Building Email Communities: How to Grow a Raving Audience

So many people think of email as an afterthought. You know, I'll, I'm gonna put a lot of time into my reel for Facebook or my blog or, or their podcast episode, right? They're gonna put all this time and effort into creating that content. And then email is just a place that I push that out. Some of my emails I, I think of as my content source first, and then we can repurpose some of that into other places. I think it's super important that we build the backbone of our business on something we control. So in the past year or so, I've had a Facebook group with 85,000 members delete it overnight. Things change. And if you build your email list, you'll always have that as your, as your backbone, and a way to communicate with your readers, regardless of all this other stuff that's changing. So it, it is gonna take some work, but again, this is what's gonna separate us. And from all the AI content and the overwhelming amount of content there is online right now. Today, I'm very excited to be joined by Paul Gowder. If you don't know who Paul is, he's an expert at developing communities via email. He's the founder of powwows. com, the leading online community for Native American Arts and culture. Paul is also the host of the Side Hustle Suitcase podcast. Paul, welcome to the show. How you doing today? I'm good. I've been looking forward to this all day. It's been one of those days, and this on my calendar has been like, you know, the highlight I just gotta get to this afternoon. Uh, I just dropped my daughter off at the airport, so kind of sad. And then been dealing with health insurance all day. So you are the bright spot of my day. I've been looking forward to this. Well, nobody likes to deal with health insurance, and sometimes having your daughter go away is a good thing, and sometimes it's a bad thing, but generally it's a bad thing. I know. I've got three girls, I totally know what it's like. It's almost always a sad moment. Well, today, Paul and I are gonna explore using email to develop community. Yes, you heard that, right? We'll get into what that all means in a little while. But Paul, I would love to hear a little bit of your story. How did you get into, uh, email in general? Like, start wherever you wanna start. So I, I like to tell people I'm an accidental entrepreneur. I, I didn't set out to build a business. I, I was playing around with building webpages in college, and I built things, uh, built pages about things I knew. So Star Wars toys I love. I still collect Star Wars vintage toys. And I, I started building pages about Native American powwows. At the time, I was just researching, um, my family background and, and friends were taking me to powwow. So I was literally just like, Hey, I went to a powwow this weekend. This was really cool. Here's what I've learned. And, and that was it. And back in those days, you know, it was before SEO and social media, those pages got, uh, indexed and put into whatever the search engines were back there, um, Alta Vista or whatever. And people started coming. The Star Wars didn't go anywhere. It was, it was 1996. Nobody cared about Star Wars back then. Disney had not bought them. There were no prequels, so nobody really cared. But the native stuff started taking off. And it was early on that people were asking me, Hey, um, we wanna, we wanna have that same environment that we have at powwows. We wanna be able to talk with each other and share. And so we, we put up a, a forum and we started growing the forum. And it was really that those first, um, couple years of having a forum and trying to figure out like, how do I effectively talk with people that I figured out sending email was so powerful. And being able to communicate directly with people was, was really, it was a, it was a touch point that you just couldn't do. Yes, forum were good and you could have conversations, but to be able to send a message to everybody and get everybody to have the same information at the same time was really powerful. I, I remember for those out there, remember V Bulletin, I remember hitting the, the thing in V Bulletin, and it would actually, you know, show you everybody it was sending to. And you just sit there and watch the screen, you know, when see emails going by and being so excited that, you know, a thousand people, 10,000 people just got my email. Um, it was really cool. And it was there that I started developing that email needed to be personal and having, you know, crafting my own voice and not just being a brand, uh, it was trial and error, but that's really where I started seeing the value of email inside a community was those early days in v Bulletin For those gray hairs that are listening, uh, like myself and Paul. Um, you do remember, I remember back when, you know, I started in the, in the mid nineties as well. And back then the idea of a website was pretty much like born, you know what I mean? And the idea of forums were really interesting. The business that I had before Social Media Examiner was called White Paper Source. And we had a forum, which is kind of like, uh, little Facebook groups is probably the best way to describe it today, with all these little sub subcategories. And everybody would interact inside these forums. And it was, yeah, it was kind of the way you did community. And if you wanna go way back, it was bulletin board systems, even before then with Dial Up, you know, you've got mail

that stuff, right? We're aging ourself for the younger generation. We're just giving you context here. But there was before social media, social activities online, and it was predominantly done through forms. So what I heard you say in your journey is you started in the nineties. Um, and for folks that aren't watching the YouTube video right now, Paul has incredible Star Wars stuff all around him. He's wearing a Star Wars comic shirt. He's got, uh, what looks like the top of, um, C3 PO on his microphone. And there's all sorts of stuff behind. Yeah. And it's really cool. So basically, when you were early in your journey, were you mostly just what we would call blogging? Is that effectively what you were doing when you were first going to these powwows? In the early days, I wasn't even doing that. I wasn't doing like a writeup after every powwow. It was more of, because it was for me, right? I wasn't, I wasn't even thinking about building an audience and all that. It was, Hey, I learned that this particular dance style is about this, and here's what their outfit looks like. And, um, at a powwow, you may see a grand entry, and that means this. And, um, these drum groups, the singers at powwows, this is the type of songs they sing. It, it was really, um, more of Wikipedia style. Like reporting is like, here's this stuff and here's what it means. Um, it, it wasn't even, yeah, like, Hey, I went to this powwow and here's what I saw. It was really just kind of a high level at, at the time. And then, um, we had those pages out there as just static pages, and it was the forms that really built out. And then from there we added a, an event calendar, and that was the first thing people wanted, is a way to track all the powwows across the country. Um, so yeah, building that, you know, writing the first PHP script myself and all that kind of stuff. Yeah. That, that's where we started growing the calendar. But that forms in the communities really what made, and still to this day, it's our community that, that keeps us going. So kind of bring us Up to the present right now. Like, what are you doing today with email for either powwows or clients? Like, talk to us a little bit about, kind of share what you're doing now. So I, I like to tell people that I define community a little different than most people in social media. I, I like to think community. It can be anybody who feels a connection with you or with your topic, your, your niche, your brand, and has things in common. A lot of marketers will say, community is your Facebook group or your substack or whatever, right? And I, and I don't like to, I think those are places that you can have community interaction, but your community is bigger. So I treat everybody that's touching my, my content, whether it's on email, social media, or in person. They are part of the powwows. com community. They're part of the powwow nation. And so I always try to think when I'm writing emails or anything, I'm thinking community first. So when I write emails, I am talking to them, like I'm talking to them at a powwow. I am, you know, I'm saying, I, I am not saying, I'm not trying to be a brand. Uh, and I'm telling personal stories and, and my personal experiences at the events and you know, what we did this week kind of thing. So, and I don't think a lot of people think about email that way. I, so many people think of email as, um, an afterthought is, you know, I'm, I'm gonna put a lot of time into my reel for Facebook or my v blog or my blog and they're gonna write all this, or, or their podcast episode, right? They're gonna put all this time and effort into creating that content. And then email is just a place that I push that out and, and send everybody a link where I, some of my emails I, I think of as my content source first. And then we can repurpose some of that into other places. Now we do a lot of, you know, pushing out our content through email, but I'm always trying to think community first and, and really trying to have conversations. I, I work hard in my emails to get people to reply. 'cause I think that's the most valuable thing you can get, is when people offer your, offer their time and reply to you and ask you a follow-up question or give you a comment, then we can have relationships and having a one-on-one relationship that's, that's the best thing we can, we can do with our, with our readers, I think. Love it. Okay, so we're gonna break down kind of some of the fundamentals of how this all works and stuff. But Before we do, I would Just like you to answer this question. Um, what are the benefits or the upside to building community with email said another way, when this is done really well, what does it unlock? Number one, things are going to change. I started, you started back in the nineties with these v bulletins and bullet courts. It's going to change. We, we have Facebook groups now and all these other things. It's going to change nothing on social media, nothing online is, is constant. But our email list we own

and control, uh, my friend Lu Ello likes to say, there's only two things in this world that we own and control in this whole digital world. And that's your podcast feed and your email list. And so I think it's super important that we build the backbone of our business on something we control. So in the past a year or so, I've had a Facebook group with 85,000 members delete it overnight. Um, Facebook, you know, this was a couple years ago changed and, and like deleted the whole podcast feature off of it. Lately they've been changing the rules on how groups work, things change. And if you build your email list, you'll always have that as your, as your backbone and a way to communicate with your readers, regardless of all this other stuff that's changing. But then also, I mean, there's other benefits too. This is, this is the only way that you can directly message your readers. Um, we have a very active Facebook page and I'm very thankful that we have a, a big Facebook page. But when I post something on there, I have no guarantee of who's gonna see it. If, if 1% of my audience sees a particular message on Facebook, sometimes that's, I'm doing great, right? Um, if 10% see it, man, it's a, it's a dream day. But with email, I, you know, if, if I'm doing good open rates, you know, we're at 50 or 60% open rates, then a lot of people saw it. And it may sit in their message, they may not see it till next week, but I know they got the message. I love that I can relate. 'cause we have almost 600,000 people that are following our Facebook page and right. I can assure you that not just a teeny, teeny little fragment. We're talking thousands, maybe tens of thousands we'll ever see any of the posts that we make anymore. I love what you said here. Some of the key things I heard you say is, number one, this is the only thing that you really have control over. Number two, um, there's gonna get a, you kind of implied this, but there's gonna be a much higher percentage of people that are gonna receive your message than ever on a Facebook group. Now I'll throw this out there 'cause I know it's true. And you know, it's true that, that there are filters out there that are going to stop that email from maybe showing up in the primary inbox. Sure, sure. It might go into spam or might go into promotion, but the, the fact of the matter is that the percentage is going to get through is incrementally higher, which is really, really valuable if you want to be in front of an audience that reads email. And a lot of people do. So now my next question is, are there any important concepts that people need to be thinking about? Um, when it comes to developing communities via email? I Love building that community feeling with building sequences. So that is on powers. com. We probably have, I don't know, 20 different email sequences. And, and a sequence is just a series of emails that you build inside of your pro your platform, whether it's kid or flow desk or, or whatever else that are, that is delivered over a period of time, whether it's, you know, once an hour, once a day, once a week, whatever. So it's just a serialized piece of content that you're writing in, in emails. And I build these sequences. Um, I'll start with topic based sequences. So our most popular and probably most successful, is a sequence that is what to expect at your first powwow. If you're new, you've never been, you're a little anxious about going to something like this. We have a free email series that walks you through the entire process that is much more effective than when somebody subscribes to our newsletter. That we send them out the weekly broadcast first because out weekly broadcasts are great, but therefore your readers that you already have a relationship with, when you build a sequence, those are for new people and that's how you build trust and relationship deliver value. And then they're kind of bought in. And your weekly emails that you send out your broadcast to everybody will be much more effective once they kind of buy in and understand who you are. So that's, that's the first way I like to build community, is by creating these sequences and doing several of these, um, based on different topics and different questions. And it really does develop a much better relationship and, and buy-in from your reader. Love it. Okay. Um, talk to me a little bit about, um, about understanding who our audience is maybe before we start crafting and anything about like how we ought to maybe craft the mess, you know, using our unique voice and stuff like that. Right? So it, over time you'll, you, you have to start taking notice, but start thinking about what's the question that you're getting over and over again. For me, I was getting questions like, what is a grand entry? How do I find a powwow? What do I wear? What do I bring? Okay, start writing those down. There's your, there's an email series. Start figuring out if there's different groups of people. Um, I work with a, a lot of, uh, people in the travel space, you know, especially I'm, I'm a big Disney fan, so people in the Disney travel, um, business, and they, they may have people coming to them wanting cruises or wanting a theme park or wanting a guided tour. So you, you can start kind of positioning your audience that way. Just look at the messages

and the interactions you're getting, the comments you're getting on social media. You can kind of start breaking people down into buckets. And then you start getting to know what your audience is. And two, start thinking about their age, their, their demographics, and, and you can start kind of tailoring that to them. When I write these sequences, I, you, you need to develop the voice. And I think it needs to be, you, you should try to write these emails in, in the way you speak, not completely right? You, you wanna put a little bit more information, formal into these than, than just a conversation with friends. But that, that's kind of how you need to think about it. It, these need to be conversational. Please don't send a message out that looks like an Amazon or a Best Buy or, or some brand with all the pictures in the layouts. These need to be text-based mostly. And that's, you know, back to your point, that's what's gonna help you get through those promotion tabs is when you're sending more text-based emails and people are going to read those, um, more readily. And, and when, and then if we make it conversational and we kind of break it up into more scannable text, people do digest it easier. I, I wish that people did read, um, you know, the vlogs that I spend or blogs, I spend hours crafting a 5,000 word blog. I wish they read them, but they don't anymore. They're gonna scan it, they're gonna skim it. So write your emails in a way that people can digest it quickly. Love it. Okay. So couple quick things that I heard you say. Number one is to make sure that you're writing in a way that sounds like a conversational style. Yes. And you've, if you've been trained folks as, uh, a writer to write very formally, you can just pop it in your favorite AI tool and ask it to make it more conversational and or to help it teach you what is it about your writing style that needs to change. Because AI is really good at taking something and kind of reformulating it in a little bit of a conversational way, and then you could format it a little bit. And the other thing that you mentioned was that, uh, you should understand what your audience is interested in and maybe think about creating different buckets for the different kinds of things that they might be interested in. Because you might have an audience, for example, in my case, that's very into ai, and then I've got another audience that's very into social and marketing, and they, there's overlap, but there's not always overlap and it's important. Right. Kind of understand that. So earlier you mentioned the idea putting a sequence or a series together. Yes. And what I heard you say, and, and what I'm going to kind of explain in my own words for folks is that a series or a sequence is effectively a list of emails that are scheduled to go out over a period of time, right? Like you just say on day one, day five, day seven, whatever, am I right? Exactly. And then you can create like, explain a little bit more about these series and how they work a little bit and let's just kind of dig in a little deeper On that. Yeah. And, and I will say too, as far as putting your, your emails into ai, I do that all the time. Don't take it word for word. But like, my daughter tells me all the time when I, she, she says, I write very direct. And a lot of times she'll, she'll actually call me or send me a message like, are you mad at me? I'm like, why? And she's like, well, you were you the way you wrote that text? I'm like, I just, I just was, I just said what I said. And she's like, no, you need to read that again. It, so I do, I, I take, take what I write dad. I can relate. And also as an employer, I can relate. So many people have been, yeah, miss, misunderstood. 'cause I'm just a quick to the point kind of guy. You know what I mean? Right, right. So yes, take your, take your message and put it into something and tell it. Please make this more conversational. Make it more friendly. Um, yeah. So let's, yeah, let's talk about more se more about these sequences. Absolutely. Love these. Uh, there's, there's several that, that we have and I'll, I'll talk about them. But yeah, these are just think about taking your content and breaking it up into chunks that you can tell a stories, uh, in a little bit across a, a longer period of time. Instead of trying to put everything into a single blog post or a single podcast, we can break our topic up into several chunks. Um, I did this at a, at a conference recently. I, I showed people that were kind of stuck on figuring out how to write their first sequence. So I took, again, going back to my friend Lou Ello, I, I took one of his webpages and I put it in the Chachi pt and I said, please create me a, a welcome sequence that explains what I do for people and break it up into five emails and it spit it out beautifully. It was great. So, you know, look at your content and figure out how you can break it up into pieces. Um, I like to do like the what to expect at your first powwow. I like to do that. Um, and tell people in the first email, Hey, look, I'm over the next, you know, seven days. I'm gonna send you a message we're, it's gonna be once a day and I'm gonna take you through all the things you need to know about going to your first powwow. And then from there, we'll, we'll kind of work through it. These are, these are shorter emails. These aren't super long. I, I'd like to break them up into kind of one topic at a time. And then for powells. com, one

of our revenue sources is, um, advertising. So I make these shorter with a link to go read more information so that they do, we try to build traffic with our email sequences. So you don't have to do that, but that's one of the techniques we use. But you want to be, you know, as short as possible, give them information and, and then the next day you can move on to the next topic. So, uh, again, if I go back to my Disney example, like if you're, if you're planning for your first cruise, maybe the first day is here's what to pack. Number two is like, here's what to expect on your first day. Here's how you check into a cruise. Number three may, here's how to plan all of your excursions and what you're gonna do on the crew. So start thinking about content that way, and you can start breaking 'em down. Okay. Help explain why this is so important, because, You know, that example you just gave about the cruise could just all be in one message. But why, why break it across multiple messages? Like, help explain what that's achieving, if you will. And again, I like to, I, I'm breaking the rule from what most email marketers will tell you. you, you want build these fancy lead magnets and put everything into this nice PDF. And I think that there's some benefit to that and people like a download. But if you're like me, I have a folder on my computer that's full of PDFs that I've downloaded that most of them I read, um, some of them I read once, but never went back. So I think you're, you get much better retention, especially over the years that I've been doing this. This is what I see is that I take a something complicated and something that's a lot of information and I break it up over 5, 7, 10 days into smaller chunks, and I get a be much better retention. I get a much better inter engagement and people actually read and digest the information. So in that, what to expect to traverse powwow in some of the first couple of emails, I ask questions and I know, I mean, I can look at my stats and see the opens and the clicks and all that, but I also know that when, in the morning when I check my inbox and I see that, you know, I've gotten five or 10 responses to those questions, I know it's working and I'm getting, I'm getting feedback, and I'm, you know, people are actually reading it. And then when they're responding to the 10th email and they're still answering questions, I know I've got them and they didn't just take A-P-D-F-I gave them and never came back. So I know that I'm actually getting them and they're continuing to read the message. It, it is a much better way to build that trust and that relationship that, you know, we're in the relationship business, right? If, if you're not trying to establish these one-on-one relationships, you, you're missing big opportunities. It's not just about shouting and shoving information in front of people. You have to find ways to actually get them to read and engage. Well, there is another benefit also to doing it the way that you're doing it, which is dividing it up into multiple messages, is that the AI systems are watching. Like, lemme the, the email systems like Google, Microsoft, they're watching to see if you are opening and or clicking on these emails because that's called an engagement metric. Just like on social media, if people engage with your posts, they'll probably see more posts from you. It's exactly true. The same with email. Like if they're, if they mean Google or Microsoft, see that there are actively people engaging with your message, they're gonna show that person your next message, and it's gonna increase the likelihood that your future messages are gonna get into the inbox, which is something kind of really, really important. Now, um, let's see here. So What about, What about like, uh, given us some places where we can come up with concepts and ideas. You already mentioned do you have a lead magnet and you kind of inferred that you can take that lead magnet and divide it up into a series of emails, but let's just talk about some other places where we can come up with ideas to come up with a series, if you will. So another one of my favorite series is on Thursdays we have what we call our Throwback Thursday. It, it is a sequence, but people on my list don't know that it's a sequence. They just think that I write these every Thursday, which is fine. And, and all it is, is we, we've been writing content on pas. com for 20 years, uh, or more. This is our 30th anniversary actually. And we have a ton of content. So every Thursday I send in a message, and at the beginning of the year we write these out. But here's what the message says. It's, Hey, we have a piece of content. Let's say it's, um, we have, you know, here's an article we wrote about the Choctaw Cultural Center in Durant, Oklahoma, and I think you would really like this. And if you ever traveled to Oklahoma, you wanna visit this, here's why. Here's some of the things they have with a link. And it's that simple, that sequence is fantastic for building engagement, building, uh, you know, building traffic and all that. But people also look forward to it. And because people don't necessarily go through your entire website, this is a way for me to take some of our best content

and make sure that new readers see it. I've also used this with podcasters. So anybody who has more than 10 episodes, this is something you wanna think about. Your best podcast may be episode five, but some you're, You're 700 and something. So I've dealt Work with Exactly right. So, you know, you, you probably know from looking at your stats and, and hearing from people what your top 10, top 20 podcasts are. Somebody who subscribes to your podcast in your email tomorrow may never go back and re and listen to those episodes. So why not create an email sequence that, that you send out, whether it, you know, podcast Monday or Throwback Thursday, whatever, and you highlight those episodes. It's a great way to make sure that every listener gets the best episodes. Um, so that's another way you can do it. If you're a podcaster, if you're a YouTuber, whatever, take your old content and put it into one of these sequences. It works. So, so well Now the key is it's gonna have to be evergreen, right? I mean, we're we Oh yeah, for sure. Make sure that this is something that doesn't go out of date, right? That's the challenge that I face. So much of the stuff that we do is so, um, constrained by, you know, the constantly changing the industry that we're in, right? Right. But a lot of people that are listening are still getting asked the same questions all the time, as you mentioned earlier. Or people are interested in certain kinds of things that are timeless. And that's all great, uh, context for stuff that you could, you could use over and over again. All right. I love it. Uh, I wanna get into, um, I wanna get into how, how we get people into the series. But before I do that, just outta curiosity, like how big should a be? Because that's a big question. Like, it sounds like you've got some that are all over the place, right? Oh, yeah, yeah. We, so the throwback Thursday is, is 52 weeks. We send it out every week. And at the beginning of the year, I'm working on it now. Um, I have a VA that helps me. We'll come up with a list of the 52, um, posts that we're gonna cover this year, and we'll, we'll write those out. So that, that's 52 my what to expect at your first powwow. The first time I wrote that sequence, um, it was probably seven messages. It's now maybe up to 13 or 14. Um, which is another great thing about these series is they, they're not set in stone. You can edit them over time is you add more content or things change. You can go back and edit these. It's not set in stone like a PDF that you, you did. And it's very tough to change. Um, but I have other sequences that are, um, maybe two emails. It's because it's a very specific question and I can answer it in two emails and be done, and then I move them on to something else. So it, it just depends. Um, we have another one that, that we did just for Native American Heritage Month, and it was 60 emails delivered over the course of two months. Um, so it depends. We, we have 'em all variety sizes and, uh, again, they don't have to stay the same. Keep looking at 'em, keep editing them and who knows what, what you'll build. But yeah, we, we have How often, How often are you sending these messages? Good question. So for something like what to expect at your first powwow, it's once a day. And, and I do tell people in the first one, like, here's what to expect. You're gonna get these over the next seven or 10 days. Um, then other ones, um, like we have, after you finish what to expect, it's your first powwow, you're then put into another series that's the, just a general, let me get you acquainted with who we are@powwows. com and, and the resources that we have and we can offer you that one is once a week, and then even after the first four or five messages, it kind of goes to once a month. And so that one is spread out o over a much longer time. 'cause I, I don't wanna bombard them with information. Um, I want to get them, you know, the, the value that they need, and then I can just remind them every once in a while. So it depends. I, I like for something where you're, you're answering a question or giving them, uh, the value that you promised them in whatever your opt-in was. I like doing once a day and, and pushing that out, um, over the course of a week or two weeks. Um, but then other ones that aren't as urgent, you can push 'em out once a week or so. Uh, for folks That are really savvy, you probably already connected the Dots that This strategy of reusing some of your older content in email series could also be used in social. Yeah. Um, you could take, You Could take this throwback Thursday stuff and you could every Thursday post something on the social platforms, couldn't you? I mean, have you even caught Up? For sure. Yeah, we're doing that. Um, and you know, I was talking about our, our Facebook page is pretty active. We, I think we're 1. 6 million right now, so we're posting a lot of that. Um, we're, we're probably posting 15 to 20 times a day. Wow. So we're doing a lot of that kind of content resurfacing, old stuff. Okay. So, uh, to the question I hinted at earlier, How The heck do you actually get anybody into a sequence, right? Because yeah, in your case, you've got a bunch of sequences. You've kind of hinted, you've got Throwback Thursday, you've got, uh, what to know about a powwow

or how to get started with powwows, and then you've probably got a whole bunch of others. So now the logical question is like, what's the top of the funnel or what's the way that they get into these, uh, series in the first place? Yeah, great question. So there's several different ways. My favorite though is I use a plugin from Media V called Grow. I think it's, uh, grow. me. And what it does is, I mean, we've all built like, you know, email opt-ins, right? It's a free plugin that puts an email opt-in in the middle of your WordPress article. And so as people are scrolling, this opt-in form will pop up and kind of, um, highlight itself. It's really, it's a really, really cool tool. What's even better is that if you're a WordPress user, um, it, you can do it based on your WordPress category. So you can have a different opt-in for, um, going back to my Disney example for cruises, for theme parks, for all inclusives, each one of those can be in diff different opt-in. And putting it in the middle of the content, I think is the, is the key here. I see so many people building these beautiful webpage that they pi spend all this time in, and their email form is in the footer or in the sidebar. And if you're on mobile, nobody's ever gonna see that. So using something that puts it right in the middle of the content and is topical. So for us, like on pages where people are asking questions about tribal enrollment, tracing their, their heritage, those kind of things, I have a, I have one that displays and says, Hey, by the way, we have a step-by-step instruction on how to trace your family history. And so that is a very topical thing. And they subscribe. They get it a series about how to, how to trace their Native American heritage. So that's, that's the number one. And that works incredibly well. But then I also, I love doing landing pages where a landing page is page with without your normal, um, headers and footers, not your navigation. It, the only thing on that, on that page is maybe some texts in an email opt-in form. And I like doing that because like, if I'm on a podcast like this or speaking at a conference, or even just talking with a group of people, I can say, oh, you're interested in going to your first powwow. Okay, great. I have a place that you can go powwows. com/powwow 1 0 1. It's a free email series. All you have to do is go there and sign up. And over the course of 10 days, I'll explain all the dos and don'ts. So I use a, a simple URL send people to that landing page. I can also use that same URL on social. I can, I, I share it in stories in reels. It is a great way, and again, it's a one call to action page. And the only thing I'm asking for them is to sign up. That, that is extremely powerful. But I'm doing other things too. You know, I'm, we're using, we're putting, um, things in, in social media. We're doing, um, we are doing some paid, um, and using, uh, Facebook's lead, uh, ads to actually get their emails. Um, but I'll explain that real quick just because I, What it's, but not everybody knows what that is, right? So a, a lead ad or lead form is, um, where they stay on the Facebook platform. So if they click on your ad, they're able to stay on the platform and supply the email address. So it comes to me, you know, you have to use an automation in the background to, to send it over to your email platform, but you're able to collect the email address without them ever leaving Facebook. So it's a, a must, uh, it's a lower friction type of ad instead of trying to send them to something on your page that they then opt in for. It's all stays in the Facebook platform. It's, it's really powerful. Um, and you, you know, you can get email subscribers. I think I'm, depending on the campaign, I'm paying anywhere from 12 cents to 20 cents per email subscriber, which is just incredible. Right. Um, that's a really Good deal. You talked To me about, Tell everybody about link triggers and how all that stuff works. Just so, yeah. That's the other one. Yeah. So as you're crafting your weekly broadcast messages, this is a great place to tell people about those other sequences that you have. And so I'll, you know, in a, in a message, I may say, oh, by the way, and here's what we're doing right now, actually, um, we're, it's our 30th anniversary powwows. com, and we're building for this big celebration this summer. So in, when I send out my weekly email, I, I'm mentioning, Hey, by the way, this is our big anniversary. We're planning for this big giveaway and all this contest that we're gonna do in the summer. If you're interested and want to get on the wait list and know when we start this big contest in the summer, all you have to do is click here. And so if they click there, um, I use kit, and Kit will then tag them as somebody who's interested in our 30th anniversary that triggers off an automation that they're put into the sequence about our 30th anniversary. And then they're delivered a series of emails and all they had to do was click a link inside of an email that they got. So I love doing that. In fact, at the end of, of all of my sequences, I'll tell people, Hey, look, by the way, um, you just finished our What to Expect. Its your first powwow. Just letting you know, we also have some other things that may help you. Here's one on, on how to trace your family history. We also have a Native American book club if you wanna be a part of that. We have a travel group, you know, so I'm offering ways in these other emails to keep funneling people into these other series.

I love it. Okay. Um, talk to me about the art and craft of Actually making these emails, because you have a very specific methodology. Uh, and I really wanna break it down so people can understand it. I learned early on that I needed to, to have my own voice and to speak as myself. I'll go back to V Bulletin where I learned this lesson the first time. And, and I have to be reminded of this lesson every once in a while too. But when I first started doing things on the bulletin, I registered, um, my account and my username on my own website was webmaster because that's what we were back then, right? We were webmasters and that was my username. And one of the moderators told me, um, she's like, Paul, everybody thinks you're like this automated thing. They don't know that you're actually a real person when they see webmaster. They just think it's like some kind of part of the system talking. So I changed my username to Paul G and I started talking as myself and being more personal. And the difference it made was incredible. It, it's kind of cool to still go to powwows now 20 years later and people will come up and say, what's up Paul G? 'cause they still remember that's how they interacted with me. So when you're writing your emails, don't write as a brand. Don't write as we and, and talk to one person. It is the same thing we try to do on podcast, right? Don't try to talk to an audience, a room full of people, try to talk just like you're talking to one person. Be intentional. Say things like, hi, friend or hi. You don't say, oh, hey everybody. It's so great to see everybody here today, ideally, Hey, first name. Yeah. Right. Exactly. Exactly right. Use, use your tool. Use the things in your email tools to be very personal and, and talk directly to one person. And that makes such a difference. Um, but yeah, that, that's what I try to do in all of these emails. And like I said earlier, you know, keep 'em short and skimmable so that people actually retain them and do other things too. Like I, I was talking to Kit the other day, you know, if you're gonna put a link in your emails, you know, maybe have that link once or twice, once as a button, once as a text link. You know, there's some things you could do there to, to increase your, your or your click through rates. But the big thing here is just develop your voice and, and talk as yourself. It, it'll be, you'll, it'll make a huge difference in how your readers engage with you. Okay. Tell me a little bit about images And stories and all that fun stuff. How you can add some of that into their, uh, and kind of what your thoughts are on this. 'cause what I want to do is have people develop a picture in their mind of what something like this might look like. Yeah. When I talk to people, and, and you and I talked about this before too, is when I start telling people these strategies and talk as yourself, ask questions, people get a little, a little scared because, um, our, our list is about a hundred thousand. Um, and people get really worried that what am I gonna do if, if 500 people reply to my message today, you know, how are we gonna do this? So you, you do wanna, we're trying to scale the unscalable here. We're trying to do things that, that not everybody can do. So when you're crafting your message like this, you, you want to ask questions, you wanna do that. You wanna be text-based, you want you maybe use an image or two, keep them simple. Um, but again, you're, you're wanting to send these messages that they look like they're from a friend. Um, we have a mutual friend, Jeff c if anybody gets on Jeff C's email list, when you see one of his messages, um, he still has people that, that think that he's writing directly to them. They don't realize they're on his newsletter because he's so personal and it's a text-based email. They think he's writing directly to them. And that is ultimately what you want people to do, is you want to, you want them to feel like you're writing directly to them because you've done it. Your email looks like it was sent from a friend. So you can have some images, you can do this. Um, the other thing I'll tell you again, scaling the unscalable. We have 30 something sequences on pals. com. I'm writing. Um, we send maybe four to seven broadcasts a week depending on what we have going on. It's a lot of content. And so I do have somebody helping me with that. And I do have VAs that help and, and write some of these messages for me. But I always reserve the top of these emails for me. And that's where I can tell stories. I can be personal. So when I send out this week's message, um, we'll be sending one on Friday because we have a, a powow live stream this weekend. And I'll say things like, uh, this has been, it was a rough week for me because I had to drop my daughter off at the, at the airport and, you know, I missed her. But it was great having her here for a few days, getting to visit with family. That was really awesome. But I'm excited that this weekend we're gonna be able to bring you this live stream. So I'm gonna tell those stories and be very personal in those emails, even though the rest of it is kind of, here's what's going on@powwows. com, here's the links, here's the latest podcast, here's the latest article. And those are all written by the, the virtual assistant. But I always leave that top part of the email for me

to be relatable, tell stories, all that kind of stuff. Fascinating. Okay. I love that part. Um, tell us a little bit about how you actually end these as well, because you mentioned, I think, earlier in this discussion about asking questions and stuff like that. How do you normally do that? Yeah, so, uh, the, we'll use again, the what to expect. Its first powwow, uh, the very first send out. It's kind of an introduction. And, and I say things like, Hey, I know this is gonna be very overwhelming. It's a lot of information and I know you're excited and want to get as much information as you can because you, you're, you're eager all that. So, hey, what are you most excited about? about seeing the dancing? hearing the music? Or is it the food and the crafts that you're more excited about? It's a really simple question. And that is, like I said earlier, every morning I know if I have five or 10 or 20 that I know people subscribed yesterday and they read the message. And so yes, I use, you know, some automations to help me respond to those quickly. Um, and, you know, a little canned response so that I can scale the unscalable kind of thing, right? But it's, it's a really cool measure. I, to me that's better than seeing open rates is, um, seeing the replies in my inbox every morning and knowing that, hey, it was effective. So I do like ending most of these sequence emails with a question. Um, another great one. And it is helping in our open rate and our deliverability. You know, we keep talking about not showing up in that promotions tab. In my weekly broadcast, one of the things I've started doing is at the very bottom, I'll add a trivia question and I'll say something like, Hey, by the way, here's a trivia question. Everybody who gets the answer, right, I'll put you in a drawing and I'll select one person to win. You know, a we, we just got new stickers in, right? So maybe, uh, I'll give a sticker away or give, you know, something, right? Um, so yeah, that's a, a really great way. And, and it rewards your loyal readers 'cause they're reading all the way to the bottom. Um, and if you train them, they'll start reading to the bottom every time. 'cause they're looking for that trivia question and talking about the signals that we wanna send back to Google and Microsoft. Um, and Open is great. A click is even better, but a reply is the strongest indicator that they're gonna keep you outta the progressions tab. So the trivia question, and man, that, that thing does wonders for your deliverability, Practicality on how in the world someone manages all this. Um, I would imagine most of the people listening have people that work for them. I would imagine they're gonna have to have somebody going through and manage the inbox, which is what we do here at Social Media Examiner. 'cause we've got a massive list. It, I mean, so that sounds like a pretty big project to manage, but I would imagine, I don't know, uh, it's not everybody who responds, right, right. You're not gonna get, you know, with a hundred thousand on our list. Um, for any given trivia question, it'll be a couple hundred that respond. Um, and then two, it's easy to filter out, uh, you know, 25, 30% are gonna get it wrong. Um, so those are easy to, to filter out. So it, it is gonna take some work, but again, this is what, this is what's gonna separate us. And from all the AI content and the overwhelming amount of content there is online right now, doing these things that, that other people can't or other people won't, is what differentiates us. Okay. So, um, let's assume we want to do multiple sequences or series, which is kinda the same word. Um, I can imagine this becomes kind of a management nightmare, right? Because they're all on different timelines. Yes. Some are like seven days, some are 52 Weeks. Like, Any tips on like how to, how to manage all that stuff? Because it sounds like it could be like a, something that could, you could forget to come back to or whatever. Like, any tips on that? Yeah, so one of the things that I wish that Kit and some of these other things would have a content calendar. I keep asking them for, show me a calendar of like, if, if I'm this subscriber, show me over the next week what messages they're getting, that would be really great. But until we get something like that, one of the things I like to do is when you build a new sequence, you can go into the settings and tell it what days to send. So I'm, I'm reserving no other email codes out on Thursday except for the throwback Thursday. So I know that, I know that regardless of whatever series they're on, they're only gonna get that one message on Thursday. Um, I then I, I also do I that what to expect at your first powwow. You're not gonna get one of our weekly broadcast messages until you've completed that. So I know that they're not gonna be on email too and all of a sudden get the weekly broadcast, right? So, um, those are kind of things you need to plan out ahead of time and think about so that you don't, uh, end up with a, with a user getting five emails on one day because everything's stomped on top of each other and it still happens. You know, I've, I had somebody message me last week and it's like, Hey, I got three emails from you today, what in the world happened? So I, I do have an automated response that kind of says

okay, by the way, here is our schedule of when we send emails, here's the, you know, if you're in some of our automations or our series or series sequences, you may get more than one, but that'll be temporary. Um, so I do have something prepared for when people do get that, but that's kinda one way I, I like to reserve days. Um, and then two, keep them out of the, the main broadcast until they completed something. Yeah. And there's a lot of wisdom in that. Uh, almost every email we use Drip. Um, you can, you know, you, you can just say on your main broadcast, send to everybody except the people that are in this series, right? Or accept the people that have this tag. Like maybe they're new and you don't wanna do any promotion to them for the first X number of days, but that's where you have to like, put on your thinking cap and start to think about like, what are all the sequences and all the possible scenarios that people are in. And, and if you have a lot of these things, you really do need to think this through, or you're gonna end up having people that are gonna get really confused and frustrated. Yes. Um, yes, Paul, we have just scratched the surface of, uh, these, uh, the idea of building community with email. Um, if folks are interested in, um, learning more about you or checking out your various, uh, businesses, uh, number one, where can they connect with you on the socials? And then number two, where do you wanna send 'em if they wanna learn more about you? So first of all, PowWowss are open, everybody. I'd love for people to come check out more about Native American Powwows. Uh, I mentioned it before, but powwows. com/powwow 1 0 1. We'll get you all that. If you're interested in more of what I do as far as building community and building email marketing, um, my website is paulgowder. com and I do have, um, again, I I have to promote my email sequence, right? Um, if you wanna see some of the email tools I use to have built this email list to a hundred thousand and manage it, um, go to paulgowder. com/emailtools. Paul, thank you so much for sharing your insights and wisdom with us. Yeah, Thank you, man. I've been looking forward to this. Again, this was the highlight of my day, so thanks for the time. Hey, just for the, um, for, for the notes for the team, um, do you want us to link to any particular social platform? Uh, 'cause you didn't, you didn't mention, uh, which social platform, Um, Are you active on any of them or not really? Yeah, I mean, my personal Facebook page, um, is where I'm doing most of this stuff. Hold, I'll send you a link right here. Okay, Cool. Yeah. Before we hit, hit done, I'll make sure, uh, I speak it out loud so it shows up in the transcript or you can just say it, you wanna just say it. Um, Facebook. com/paul gatter.