How to Spend $1000 to Massively Grow Your Email List! | Ep. 405

0:00Welcome to Do This Not That, the podcast for marketers. We share quick tips, things you can do right now, and then we add a little bit of chaos at the end of every episode. We also keep it short, like this intro. Let's check it out. We are back for Ask Us Anything from the Do This, Not That podcast presented by Marigold. This is our short episode where all week long we get in questions. We get in work questions and we get in super ridiculous questions and we try to tackle one of each. If you want to submit a question, you'd be my BFF. I'll never say that again. BFF is definitely embarrassing. But just go to jschwedelson.com.

0:38There's a button that says podcast. Another one that says ask us anything and drop it in there. It could be wild. It could be work-related. We don't care. We love it. Let's get into this week's question. We'll do the work one first. All right, we got a question from Jared from Pueblo, Colorado. I have no idea where that is. I did see, though, I think Colorado is a big state fair going on right now. I used to like those big state fairs with all the rides and stuff. I still like them. I just, I don't know. I cannot do the rides at all anymore. I can't go on anything that goes in a circle. If it goes in a circle, like a ride, I will throw up.

1:17Like, I can't go on a merry-go-round. And I found this out the hard way. But I do like playing the carnival games, which I'm very bad at. And I like funnel cake. Funnel cake is underrated. What are we talking about? Jared, what do you got? What's your question? Jay, we are trying to grow our email newsletter and we want to test some paid social media ads, but our budgets are super tight. How would you spend a thousand dollars to grow a newsletter using paid social? Ooh, a thousand bucks. All right. Well, this is great because people think that you need to spend all sorts of money on stuff to grow your database, to grow your newsletter, business, consumer, nonprofit.

2:00It doesn't matter. I'm gonna give you a simple playbook here, literally that you could do with$1 ,000 and stop spending$1 ,000 on stupid stuff. This will actually work and people are sleeping on some of this stuff. So let's say, oh, I think my audience is on LinkedIn. I'm gonna run paid ads there and that's gonna win the day. That ain't gonna win the day. You have to undo almost everything that you think about where you think you should be putting$1 ,000 into play and what it's going to do. So the first thing I want to think about with paid social media is that it is amazing. It can work incredibly well, but there's one thing that you need to have locked into your brain.

2:43When people go on social media, Instagram, Facebook, LinkedIn, Reddit, whatever, what they don't want to do is see an ad and then click on the ad and then leave the platform. They don't want to leave the app. They don't want to go and look at your garbage that you're promoting. So the way that you convert people, I'm going to tell you exactly how to do it. The way that you convert people on any of these platforms, I'm going to break down each one specifically, is to have your ad unit that you are using capture the person's interest and them submitting forms and them registering for your thing on the platform, right?

3:21So when someone sees that Instagram Reels ad, right? And they said, yes, I want to register. They don't leave the platform. They register for it right there because if they have to leave the platform, forget it. Your cost per registration goes into the stratosphere because nobody wants to leave the platform. So that's numero uno. Okay. So here's the deal. What is the best, absolute best use of a thousand dollars on a paid social media ad? It doesn't matter if it's for a business to business newsletter or a consumer newsletter, you're going to think this is wild. You're going to think I'm wrong, but I'm not.

3:53We have done this with my agency for over a hundred clients, business and consumer. Instagram reels. Those are the videos. Instagram reels ads. This is the secret sauce stuff. I am telling you, it could not work better. And the average cost per registration for a newsletter subscription ad. Sign up for this newsletter, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. The average cost per subscriber is between$2.50 and$4 per subscriber. So for$1 ,000, you can get 250 to 400 new subscribers. That is amazing. Now, the way that you do it on Instagram, the targeting that you can do, and I know some of you folks out there that are business to business folks are like, I'm not doing this.

4:40This won't work. I am telling you it couldn't work better. Instagram is a goldmine for business to business marketing. Obviously, it's a goldmine for consumer brands as well to grow your databases. So what you want to do is you want to not just any ad. You don't want to run regular post ads. You want to run Instagram reels ads. You want to make sure that they stay on platform. You can do great targeting. You can upload databases. You could do lookalike audiences. is you could do all the things, okay? And there's really no minimum. You could run this ad for five to$10 a day and see if I'm a doofus.

5:12And if I'm wrong, I am telling you, it crushes it. If I only had$1 ,000, that is where I would spend my money to grow my newsletter. Now, the next place I would look, I would not be running this on LinkedIn. Running the same ad, these lead gen ads, where you try to get somebody to subscribe to a newsletter or grow your database on LinkedIn, which is weird to say, you think that that's a better place to do it. It is not. We see across all of our clients the cost per registration for a paid newsletter ad. If you're going to do$1 ,000, it's going to cost you anywhere between$30 to$40 per subscriber.

5:47That ain't it. That's not going to get you very far. The other place that I'd be thinking about running these right now, you're going to fall over, is on Reddit. Just in the last 30 days, Reddit came out with lead gen ads where you can actually do the same thing that you're doing on Instagram Reels. They didn't have this before where you can run an ad. Okay. It's called a lead gen ad on Reddit just came out and you can have, Hey, subscribe to our newsletter. You can have it show up in the different Reddit commentary and subreddits and whatever. And it popped up a little form on platform. You can then submit right there and boom, this is literally brand new.

6:27So we've only have some very limited testing out there, but from everything that we're seeing, the cost per reg is anywhere between$5 to$10 on Reddit with these lead gen ads. This is brand new. You could not do this before a few weeks back. So in general, if you're not using on-platform lead gen captures on social media and running these paid ads and test them, this is it. This is the most cost-effective way to grow your database, whether you're a business marketer in a boring category, a consumer marketer, it does not matter if you're not testing this and you don't need big, there's no minimums.

7:04There's no minimum on Reddit. There's basically no minimum on LinkedIn. There's no minimum on Instagram. You need to be testing this. This is a no, no brainer. All right, let's get to the ridiculous portion of this podcast. We got a question in from Jill from Los Angeles, California. All right, Jill, what do you got? Jay, Love Island is totally over now because the reunion happened. What are you watching? We need to know immediately. Well, this is a really important topic. What am I watching on TV? You're going to be surprised. I think you're going to be surprised. So, and for new listeners, you're like, what?

7:44He's going to talk about what he watched on TV? Yes, I have no life. This is what I do. I watch TV. So on Netflix, there is a sitcom called Leanne. This is a great show. I don't know if you've seen this. It's with this woman, Leanne Morgan. Okay. And it is like a sitcom from like the eighties, the same style, right? And you think it's going to be terrible. You think I'm not watching a sitcom. I don't even like sitcoms anymore. I'm telling you, it's like a mental massage watching this show. Leanne Morgan is hilarious. She's this woman from Tennessee. I love her. I have no idea why I can't stop watching this show.

8:22It is like a throwback. So I would check out the show Leanne on Netflix, which is not a reality show, which is very odd for me, but yes. A show, what's coming up since you brought up Love Island, which is very important. I don't know. I'm not a big fan though. I'm a big fan of Love Island. I'm not a big fan though. On September 16th, Love Island Games is going to be premiering. And it's one of these, you know, all these reality shows, once they have a hit, all they do is then they try to turn it into like an all-star cast and they make stupid spinoffs. So I don't think the world needs Love Island games, but I'll probably check it out.

8:55It's on Peacock. And by the way, I like Peacock, but if there's a less intuitive streaming platform on Earth, I'd like you to tell me what it is. I don't understand. Netflix has it all figured out pretty much, but you go on any other streaming platform, okay, I don't care if it's HBO Max or Paramount and Peacock, forget about it. All I wanna do when I get on a streaming platform is I need you to show me whatever it is, whatever the hell I was last watching. That should be the first thing. Okay. And then the next thing should be, okay, the, whatever the top 10 is on that platform. That's what it should be.

9:34I go on Peacock. It's like, it, it thinks I've never been on the platform before. I cannot figure out how to find a show, how to start a show. It shows me shows from three years ago. I'm losing my mind over the whole thing. What else is going on? Oh, the other show that's coming up that I probably won't watch is Dancing with the Stars season 34. That's coming up in like a week or so. The cast looks terrible. They have two people from the Secret Lives of Mormon Wives. I mean, okay, that show is fine. Almost unwatchable. Who cares? You want to have one person on? Fine. You need two people from that show?

10:09Seriously? It's that important that you have two people from that show? Like what's going on? What are we doing? What am I doing? What's that? I have no idea what I'm doing. Anyway, I appreciate you being here. It would mean a lot to me if you left a review. When you leave a review and you write a little comment, Jay's a big loser, whatever, it helps us circulate the show. And then I can tell more people to go watch Leanne. And that's very important. I appreciate you all. Keep crushing it. Later. You did it. You made it to the end. But wait, the party is not over. Listen, I want to keep hanging out.

10:42Subscribe to this podcast. And if it wasn't the worst podcast you've ever listened to, give it a five-star review. Why not? But you know what? I want to do even more with you. Go to gurumediahub.com and we can partner there. You could find out about all of our free events, all of our stuff. And if you're epically bored, go to jschwedelson.com and we could stay connected. You could find my newsletter and everything else I got going on. Thanks for being here and hope you subscribe.

11:10Thank you.