that is the sponsor of our show, e Camm. You can find out more about them by going to Ecamm dot com slash jeff. You can say 15% by using the code, Jeff. 15. but they’re amazing. I mean, I mean, I think live video is gonna be on the rise it’s really hard to fake this. Like me messing up, you know, pro pronunciations, Connor, looking at me weird on the corner.

[00:17:44] Jeff Sieh: we have comments we can bring up that’s gonna be really hard for I to fix. So, just check out ECA m they’re a great company. I love ’em to death. and so check them out But let’s go into our next section. I wanna talk about this newsletter business model. I mean, everybody wants to make a gazillion dollars with their email.

[00:17:59] Jeff Sieh: They wanna be the [00:18:00] next morning brew, the 1440, all those ones that they want to, they see and they subscribe to and they’re like, I can do this. I can write, I’ll just make a newsletter and make thousands of dollars. But,

[00:18:09] Jeff Sieh: uh, yeah, it’s easy. No problem. But Chanel, if you were going to build a newsletter from scratch today, like starting over, you’re, you’re done with growth in reverse.

[00:18:17] Jeff Sieh: You, you can’t stand it anymore. You wanna do something different? Like how, where, and what would you do to get your first 1000 subscribers?

[00:18:25] Chenell Basilio: Yeah, that’s a good question. I think, again, I’m gonna sound like a broken record here. Go on social media. Find people in that, that space. Engage with them, start posting your stuff. Do some sort of like build in public type thing where you’re teasing out, Hey, I just wrote this article, I’m gonna share it out to my email list tomorrow.

[00:18:42] Chenell Basilio: You know, all of the best practices for social media, like getting a good hook so that it does well. I think that’s a big benefit. But then from there, like find. Find people where you can do guest posts, you can do those collaborations and maybe it’s a cross-promotion where they promote your email list, you promote [00:19:00] theirs.

[00:19:00] Chenell Basilio: maybe it’s a guest podcast that you can go on. a lot of people try and start a newsletter about something they don’t know anything about, which is hard. And like I did the same thing, but I did have a marketing ish background, so it was helpful for that. But if you’re going into like. The gardening space and you’ve never, you know, touched a plant in your life, like it’s gonna be harder for you to, showcase your experience and do all that.

[00:19:24] Chenell Basilio: It’s not impossible. You can come at it from like, Hey, I’m trying to grow basil for, in whatever, however many days, and like, showcase that. But, it’s easier if you can take what you already know and are good at and turn that into, you know. A newsletter of sorts and talking about business model, like one of the best ways to get started is like a service, like a done for you service.

[00:19:44] Chenell Basilio: How can you help people with that specific thing? and that can turn into case studies, which can then be content for you. And so that’s a, a really good place to start too.

[00:19:53] Jeff Sieh: In fact, like, Amy Keys, who’s watching this show right now, she, her whole thing is she does PR for museums like the [00:20:00] big ones, like Smithsonian, it’s kind of a thing. And, she has a podcast all about how to, you know, promote your museum. She’s got a newsletter based on it, so you don’t have to have. A huge, we, we talk about lists ’cause it’s kind of social proof.

[00:20:11] Jeff Sieh: And like, even with this one, I said like, oh, Chanel’s got 48,000 plus subscribers. But if you have the right audience, like Amy does, you can still make money on a small list because you are serving that perfect audience. So I, I would say, and tell me if I’m wrong, but don’t, always just look at numbers, kinda look at your, your audience and how you can serve them the best.

[00:20:30] Jeff Sieh: Would you, would you agree with that Chanel.

[00:20:31] Chenell Basilio: Totally. And there’s people in my community who have like less than a thousand subscribers who are making like more than 400 KA year. And so you don’t need a ton of people, especially in the right space. Like, like you said, Amy is doing PR for museums. Like that’s awesome. That’s such a cool niche and like.

[00:20:49] Chenell Basilio: You probably don’t need even a thousand people on your list for that. You could probably get away with like a smaller email list and still do really, really well. So I think, yeah. Oh, I’m, I’m working [00:21:00] hard to get 200 people on my list. Yeah. But like how many museums are there?

[00:21:03] Jeff Sieh: Yeah. And she’s got the biggest ones in the country, by the way, anyway, so I’m like just saying like, that’s a pretty big win there, Amy. So, yeah. Very, very

[00:21:10] Jeff Sieh: cool. Yeah.

[00:21:12] Conor Brown: I think that that’s important too, to, to kind differentiate like why you’re setting up your newsletter, right?

[00:21:19] Conor Brown: Because. I think so many solopreneurs probably get into it and they think that they’re just gonna go with like the YouTube model, right? Which is advertisements, like as many advertisements in my newsletter as possible.

[00:21:32] Conor Brown: And in order to make money off of that, I have to have a huge list, right? And all of these platforms now are helping with these native ads, these native ad integrations, and you don’t really have to do anything. It’s almost like. Putting it in there for you, but Chanel, I, I think what you’re, you’re alluding to, and, and the fact of this is that is one way to, to build a business from a newsletter is to get a big list and start, you know, pinging ads in [00:22:00] there.

[00:22:00] Conor Brown: But the other side of it is, is to build your newsletter and you’re offering your own service, and that’s how you can kind of get an in and probably get upscaling. So talk about the two sides of that and, and where you think solopreneurs find more success.

[00:22:17] Chenell Basilio: Oh yeah. I mean, I would say solopreneurs would find more success doing a smaller but more targeted like service type offering. It can eventually morph into a digital product or a community or whatever you want it to be. But the other. Method of like growing this huge list and just relying mostly on sponsorships is it’s getting so much harder.

[00:22:36] Chenell Basilio: Like I don’t recommend that for 99% of people. And I, it’s sad because I see a lot of people getting into this space and that’s what they think is gonna grow and that’s how they think they’re gonna make their money. And it’s like you’re gonna need like multiple hundreds of thousands of subscribers to make a safe living from that.

[00:22:53] Chenell Basilio: And. There are ups and downs with the sponsorship side of things. Like sometimes sponsors pull back like if the economy is not doing well or [00:23:00] whatever. And so, I don’t know. I really, recommend people at least do a hybrid. So have sponsorships, but also have your own products and services that you can sell.

[00:23:10] Chenell Basilio: ’cause you’re gonna make so much more money from just like at least margin wise off of those.

[00:23:15] Jeff Sieh: Yeah. Very, very cool. I gotta, I have a question, and this is one of the, no, it’s not a question, I guess it’s a statement and a question. But, one of the things that you said that kind of blew my mind, and I never heard it talked about before in this way, you talked about making offers non calculable, which you know that it’s something that your offer, like if you are doing a newsletter, like saying, okay, I’m gonna sell a subscription is gonna be $5 per this, and you can kind of, you can kind of see like, okay, if I buy your, your paid.

[00:23:43] Jeff Sieh: Email newsletter, it’s gonna be $5 per email, and that adds up to this per month. And, and you mentioned not doing it or making your offers in a way where they can’t really put a price tag on it. It’s more of like, oh, I get all this if I, if I become part of this community. Can you talk about that a little bit?

[00:23:58] Jeff Sieh: What does it mean in practice for like a [00:24:00] newsletter business or an email list?

[00:24:02] Chenell Basilio: Yeah, I think this one came from, my friend Tom Orach, who runs marketing ideas.com. He actually, he has a paid newsletter and he said that when he launched his paid newsletter, he tried to not make it. Calculatable or calculable, whatever the word is. He said that, you know, most paid newsletters, they are like, okay, I’m gonna send four paid issues a month.

[00:24:22] Chenell Basilio: It’s $20 a month. So backing out of that, the math is $5 per email. And he is like, I didn’t wanna do that one. It feels like you’re putting yourself on a really big hamster wheel of creating more content. And two, it’s just like. It’s very easy for someone to decide to cancel that paid newsletter. Whereas if you say, all right, you’re gonna get, you know, X number of emails, but you’re also getting this community where these people come in every month or whatever on top of it.

[00:24:48] Chenell Basilio: And then you have, like, he created a full book at the launch of his newsletter, which was crazy. and so you get that as well. And so it makes it very hard to back into the math, or at least harder, I would say, than just a [00:25:00] straight, you know, four emails a month that you’re getting for a paid newsletter.

[00:25:03] Jeff Sieh: Yeah. I thought that was a genius. I had never heard of it broken down in that way, and I loved what he did with that book that he could, that only his list only subscribing would get that PDF of whatever, the 400 page book. But I’m like, wow, that’s, that is really, really cool. Yeah.

[00:25:17] Chenell Basilio: Yeah, I had not seen somebody do that before when he told me that. I was like, what? You were writing a book to launch your paid newsletter?

[00:25:23] Jeff Sieh: Yeah. That, but, which makes perfect sense once you, when you talk about making it so, so they can’t figure out like how much everything is worth and like, you know, really breaking it down like, okay, am I gonna buy Starbucks this month or am I gonna get an on a newsletter like that does, I mean, you know, I like the, I like that idea.

[00:25:38] Chenell Basilio: Yeah, me

[00:25:39] Conor Brown: Amy Amy has a great question too, where she’s asking about her particular newsletter and, and Amy says, my newsletter is a letter email style. I see a lot of newsletters going more to a news and article style design. Any advice on which direction to go? I think we’re, we’re far past [00:26:00] the, we need a million graphics in our newsletters, right?

[00:26:03] Conor Brown: It’s, it’s, we’re gonna. Focus on text and have maybe one or two supporting images or, or that, but Chanel, what, what would you say to, to Amy? a letter, email style, or this kind of like digestible, Hey, here’s an article, here’s, here’s the latest news.

[00:26:17] Chenell Basilio: Yeah, it’s a good question. I think it really just comes down to what, what do you enjoy? What does your. What are your people like reading? and the format of the actual newsletter is gonna matter too. So if it’s more of like personal brand, you’re talking to your readers directly, maybe like a letter is totally fine.

[00:26:33] Chenell Basilio: if you wanna go more like, I don’t know, a brand that. Lives outside of you. Maybe you have like an article and then you can have like some, I don’t know, talking points at the top. Like for mine, I say like, Hey, this week is blah, blah, blah. Maybe I’ll say something personal. And then I go into like the article.

[00:26:48] Chenell Basilio: And then sometimes there’s like links at the bottom of like, here’s what’s happening, or here’s some interesting articles I’ve seen. and honestly, you can change it up. Like I do my typical format most of the times, but then [00:27:00] sometimes I’ll send out like a random one-off email and it’s just like. Text only very random, and it gets way more engagement.

[00:27:06] Chenell Basilio: And so I’m like, well that’s interesting. So I don’t know if it’s like the pattern interrupt or, or what, but yeah, don’t feel like you’re stuck with one. Once you pick it. Like you can always experiment with this stuff.

[00:27:17] Jeff Sieh: That’s a great

[00:27:17] Conor Brown: And so kind of a follow up question to that too. I think for so long what we were trying to get people to sign up for our newsletter, we were just saying. Sign up for our weekly newsletter, right? Or our monthly newsletter. Like the thing you were getting access to was a cadence in which you were sending it, but it wasn’t ever saying anything about, well, what is in the actual newsletter?

[00:27:39] Conor Brown: Like, why should I sign up? Why should I be excited about something coming to my inbox every single week? So. How can we, in today’s day and age, like differentiate and get people to sign up for a newsletter where we’re not focusing on the cadence, but we’re basically saying, Hey, you’re gonna get access to, to something.

[00:27:57] Conor Brown: Like, how can we do that and keep it really [00:28:00] pithy so people understand immediately when they’re giving their email address up, they’re gonna get something good in return.

[00:28:06] Chenell Basilio: Yeah, totally. I, I remember those days where it was like, join the, the weekly email or join the email list, and then the button was just like, subscribe, and everybody was like, sure, why not? Now it’s like, I do not want anything else coming into my inbox. Get outta here unless it’s super valuable. But, Yeah, I think if you can just find a, a format or some sort of angle that you can provide value with every week, and it could just be entertainment. It doesn’t have to be like monetary value. that is, that is way more important, I would say lead with like a problem or something that you’re able to kind of help solve every week.

[00:28:44] Chenell Basilio: for me. I kind of like just stumbled into the deep dive format and so people knew that they were gonna get a breakdown of how someone grew and there was a lot of relatable things that they could, you know, pick one or two and maybe implement those. and so I think if you can just find a format, find a [00:29:00] problem that you’re solving and like who you’re solving it for, and convey that in like one to two sentences on the on the landing page, I think that’s gonna be way more impactful than just like, join my email list.

[00:29:10] Jeff Sieh: Yeah, I’ve been, I’ve been trying to say, you know, like, join the email community, like you can do that by jeff c.com/news. See how I did that? Um,but like, instead of saying like, join my list, which seems really. I don’t know, business e transactional. I want, I want the community, ’cause I want ’em to respond back.

[00:29:27] Jeff Sieh: I want to talk to ’em via email. So I think instead of just saying hit the subscribe button, we say something like, Hey, join our email community, or be a part of this group that we, we discuss weekly. I don’t know, but I, I think get away from just like the list sounding thing. ’cause it just, when you’re a list, you’re just a number and I want these people to be like part of the group.

[00:29:46] Jeff Sieh: Right. I guess I’m, I’m just trying to. Start it that way. I guess underground movement, maybe Connor, we need to do

[00:29:53] Chenell Basilio: Underground social media movement.

[00:29:55] Jeff Sieh: yeah. yeah. So, this’ll be a, just depends question, but I still want you to try [00:30:00] to answer it like, um.When should creators start monetizing on their list?

[00:30:05] Jeff Sieh: I mean, should they start from the beginning even though it’s like maybe just an affiliate thing? Or should we, ’cause you always hear the guru say like, get ’em used to spending money with you. Even if it’s like $2, like, you know, train them to spend money. When should really a creator start monetizing their lists?

[00:30:22] Jeff Sieh: Chanel.

[00:30:22] Chenell Basilio: Yeah, I think as early as you feel comfortable. I, I think I got my first sponsorship when I was at like. A thousand subscribers. So it was pretty early, but not super early. And I was also doing some affiliate stuff before then. I think affiliates are like a no-brainer. Like if you are able to, you know, promote something you believe in and you would like tell your mom to sign up for, um, I think, I think then you can definitely do that.

[00:30:50] Chenell Basilio: The, the problem I see is when people start and they’re like, well, this company has an affiliate program. I’m just gonna like. I put it in my email and I’m like, is it relevant? Is it [00:31:00] helpful? At the end of the day, like you’re building a list of people who trust you and so you really wanna guard that as much as you can.

[00:31:06] Chenell Basilio: yeah, I think you can start as soon as you want as far as your own products. Yeah. Why not start if you have 15 people on an email list, if you learn who those people are and what they need help with, you might be able to sell stuff from there. So I think you can start as early as you can.

[00:31:20] Jeff Sieh: Cool. Okay. That’s, that’s encouraging. I think so. even if you have like you know, two or $3, I think it’s worth, trying to see,

[00:31:26] Conor Brown: And I think that that is, is an important thing just in like all marketing, you know, we keep hearing consistency. You want to be consistent, right? You wanna show up and you have to also be consistent in reminding people that you have an offering or you have an affiliate, or be consistent in how they can help pay for this thing that you’re doing.

[00:31:47] Conor Brown: And Chanel, you’ve studied so many creators who are making like serious money with. Small lists, relatively small lists. What patterns do you see that [00:32:00] they’re all kind of sharing in that, that help them monetize,so effectively, even if they’re in totally different sectors, like what’s the kind of some overlaps that you always see.

[00:32:12] Chenell Basilio: I think one of the main ones, we kind of alluded to it already, but you know, have a service. Figure out what you can offer people, what you can actually help people with and get them a result. And if you like doing that and you wanna help more people, like take that thing, put a framework on it, like build it into a process, and then you can start doing like a cohort around it with a group coaching thing, or make it into a, a small digital product, or even like a, a community of sorts and like have people working on the same thing.

[00:32:40] Chenell Basilio: I think that’s, that’s the one thing is like start with the most like. Hands-on way that you can do it, at least for your own service and product, like build it while you’re helping someone. So whether you decide to get 10 people to sign up for something, you’re gonna help them live and figure it out.

[00:32:55] Chenell Basilio: Figure out what questions they have, figure out how you can solve those for them in the best possible [00:33:00] way. I think one of the mistakes they see is people will go into a cave, build this huge course, come out and try and sell its people, and it’s like it might not have been what your audience actually needed because.

[00:33:11] Chenell Basilio: You didn’t ask anyone. You didn’t see if they really needed that thing or if they had that problem. and then there’s too many variables of like, well, they have all these other questions that you didn’t hear or know about, so you didn’t answer them. So I think if you can do like a live cohort or group coaching or a specific, like one-on-one service first, I think that’s really beneficial in order to be able to, you know, scale that up eventually.

[00:33:32] Jeff Sieh: That’s a great point. this is kind of a comment, but it leads to a, a great question, and this is from the amazing Dustin Stout, creator of Magi, which is awesome, tool. but he goes, I’m glad I was able to watch today. I realized I’m getting to email my list for the past month or so.

[00:33:48] Jeff Sieh: and he kind of did a laughy face emoji, but I know this is a lot of people, they’re like, they’re listening to it. Maybe they have a thousand people on a list or maybe they have a bigger list. You know, I’m sure Magi has a huge one. What do they do? Like, [00:34:00] is it weird to start emailing people again? I know you probably get this question all the time, like, I haven’t touched my list in, you know, six months.

[00:34:06] Jeff Sieh: What do I do Chanel? Like, what do you tell people who want to kind of warm up their list again?

[00:34:10] Chenell Basilio: Yeah, I think if it’s only been a few weeks or a month, like you could probably just like make a joke of it and be like, Hey, I’m back. I didn’t like disappear. if it’s been a little bit longer, maybe you send it to a smaller segment first and kind of say like, Hey, remember me, like, here I am again. and just make sure that they know who you are at the top.

[00:34:27] Chenell Basilio: So, hey, you signed up for this one thing. A couple months ago, sorry, I’ve been MIA or whatever, but, yeah, I think that could, would be helpful. Honestly, most of the people I talk to are so email centric that they don’t forget to send their emails or they might miss a week or two, but it’s not like super consistently missing that.

[00:34:47] Jeff Sieh: In, in the same vein, is there a time when you need to increase your emails? Let’s say you’ve been emailing for a week and then, people are like, we really like these emails. Should you automatically just start doing another [00:35:00] one? Or like, how do you decide? When to amp up your email, frequency.

[00:35:05] Jeff Sieh: I know Paul Gowder is, he’s, he’s always adding more and it, they seem to be fine. He’s got a huge community over a million plus on Facebook, for his powwows.com com community. But what, when should, like us normal folk, like who don’t have a million, uh, Facebook groups, start thinking about, okay, maybe I should increase my frequency of email.

[00:35:23] Chenell Basilio: It’s a great question. I’ve been thinking about it for over a year and I’m like, I should send a second one because, you know, there’s more sponsorship spots. I could like help people more, but I just haven’t done it because I don’t trust myself to send it twice a week or more than that. So right now I’m stuck on one.

[00:35:39] Chenell Basilio: the other thing you can do, and this would help with the consistency piece, is like set up an autoresponder or like a sequence that people go through. there’s a guy named Eddie Lanner and he actually started, creating this long email sequence with his older content. So it’s kind of like repurposing his other stuff, but it’s still helpful.

[00:35:57] Chenell Basilio: It’s still valuable for people. And [00:36:00] so I think it’s like a year long sequence. And so every Tuesday or Wednesday, whenever he sends those vault emails, people are just automatically getting those. So then if he skips a week, he’s not like completely ghosting his people. They’re still getting something.

[00:36:13] Chenell Basilio: but it’s just. Not the same thing.

[00:36:15] Jeff Sieh: Got it.

[00:36:15] Conor Brown: That’s the Paul Gowder special as well. Throwback

[00:36:18] Conor Brown: Thursday. He has year long email sequence and he just sends an article or a video or something that he’s already created on his website. And it’s 52 weeks long, he does it. There you go. Throw back

[00:36:29] Conor Brown: Thursday emails. Yeah. Yeah. I think that that’s really good.

[00:36:31] Conor Brown: ’cause I think that like we have to create so much content, right? So. Repurpose it a a little bit, but still provide value to, to people. I’d love to know your process. Chanel, do you have any, besides maybe just like an initial autoresponder, do you have anything else automated or is it you, you get the up that week, you write that email, you send it out, and that’s pretty much your, your email for, for what’s going on that week.

[00:36:58] Chenell Basilio: Yeah, I wish I had a better answer for this, but [00:37:00] No, it’s just every week I write the email, sit down, s slug it out, and I’m like, oh, why didn’t I like automate some version of this? but yeah, you’re right. Like I spend, what do we like 30, 40 sometimes more hours on one piece. And most of the time I don’t repurpose them, which is not the best use of my time, but, but I also have this like.

[00:37:20] Chenell Basilio: probably a false belief of like, well, I researched that person back in 2024 and now they’ve grown even more. So it’s not relevant anymore. But I don’t think that’s the case, but that’s what I tell myself, so,

[00:37:31] Jeff Sieh: But you kind of, I mean, don’t you kind of repurpose it because you have the YouTube channel and the podcast too. Don’t you kind of like use some of that content over on those. Other distribution channels.

[00:37:41] Chenell Basilio: Yeah, sometimes. but there’s, I mean, I would say 90% of the deep dives I’ve written, I have not repurposed. So, yeah.

[00:37:47] Jeff Sieh: Yeah. But luckily, luckily folks, if you go to growth and reverse.com, she does have past additions. So you can go and read and look at those. So, go check this out. But, I wanted to kind of go next into [00:38:00] like. Talking about why people subscribe, like kind of, I know you do a lot of that kind of sub psychology and you’re kind of looking at intent for people who are signing up for emails, but what do you think makes someone feel like they have to subscribe?

[00:38:13] Jeff Sieh: You know, not because of a pop-up on their website, which I mean, they work, but you know, it’s, that’s not probably the best thing. is it because it feels obvious or somebody likes you enough that they wanna get more from you? So like, what do you think, about that, why people subscribe?

[00:38:27] Chenell Basilio: Yeah, I mean, are you able to provide them like a consistent type of content every week? Like if we’re talking about Paul’s, like he’s sharing all of these, you know, events that are happening and like why you should pay attention and maybe the history of them. And so that’s interesting for someone who’s.

[00:38:43] Chenell Basilio: Wants to learn more about powwows and, and do that kind of thing. for me it’s like if you wanna grow your email list, go check out these deep dives that I’ve written or go check out the podcast where we’re interviewing people who are doing this thing every day. so I think it comes down to like, how can you make what you are doing?

[00:38:59] Chenell Basilio: [00:39:00] Feel super valuable to them and like they want to keep subscribing. And I think it comes back to like making sure that, you know, the content you are providing is so good that you can continuously do it over and over again. but yeah, it’s just make it valuable for them. Tell them what they’re gonna get from it and solve their problem.

[00:39:18] Jeff Sieh: So this is a totally, before you get to the next question, Connor, I wanted to ask this because I just thought of it. so Chanel, what’s on your, like, I know you’re, you’re a big marketer. Your, your emails are, you know, you probably, you have to collect all this stuff about, email stuff, but what, what’s a newsletter that you subscribe to that a lot of people may not know about?

[00:39:35] Jeff Sieh: and what made you, subscribe to it?

[00:39:37] Chenell Basilio: there’s a guy named Billy Oppenheimer, and he is Ryan Holiday’s research assistant. But he puts out what he calls a six at six on Sundays, and so he’ll take, I don’t know, six different types of, like quotes or stories from the research he’s done. And he kind of finds a theme throughout and he’ll just like put them together into the, it’s [00:40:00] super.

[00:40:00] Chenell Basilio: It seems simple, but it’s like very impactful when you see like he’ll compare like Jerry Seinfeld to like something in history that happened and it’s like all of these things like relating back to each other. I just, I think it’s an interesting read and it kind of takes my brain away from marketing so.

[00:40:15] Jeff Sieh: Yeah, it’s just, I just, it’s fascinating ’cause we’re talking about why they subscribe and like why certain people like, you know, some that we get, like, because of the, you know, the industry we’re in and we just need to keep up on stuff. But I always think it’s fascinating when people like, okay, yeah, Connor has a crochet newsletter that he reads every week or something, you know?

[00:40:32] Jeff Sieh: I don’t know, like any, I know your mom does, but Connor, what, what,

[00:40:35] Jeff Sieh: about you?

[00:40:36] Conor Brown: point. It’s not

[00:40:37] Jeff Sieh: Sorry. Sorry. That’s

[00:40:39] Chenell Basilio: Get it right Jeff.

[00:40:40] Jeff Sieh: I know. I’m just,

[00:40:41] Conor Brown: a new one I just recently signed up for, which is just really well done, is, I think his name is Daniel Bryan, which I always get. Nervous. ’cause that’s also a WWE wrestler, but he’s a a credit card point guy and he just lets you know, like, Hey, here are the current bonus offers for, [00:41:00] you know, transferring your credit card points to a certain airline.

[00:41:02] Conor Brown: Those cer certain things and he just does it in a really concise and like, thoughtful, way. So I love that guy.

[00:41:10] Jeff Sieh: Yeah. And, and,

[00:41:11] Conor Brown: really cool.

[00:41:12] Jeff Sieh: and if you, and if in the comments, let, let us know your favorite newsletter down below, like I wanna know. Because I always love to find new ones. Like Anne Hanley’s, one I read every week about writing. Everybody writes I, she’s funny and she’s just really, I’d love her newsletter. Mike Alton’s another one about AI stuff.

[00:41:27] Jeff Sieh: But I mean, I would love for you guys to drop in your favorite newsletter, maybe cut something kind of offbeat. Let us know down below. Okay. Connor, you can take the next question. Sorry.

[00:41:35] Jeff Sieh: Random.

[00:41:36] Conor Brown: when we’re, we are doing this and we want to make sure that, you know, when somebody subscribes, they’re getting exactly what they think they’re gonna get, so that they’re excited when that that credit card point newsletter comes in their inbox and they’re like, I gotta open it. So, Chanel, what should someone need to do?

[00:41:55] Conor Brown: In the first, like three emails after someone subscribes to [00:42:00] really start that long-term relationship instead of just somebody subscribes and then they immediately unsubscribe. do you believe that it’s, you know, starting with a, a, a really well thought out welcome sequence? Or is it dropping ’em in?

[00:42:15] Conor Brown: Like how do you get ’em hooked within those, those first few emails?

[00:42:19] Chenell Basilio: Yeah, it’s a good question. I think there are a couple different ways you can go about it, but the main one, like the, the first couple emails, what you wanna share with them is like. What they’re gonna get, who you are and why, like they should listen to you about this thing. and maybe give them some of your best content.

[00:42:33] Chenell Basilio: So I, the one thing I do see though is like, people will, they’ll start like an about me email and they’re like, here’s all my whole life story and like, why I’m the person to listen to. But they don’t explain why that’s beneficial for the person reading. And so you do wanna explain who you are, but in the, the vein of like why it matters to them.

[00:42:53] Chenell Basilio: Which seems like a simple different distinction, but it’s, it’s actually pretty impactful. so I would say give them some of your rest content. [00:43:00] Let them know what they can expect and then tell them who you are and why they should subscribe. One thing I love doing too at the bottom is I’m like, Hey, come, like, hang out on LinkedIn and Substack too if you’re, if you’re over there, because then you’re getting people into multiple areas of like your world and you can kind of keep them engaged that way too.

[00:43:16] Jeff Sieh: That’s awesome. and I, I, I wanna talk about this and I, it was from, I think it was from your episode where you. You talked about the generalist, the girl who does the generalist newsletter,

[00:43:25] Jeff Sieh: um, which, which for me, when you, you talked about, those first three emails, tell ’em why it matters, not just your life story, but why it matters to you.

[00:43:33] Jeff Sieh: And as soon as I saw Millie and talk about the generalist, like I immediately connected. ’cause that’s how I feel like I feel like I’m a generalist and I signed up for it because of. I felt an instant connection to, to her. And I think that’s what you’re saying with, those three emails is, okay, not just who I am, but how can I connect with you?

[00:43:52] Jeff Sieh: What makes us similar and what value, can I give you, if you continue down this email journey with me? So I think that is so key [00:44:00] instead of just like, Hey, I’ve been, I’ve done this and here’s my, you know, resume and I’m so good and yada yada. It’s like, why, why I, why will this matter to me? So I think that

[00:44:09] Chenell Basilio: She helped you see yourself in her through that story, which is so impactful. ’cause then it’s like now you’re bought into the whole generalist idea and she can continue to like send you content. That makes sense.

[00:44:21] Jeff Sieh: Yeah, and, and I think it was the same girl because she had the URL, but you’ve highlighted the power of quizzes and I think that she has a quiz on there to find out what type of generalist you are. So what separates, like, ’cause I hadn’t really used quizzes in this way before to grow my list, but what separates like the high converting quiz from just another generic kind of lead magnet.

[00:44:41] Chenell Basilio: Yeah, well, so Millie actually went, and someone in her community was an organizational psychologist, which I didn’t even know what that meant. But, apparently a super smart person who knows how to like, help build quizzes. just kidding. But no, like, so she got him to help her set up the quiz in a way that like, is actually impactful.

[00:44:58] Chenell Basilio: It’s not like a [00:45:00] buzzfeed quiz of like, Hey, answer these three questions and I’ll tell you your life story. it’s kind of like. Actually impactful and like reverse engineering these different types of people. So that is definitely gonna help it stand out as like it’s actually, you know, scientifically backed in a way.

[00:45:15] Chenell Basilio: and then on top of that, she gives you like a ton of resources at the end to be like, oh yeah, here’s some like verbiage you can use with your boss to say like, Hey, I’m actually this type of person, here are my strengths, but I have this wealth of knowledge in these other areas too. So that’s, that’s impactful.

[00:45:30] Chenell Basilio: And if, if you’re gonna build a quiz, I would definitely recommend like, trying to make it as beneficial for people as possible. one, you’re not wasting their time, and two, they’re gonna actually see themselves in it and they’ll be more likely to share and promote that thing for you. so that was, I think that’s her leg up is just having it be like, pretty scientifically backed.

[00:45:49] Jeff Sieh: And the cool thing too, and I think you, you pointed out this in your deep dive, was that it’s not just that she has a quiz like jeff c.com/quiz. It’s like she has like generalist [00:46:00] quiz.com or something like that. So she’s got actually the domain for the quiz. So whatever podcast she’s on or blog posts, you can just spout that off and boom, it goes right into, that email capture from taking that quiz, which I thought was just genius.

[00:46:12] Jeff Sieh: So.

[00:46:13] Chenell Basilio: So smart, and it’s such like a small distinction. I’m glad you picked up on that because Yeah, I mean, other people, it’ll be like. xyz.com/pages/quiz/one or whatever, and it’s like, well, that’s not really easy for someone to go find and actually type into their URL bar. So, yeah. And now she goes on TikTok and she’ll like, talk about the quiz and it, it’s just like the domain is sitting there and you can just, you’re like, oh, I can just go type that in and take the quiz for myself.

[00:46:41] Jeff Sieh: It’s very cool. Very cool

[00:46:42] Chenell Basilio: Yeah, that’s gotten her like 25,000 subscribers in like five months or something. It’s

[00:46:47] Jeff Sieh: Sparks.

[00:46:49] Conor Brown: And I think the good thing about that is that they’re, they’re like qualified subscribers, right? Like you’re saying Chanel, that it, they’re getting value and they like that quiz and they’re, they’re subscribing for that. ’cause this is the [00:47:00] age old marketing question, right? Every marketer has faced this dilemma, and it is, do I add one more field to my form?

[00:47:07] Conor Brown: Or do I not add one more field to my form? Right? We know every single additional value you are asking for before someone. Can sign up is a likelihood that they’re gonna turn away and they’re not gonna fill out that form. Right? But every less field that you add, maybe an unqualified person comes in. And when you’re spending money on your lists, you don’t want a bunch of unqualified people on your list and subscribe to your list.

[00:47:37] Conor Brown: So is there a danger in, in making it like. Too easy to subscribe and just putting your email address in and that’s it. How have you seen people balance that, like low friction with high intent?

[00:47:51] Chenell Basilio: Yeah, this is a, a good question and some days I’m like, you know what, I’m gonna kick everyone off my email list except for like 8,000 people. And like, you can’t [00:48:00] subscribe again unless somebody else unsubscribes. But, um, just because, like, I feel this all the time, I’m like, sometimes it’s way too easy and.

[00:48:08] Chenell Basilio: Kit, recommendations, beehive, all the substack recommendations. Way too easy to subscribe. Those people have no idea who you are. so I highly recommend sending a separate welcome sequence for those people just so you can like, warm them up and treat them more like a Twitter follower versus like an actual email subscriber

[00:48:24] Chenell Basilio: in the beginning.

[00:48:25] Chenell Basilio: but yeah, I think friction, there is something good about friction too, right? Like you’re making sure this person actually wants to be there. Yeah, I don’t know. I do love quizzes though. Like I do something with write message after someone subscribes. Like they’ll get questions that they can click answers to and it automatically saves that to their subscriber record and kit.

[00:48:43] Chenell Basilio: So I can say, all right, Jeff subscribed. He has, you know, 10,000 email subscribers. and then I can send you different emails than somebody else per se. So, yeah, I mean, I think the more data you can get from people will help you decide if they’re a good fit for your newsletter. And then just having [00:49:00] sequences that kick people off if they’re not opening or engaging.

[00:49:03] Jeff Sieh: So let’s, let’s dig into that really quick. kind of our, kind of our last question. ’cause I, I think this is really. Because so many of the big platforms like Kit Beehive and some other ones, one of their big selling, thing is that recommendation engine, right? They’re like, Hey, we can help you grow your list.

[00:49:16] Jeff Sieh: And I’ve gotten a lot. It’s like, so Paul recommends me and he’s got powwows.com. Now, that Native American community may not be a great fit for my list. I get a lot of people on there, but I also see a lot of people leave. So I’ve gone and I’ve made a, like you said, a special welcome sequence for just people coming in through that funnel to tell them who I am and then they can make the decision maybe a little better if they wanna stay or leave or not.

[00:49:40] Jeff Sieh: because so many people are coming to these platforms, Chanel, I think that’s something they should probably do sooner rather than later. And we talked about earlier in the show, not just telling people who you are, but how do you, how do you finagle that with somebody coming off one of those. Lists where they may have 10 people that they automatically, they didn’t know any better, they left everything checked, and they got on all these lists.

[00:49:59] Jeff Sieh: [00:50:00] How do you keep those people on? Like what, what should you say in that email? Not just like, Hey, I’m Jeff C and I do this. I have a live show, da, da, da. How should we word it to keep them on there the best we can? Does that make sense, what I’m trying to ask?

[00:50:11] Chenell Basilio: Yeah, and like you were just saying, like some of them shouldn’t be on there. And so you wanna give them the option to unsubscribe, like right away. Like, Hey, I’m gonna talk about these things. If you don’t have any interest in this, like, here’s the unsubscribe link. Go click that. what I’ve seen people do, and I, I’ve started to emulate this myself, is like. There is a newsletter operator named Caitlyn Bergin and she writes a newsletter called Why We Buy. And in her first email, if you subscribe through recommendations, she shows you a picture of what that kit recommendation box looks like. Because one of the things with recommendations is they might think you just subscribed me from outta nowhere.

[00:50:44] Chenell Basilio: I don’t even know who you are. This is spam. And they’ll click the spam link and that’s not good either. And so she wants to make sure like right away that you know, you came from this. And so that’s helping reduce the spam rate as well. Yeah. Like you said, just let them know what you’re gonna talk about and who you are and let them [00:51:00] unsubscribe.

[00:51:00] Chenell Basilio: Like if nobody wants to be there, then like don’t force them to stay.

[00:51:04] Jeff Sieh: doing that like screenshot of that recommendation list is genius. I need to go back and change my sequence. If people see that, and maybe you can make a joke about it, like, Hey, you may have not known, but haha, this is what I do. Don’t hit spam. Whatever you do, just unsubscribe and we’re all good.

[00:51:18] Jeff Sieh: You know, something may be funny, a little playful, if it’s on brand for you to do that. I think that it’s genius and an awesome way to do that. by the way, we had, Amy Keys, she goes, and Amy, you’re supposed to be paying attention to the show, but she goes, I just did all those questions when I signed up for your newsletter.

[00:51:33] Jeff Sieh: She really liked that. So Amy will be stealing that idea

[00:51:36] Chenell Basilio: Yeah, and that’s like subtle, but let’s dig into that a little bit. So those questions, like I’ve heard people say that they feel heard by answering more questions about themselves, and I’m like, interesting because from a marketer perspective I’m like, I just wanna know more about you so I can like help you better or sell you things.

[00:51:53] Chenell Basilio: But people, especially like Amy just said, I really liked that. And so people feel heard when you’re asking them these questions so you [00:52:00] can better. Help them or, or steer them in the right direction.

[00:52:03] Jeff Sieh: Well, it’s just a great time to end the show because everyone’s leaving to go do all these ideas right now. so thanks Paul. But Chanel, before everybody takes off and does all these great, ideas that you, uh, mentioned in your show, tell people where they can find out about you. We’ve mentioned growth and reverse throughout the show, but you also have a, a select community inside, growth and reverse.

[00:52:21] Jeff Sieh: So talk about that, your podcast, wherever you want people to find you. The floor is now yours.

[00:52:27] Chenell Basilio: Yeah, so growth and Reverse Pro is a community of people trying to build this kind of thing. So email lists, newsletters, just trying to, grow their business through email. that’s a super fun place. I love that. We’d love to have you if you’re. we also have a podcast growth and reverse.

[00:52:40] Chenell Basilio: Everything is growth and reverse. I tried to keep it simple. so that’s on Spotify, YouTube, apple, everywhere You get your podcasts.

[00:52:47] Jeff Sieh: Yeah, and I was even talking to Paul this morning and he said, yeah, I just listened to her, her podcast on the way back from Disc Golf. So like, it’s, it’s great. So, uh,if you’re a reader, if you’re a listener, you can find Chanel everywhere. So make sure you go to [00:53:00] growth in reverse.com. This has been an amazing show.

[00:53:05] Jeff Sieh: Uh, we’ve had so much fun. Thank you for our sponsor, Ecamm. You found out more about them at Ecamm dot com slash Jeff Connor Brown. Where can people find out more about the amazing unsinkable Conor Brown?

[00:53:15] Conor Brown: You can go to vacation kingdoms.com and you can follow me on social media at Vacation Kingdoms for all of your vacation planning needs. What an awesome, awesome show. thank you Chanel so much for being here.

[00:53:28] Jeff Sieh: Yeah, and,

[00:53:29] Jeff Sieh: and thank you for Amy, Dustin, Sean, Paul, everybody who showed up and left. Great comments on today’s show. This has been awesome. Chanel has been great. I’ve been so excited to have her on. thank you guys, for coming. And by the way, we’ve been talking about newsletters. I’d love for you to subscribe to mine@jeffc.com slash news.

[00:53:46] Jeff Sieh: this has been an amazing thing. Go check out Ecamm, they’re an awesome sponsor of the show. And with that, we’ll see you guys next time. Bye everybody.