From In-Person Powwows to an Engaged Email Community with Paul Gowder

Allea Grummert (00:12.046)
Hey there, welcome to Happy Subscribers, a podcast that explores how bloggers and content creators can create more purposeful relationships with your audience through email marketing. I’m Allie Grimert, email marketing strategist, copywriter, email platform expert, and founder of the done for you email marketing agency, Duet. I started as a personal finance blogger in 2016 and have since helped hundreds of bloggers and creators like you maximize your email marketing for more impact, more traffic, and a better connection with your subscribers.

Be prepared for some advanced email talk, as well as tactical tips to help get your valuable content into the hands of your audience faster and easier. I’m excited you’re here, so let’s do it. We can create a deeper, more meaningful connection with the community you love and serve through email.

Allea Grummert (00:59.768)
Hey, everyone. I want to introduce you to Paul Gowder. He’s the founder of powwows.com, a community and media platform celebrating native culture for nearly 30 years. After building it as a side hustle while working a full-time job, he turned it into a thriving full-time business. Now, Paul helps creators build a life they love by growing their audience through smart, relationship-driven email marketing, and he teaches people how to write emails that connect, build community, and actually get results. So if you can imagine,

Paul and I have some things in common. Paul and I officially met in Cleveland at the Content Entrepreneur Expo, CEX, this past summer. So that was fun, but I was like, I definitely knew who he was beforehand. So yeah, we couldn’t really figure out exactly our origin story, but that’s when we met face to face. Right. It was so fun. We were in a mastermind event prior to the actual event starting. So we got lots of quality of time sitting at the same table.

And getting to hear about your experience with email marketing, Paul, was like, how quickly was I like, can you come on the podcast and tell everyone? But yeah, is there anything just as we get started that you think is helpful for everyone to know about you that maybe I haven’t shared or was it in your bio? I mean, I’ve been doing this for a while. Email is really the, it is the cornerstone of what we do. I feel like even with the social media platforms we have and I’m very

I’m and fortunate for our social media, but I just feel like email is the place where I can connect. I am building something new where I can connect differently. We can maybe talk about that, that direct result of CEX. Yeah, you know, our origin story. So I’ll tell you the lead up to CEX for me. I, I’ve been to a lot of conferences here and so I’ve been very strategic. And before I go, was like,

here’s who I want to connect with, here’s the questions I want to ask. And like three of the people I wanted to connect with were at my first mastermind table. And I’m like, boom, this is it. I can go home now. I don’t even have to speak. We’re done. So that was really cool. One of them was me, right? I’m just kidding. Yes. No, was not. and Chanel. Yep. You Justin and Chanel. gosh. I was being facetious. That’s so sweet of you. Yeah. Having Justin Moore and Chanel Bastillo, Bastillo, can’t, so sorry, Chanel. Pronunciation is hard for me.

Allea Grummert (03:22.123)
Yeah. And we had Darrell Westerfelt stop by at our table. Right. Crazy. It was it was really great. He Darrell is the one who hosted and asked these really phenomenal questions to get us thinking. And then we got to kind of hot seat with each other. And there’s so much trust when you have a group of people who are there in that scenario to be like, I’m just going to lay it all out there and people. Yeah. I give it back to you so graciously. Yeah. So I love that. Was there. Yeah. What maybe was one of the top things you took away from?

that mastermind meeting that have impacted your business? just what I mean, I come out of anytime I have a table like that, I’m always reminded that we’re all we’re also similar with our struggles. And, you know, I was sitting at a table, complete imposter syndrome. Like, why am I sitting next to Justin Moore? Right. Why am I even in this room? But then, you you spend an hour at that table and you realize we’re more similar than

than we’re not. that, you know, so that was those are kind of making those connections and, and being able to actually have real conversations. That was the big takeaway for me is just having that comfortability and being able to interact with you guys was pretty awesome. Yeah, I agree. There’s Justin was I met him at a mastermind a few years ago when I was the one presenting and I was the tiniest fish.

in that whole dang room. And Justin was sitting at the very front and I told him, I was like, you are a master hype man. He made eye contact with me and smiled the whole time while everybody else was like taking notes or whatever. He just did not break like eye contact. But ever since then, I’m like, you are my personal hero. Like you’re the reason I like, could stand there tall and give this presentation and come back year after year. So yeah, what a really wonderful group. But yeah, a lot of us were struggling with like, what does this look like for how my time is spent?

I think a lot of us like, is that how we want to spend our time? Or even thinking like with the parents at the table, like, you know, is this, yeah, is it worth, you know, stressing out over whether my team can do everything to 1000 % or can I like breathe and go for a walk with my kids? Like, because we all there are high achievers. And- Right. And one of the questions I asked, and a lot of us were asking similar questions about time management and prioritization and-

Allea Grummert (05:46.922)
Justin was one of the people to answer that and giving me permission to not do things that I felt were important, in the, you know, really prioritizing your goals and figuring out that there’s some things that I was spending time doing that aren’t as important as I think they are. And I have outsourced since then. Was that about your email replies? Yeah. I now have somebody who is handling my email. is…

It is so freeing. is crazy. like I was, I was at a disc golf tournament this weekend, watching, not playing. I’m a big disc golf fan. So I was there Thursday, Friday and Saturday and didn’t even look at my email on my phone. I just knew it was taken care of and I would get home at night and check a couple of things, look at the folders that she put things into. it is so freeing. And in the last two weeks,

so productive because I’m actually crossing off projects that really matter and not spending hours in my inbox worrying about minor replies that, and just, told my wife, think last night I actually said to my wife, just the weight of having my inbox all the time worried about, wasn’t being responsive. was losing opportunities, knowing that it’s taken care of just frees me up to do other things. It has been fantastic.

my goodness. I heard you exhale when you said it. It’s cool. Yes. So yeah, just to give listeners some context, I remember at the beginning at our roundtable, you were like, because your list is how many people? Subscribers? At the time we were about 130,000. I just did a big purge. So we’re down to about 95 ish. Of like hot and fresh people who are excited to be there and not cold subscribers. Paul was telling us he’s like right

because you have such an engaged list, which we will talk more about, you have a lot of people replying, or people who are new to pow wows with commonly asked questions. And I remember one of your concerns, is it okay that I share this? for sure. But one of your concerns was like, well, I’m gonna miss out on site traffic from sending people back to related blog posts because they’re asking about these things. And that’s where Justin was like, that’s like one blog post versus the time you could spend doing.

Allea Grummert (08:10.858)
creating a product or creating a new opt-in or something like that. But it’s understandable that it’s scary because we create our list because we care about the people. And I remember you feeling this like, yes, was part of it was the site traffic. But part of it is like, is everybody getting the right answers that they need or the full and complete answers? Because you are like the encyclopedia of all this content. And then I think that there’s also this idea that passing that on to someone else feels like this huge task. Like, how am I going to teach someone else about all this content?

Or how I would reply. Did I miss anything? Where were you? That was exactly. exactly. Worry. Yes. And we’ll dig into it. I spend so much time writing these emails and trying to be personal, trying to be myself and conversational. And then I’m looking over at my inbox now and I had a bunch of we had a newsletter go out this morning. So, you know, seeing that.

Since we’ve been on the call, I have 10 emails that are replies to the newsletter that went out just a few minutes ago. And knowing that that’s going to get taken care of later today is so freeing. yeah, Justin was right. And, you know, being a Mediavine publisher, a priority is I got to get the click, right? Because if I don’t get the click, then we don’t get the ad revenue. So it’s making sure that if somebody answers a question that maybe I can provide them some additional information with the link. And, you know, if I do that,

20 times a day, that’s 20 new clicks, but he’s right. It would literally take thousands of those to move the needle. And yeah, I don’t need to be worried about that kind of stuff. Yeah. Well, how were you able to, can we talk about team briefly? Like how were you able to train this person in a way where you felt confident handing that off? So I did a lot of research trying to find, in the past I’ve gone and just done like a five or upwork, a general VA. So this time I went to a couple of companies

that their VA services are focused on inbox management. So that was the first thing. I didn’t know it was a thing until I started Googling it, right? So that was the first thing, getting somebody who that is kind of their background, that is what they do. I did interview several people to get somebody that I felt we had a rapport kind of comfort with. And it’s a process where I’m still training, right? So there’s probably five or six emails that came in today that I’m gonna have to, you we’re on Slack together.

Allea Grummert (10:37.416)
I’ll send her and say, look, here’s how I want you to answer this. And then we’re done. Right. So it’s constant training. It’s not a, it’s not one and done for this, but that’s okay. because we’re, she’s doing great work and I trust her. and she comes back to me too. It’s like, I’ll put things in a folder that I want her to respond to that. I think that she already knows and she’ll write me back. Hey, I’m not sure what you want me to say here. And so we just have a conversation.

Do you have an SOP or a Google Doc that kind of has these templated answers based on different questions that people ask? Yes, because I had been building some of that myself using TextExpander. So I sent that all to her to start with. And then from there, we’re kind of building out like questions that are outside of those things. How do we handle those? Yeah. Internally, we call that a decision tree of like my project manager, because we’ll run into a situation where like we might run into this every six months. And it’s like,

Okay, well, what did Ali say last time this happened? Just that we have a record of it of like, this then that type of documentation? Just because I’m like, do you want to have to wait for an answer from me or do you just record what happened last time and then run forward? So the other thing I wanted to point out is that the weight that this put on you, all of these replies from your adoring subscribers who feel so connected to you, there’s the weight of replying to them.

But there’s also, I just want to point out, you could have easily said, I’m going to do less personal things in my emails. I’m going to make it less so that people feel like they need to reply. You could have distanced yourself from that. And just knowing you, you probably never even considered that option. You’re like, right, because the option is, well, that’s too many emails. I’ll stop sending emails. That’s probably what some people are thinking. Whereas instead, you were like, I want to maintain that relationship. I’m going to keep being Paul.

I’m going to keep being resourceful and find a way to continue to nurture my subscribers from within the inbox. me, the whole reason this website even grew to begin with way back in 1996 is because of community. And so I want to make sure I continue to foster that relationship with the community. don’t want to. Yeah, I’ve never considered changing the way I email because it was overwhelming.

Allea Grummert (12:56.358)
Yeah, I have to keep doing that, which is why it was such a burden and why I felt that weight is because I knew I was going to keep going. And in the last year, I’ve spun off and niche down a little bit and created more lists. What? Yeah. So we can talk about that too, but that’s one of the things, again, trying to grow the community, find new ways to engage and in the background too.

finding ways to continue to try to grow that media vine revenue and replace what Google has done to all of us. Yeah. So tell me about the community and perhaps like what you think led to it being such a tight community. Because because we throw around a lot like I just want to build a relationship with my readers. Paul, you getting lots and lots of replies from people is different than like this vague idea.

of a community, like you actually have it, what do you think led to that?

I don’t think it was any one thing. I mean, part of it is continuing to show up for them. part of it is just being involved. You early on we had a V Bulletin forum. don’t know if people back then, people even know what that is, but, social media before there was social media. And somebody told me a really good point back then is the community was growing, but my username on the community was webmaster.

Cause that’s just what I consider myself. Right. and somebody said, Hey, you know, people in here don’t know that you’re an actual person. They just think you’re like a or something. and so I changed my username to Paul G and started answering people’s questions as myself being involved in the community, talking with people. And it completely changed the way the forums interacted. and

Allea Grummert (14:56.091)
people felt a little more comfortable with addressing me. And at the disc golf tournament, I ran into somebody who was back in part of those forums and they still referred me as Paul G. So, you know, those making those kinds of connections over time. And I’ve always approached this as like, I’m not an expert. I don’t know all the answers. And this time I had to tell the VA is sometimes it’s okay just to say we don’t know. But I enjoy exploring and learning about this and I’m

I want to take you with me. And so I try to present when I write the newsletter, it’s like, oh my gosh, look at what we’re going to talk about today. This is pretty cool. And here’s why I think this is, this is fun. That kind of stuff, I think resonates. I’m sure it doesn’t resonate with everybody, but the people that stick around and read, they really enjoy me kind of being myself in the emails and it works. That’s awesome. I was curious too. like, I didn’t know if maybe the engagement came, maybe

based on where subscribers are coming from. Like if you are gathering email addresses at powwows or something, so people are already like, they’re willing to go in person and then join the list. That would be probably more engaged audience than maybe like an Instagram follower converted into an email subscriber. So we do a lot of live streams of powwows. Like this past weekend, we were, my team was up in Rapid City, South Dakota streaming the Black Hills powwow. And

So, you know, we’ll occasionally show things on the screen or in the chat. Like here, if you want to know more, come over here. We’ll help you out. But that’s how that’s one of the ways we get discovered on social media is that people see a live stream and then they want to interact. I got a great email this weekend from somebody that said, my God, I just signed up to your email list because I saw the Black Hills live stream and she had gotten the first email. She’s like, this is fantastic. my God. I didn’t know you were out there with all these resources. So.

Yes, she’s going to be more engaged because she came in through something she was already involved with it. And then my number one lead magnet is what to expect at your first powwow. And again, I try to make that approachable for people who are interested, but maybe are a little hesitant and they don’t know what they don’t know and they don’t know that they can go to a powwow. that’s a really good one. People get into that sequence and

Allea Grummert (17:20.689)
They really start to feel comfortable and then they are engaged with more of our content from there. I love it. Well, and then, I mean, it sounds like because Pow Wows are a community event too. Yes. It’s like people are like already they’re they’re seeking community for this specific type of in-person community. Right. And that’s how we grew originally is people wanted that same kind of connection online that they were having at Pow Wows. And in the beginning, we first started our forum. It was

You know, was telling people when I went to a powwow, was like, hey, by the way, I have this thing. And so it was a lot of people here in the Southeast that were kind of connecting. And so then it started growing and like, my God, there’s, can talk to people that powwow in California. we can talk about what’s different. What’s the same. Yeah. They wanted that same communal aspect as they had at the event. They wanted it online. So it was really fun. And when we first started doing that, it was really fun to see all of that blossom.

So that gal who signed up for your list, was she getting the what to expect email? Like what to expect from your first powwow or what was the one that she was like, this is so helpful. No, she signed up. So here’s another little sub thing I do with my list. Every October, October through December 15th, we have our explore native challenge. And this is my way of helping people learn more about native culture during Native American Heritage Month. And so we started in October. We run it through December.

And so she saw a little blurb on the live stream about that. And so she, I write that’s what 60 something days. There’s an email every single day for that. And every day I’m giving them a little thing that they can go and do, whether it’s go and follow a native creator or click a link and read the story, watch a video. and it’s a giveaway. I have a sponsor and every day, if you do the task, you’ll find a bonus code that you can take to the giveaway contest and get extra entries.

And so she’d gotten the first email and she’s like, this is so fun. I’m already finding out stuff I didn’t know. So yeah, I love that. So was that somebody just opting into your general newsletter list or they opting into get all 60 of those? the giveaway. Yeah, she was opting into the giveaway. Are you those out as broadcasts, Or are you sending them out as sequences? No, it’s a sequence. Yeah, I program it ahead of time. Well, I’m only, I have a spreadsheet. I think I’m about 20 something days into it.

Allea Grummert (19:46.201)
I’m about a week ahead right now. And so I’m heading to a conference this weekend. So I’m trying to, before I leave on Wednesday, be somewhere caught up to about October 25th, 26, something like that. So, yeah. That’s fun. So then when it hits December 15th, are you just turning off that sequence? Like the giveaway is done? The giveaway is done, but I continue to let the emails run. But I do send out a message and tell them in some of the emails too, it’s like, Hey, depending on when you get this, you may continue to get messages even if

after this is over, I give them the option, you can remove yourself from that series of emails without unsubscribing. Not many people do because at that point they’re having so much fun in it that they want to continue. I love that. You are the king of a happy subscriber list. Let me tell you. We love all the communication and the ability to kind of opt out of it after a while. But I can imagine why people would want to stay subscribed. That’s really cool. That’s a really clever opt in topic.

Thank you. And so, so, so valuable.

Allea Grummert (20:55.084)
If you are interested in getting my help to grow your email list, send traffic back to your website and create a more meaningful relationship with your subscribers through email marketing, visit duet.co.hapi to book a free call with me. I promise you’ll learn a lot, even in the process, just about your own business, your own goals, and what could potentially be next for you and the growth of your email marketing strategy. Go ahead and book a call with me. I can’t wait to meet you.

Allea Grummert (21:30.305)
It’s really fun. I enjoy it too. It’s a lot of fun for me to try to this year. I am not repurposing any emails from last year. I’m writing it completely completely from scratch. I actually talked with the folks over at Kit and we kind of went through it. They gave me some great advice and some new ways to to new topic or new ways of doing it. So, yeah, it’s been it’s been a lot of fun so far. I still got over a month and a half to write, but that’s OK. I’ll get there. love that. Do you want to share? Did Kit give you anything that you were like, aha.

That’s cool. I’m going to do that. One cool thing in this is helping me write them. But they said, you know, start doing, do like a series for a few days instead of every email being its own thing. So like the ones I’m writing for next week, we’re talking about books and authors. So, and here’s one of the ways I niche down in the last year is I created a native American book club, which has a Facebook group and an email list for it.

And so that was the first email in this is, by the way, do you know we have a book club? If you’re interested in native authors or native topics, join our book club. The second one was like, here are our 10 favorite native cookbooks. The next one’s like, here are 10 history books that cover things you probably didn’t learn in school. So we have, we’ll have like a five or six series of emails all about books and authors. and one will be pointing out some of the people I’ve interviewed on our podcast.

And then then we’ll move on to another topic. We’re probably going to native athletes and native sports next. That’s so cool. The list within the list. Yeah, yes. That’s awesome. Man, so you have the super engaged list. You’re sending out how many emails a week? OK, so in this series, you’re setting up one. People are signing up for this. They might be one email a day from you already if there’s part of this giveaway. Maybe let’s talk about the rest of the year. What’s happening? How many emails are they getting from you? Any that are automated?

Can fill me in on what the scope looks like? Sure. So if you get put into our general newsletter, I send a broadcast on Monday that’s just like, here’s what happened last week on powwows.com. Here’s new articles. Here are upcoming powwows you want to know about. And here’s some new ones we added to our calendar. Because we have a calendar of all the powwows across North and South, North, United States and Canada, North America. We don’t list all of them, but we list as many as we can. So.

Allea Grummert (23:55.533)
People really want to know that. So that’s the Monday broadcast Thursday. It’s like a broadcast, but it’s really a sequence. And that is our throwback Thursday sequence. And it’s literally just a, Hey, here’s an art. have so many articles. You probably missed this one. I think you need to go check again. It’s like, here’s why I think this story is really cool and why I think you’re going to like it. Go click on this to read more about this. And that’s, it’s really one call to action, one article.

and it just goes out every Thursday. So the beginning of the year, I work with the VA and I give him all the topics and we write a 52 week email sequence and they get those every Thursday. I love that. And then are you resending? so you do new ones every year? New ones every year. And then on Friday, usually on Friday, I’ll send out another one if we have a live stream happening and it’ll be here. Here’s what we’re streaming this weekend. Here’s the links to watch. Here’s some things you want to.

to be on the lookout for if there’s any kind of specials or events, things like that. And yeah, that’s it. And then of course there’s all kinds of series and other stuff that’s going on. Yeah. Can I ask, do you, do you sell anything to your list?

Yes, a few things. So right now we have what to expect at your first powwow. Our best performance sequence. People love that one. Probably a year ago, I took all of the information in that sequence and put it into a guidebook, a PDF. So I’m kind of doing the opposite of what most people say to do lead magnets. I don’t like PDF lead magnets. I like sequences because I feel like people engage with it better.

So before that for that sequence, I actually at somewhere about email three or four I tell them that there is a PDF guide and they’ll have everything that I’m covering this and Then by the end you get it You get a discount if you if you continue all the way through the end of it You’ll get a deep discount if you want to buy that PDF guide. So we sell a couple digital products We do have a Shopify store where we sell some of our own merch And we’re starting to broaden out and sell some other native companies goods like we just

Allea Grummert (26:08.052)
We’re working with a company to sell some candles. So we sell that. what else? And then there’s the new project that I’ll be using. because of it actually came about probably because of craft and commerce. But then we had some really deep conversations at CEX about it. Is we’re rolling out a Mighty Networks for Powwows.com. Yeah, you are.

That’s so exciting. We’re in the test phasing right now. I’ve opened it up to a few people and kind of soft promoting it in some of those subgroups list I talk about. So we have maybe 50 or 60 in there right now and I’ll open the doors completely November 1st. I love it. Do you have a like a launch planned to be able to encourage your list to opt in? Yes. I mean, it’ll be part of our regular email series.

And so there’s a free side. There’s a paid side. on the paid side, we’ll have, when I say this out loud to, somebody like you, feel like I’m, I’m talking crazy, as part of the paid side, there’s a, there’s an exclusive newsletter you’ll get. so that’s another one I’m going to write. but yeah, so we’ll be promoting that heavy in the, in our, using our list to promote that. and it has a kit integration, so I’ll be using that to kind of.

You can highlight different posts and threads and spaces inside of kit easily. So I’ll be using all that. Yeah. Will you be using conditional content to promote that to your existing or that will just go to your members? That will just go to subscribe. Yes, that will just go to paid. The paid newsletter will just go to the paid subscribers. The other one, yes, I’ll be using some conditional stuff. Not as much in the beginning because it’s not many people have signed up, so it’ll be more broad. But eventually I’ll be doing a lot more conditional.

One of things we’re going to do is highlight a member of the week, things like that to try to get people into the group. Can I ask, have you used snippets or thoughts on using snippets in some of your automated sequences for that promotion? I use a few. I need to be better about it. I need to. Yeah, I have one for our digital product because I started off first using kit to sell the digital product. I’ve moved it to Thrivecart or that Palau guide.

Allea Grummert (28:32.532)
Just cause I like the landing page experience better on ThriveCard. It feels like a little more fully developed. So I have a snippet for that. But yeah, that’s something I need to do better. And then also I want to start doing some more conditional things with that, with our digital products so that the people who I’ve already bought will stop seeing it now that we’re actually made a few hundred sales. Everybody doesn’t need to see it. So.

Well, I asked because if you wanted to promote like member spotlight with a little pitch or you know that that kind of converts well, you could go drop that snippet for like member spotlight in a bunch of your evergreen emails into your sequence. True. And then as you swap it out, the person that photo and the name and the story swaps out too. So you don’t that way it’s all up to speed no matter where it’s shared.

Okay, that’s a really good way of using that. Yeah, and then… notes, take notes. Thankfully, this is recorded. So the other thing you can do is you can use conditional content within the snippets. So if you find a way to add a tag to everybody who’s already a paid member, you can say anybody who’s paid member doesn’t see this at all in the evergreen sequence. But if they don’t have the paid member tag, then they see the pitch.

Allea Grummert (29:50.792)
That’s another level I have not even considered. That’s great. OK, great stuff. The way which you guys can see, Paul is just head down taking notes. That’s a really sweet thing to do. And then I’ve interviewed a guest before that talks about she includes a snippet like in her newsletters that I think she probably also includes them in some of her evergreen emails. But every week she just spends 10 minutes updating this and it’s like.

Here’s what’s happening on the podcast. Here’s a product for sale or here’s a, you know, my most popular blog post this week or here’s something that went viral or that I posted on social media. And she just swaps out and actually swaps out the date as well. And so it’s like, people know that it’s really recent and relevant and you only have to change it in one place and it changes it everywhere else. That’s really great. That’s, that’s really good. There’s I’m already thinking there’s other ways we can do that with like upcoming powwows. I can just update the snippet and it would

That’s good.

So, listener, if you’re not familiar with the snippet, it’s a reusable block that you can insert into a broadcast or a sequence. And like I’ve alluded to, if you edit it or update it, it will change it wherever it is being shared and used, including on your creator profile. It’ll just swap it out there. But you can change it within snippets or if you’re in the broadcast and you’re like, there was a typo and you change it, it will change that typo wherever else that snippet is being used. yeah.

If anybody from Kit is listening, this is the kind of stuff I wanted to find at Craft and Commerce. I loved I loved my experience at Craft and Commerce. It was a great event and some fantastic keynote speakers. But I wanted some some sessions on like here are the tips, the tricks. Show me how people are using all these tools. So if you’re listening, Kit, let’s do that next year. Are you suggesting that I become a speaker at Craft and Commerce, Yes, of course.

Allea Grummert (31:45.189)
Wink wink. And if they’re looking for more, I’ll be there too. Yes, I love it. Thanks Kit, we love you. OK, so I do want to spend some more of our time also talking about list growth, because I know that you also are a consultant for other people learning to do more and better with their email marketing. So what has worked for you and or what do you often recommend for people that you’re consulting with? The first thing I tell people and

I talked about this on stage at CEX is so many people spend hours designing their websites, making their pages look so beautiful and all of this. And when I audit people’s email, the email ask is the afterthought. And so I, that’s what I tell people. The first thing you need to do is your call to action, whether it’s your website, you’re being on a podcast, being a guest or your own podcast needs to be sending people to your newsletter.

And so look at all of the stuff you’re doing and figure out how you’re asking for it. So many people on the website, they hide the ask, they put it in the sidebar, the footer, and it’s just subscribe. You got to do more than that. So I was working with a client last week and I converted him from just using a, you know, it was a, just a block that said, subscribe to my newsletter. I converted him over and I’m using grow from Mediavine as his,

the form and he had he only has 5000 people on his list. Within two weeks, I had almost 200 new subscribers just from grow. Like there you go. mean, people see it and they actually will subscribe. So you have to ask for it. So that’s the first thing is I tell people is like, you’ve got to ask. then from there, it’s go ahead. Can I ask follow up before you move on? Is that because the spotlight subscribe is catching people’s attention because it’s in post? OK.

It’s all those things, right? It’s in the post. It’s a spotlight subscribe. It’s as they’re reading the content, they come across something and it says, if you really like this post or if you, know, whatever your ask is, right. And you can do it by category in WordPress. That’s the best thing, right? So you can have multiple of them. So for me on powwows.com, I put the what to expect to traverse powwow on pages where I think new people to powwows would be. And they, that’s what they see. And then.

Allea Grummert (34:08.926)
on things where we’re talking about DNA testing or tribal enrollment. Then I put a grow that says, if you want to know how to trace your family heritage, subscribe to our list about that. So I think putting those kinds of things in context really does help. That’s a big one. And then I love using landing pages. People don’t think about this, but how many times do you, whether you’re a guest on a podcast or even

talking to a group and you people say, how do I learn, learn more? And you’ll tell them a page on your website. Well, if somebody goes to the front page of Powwows, they’re going to be completely overwhelmed and probably going to leave without taking any action. But if I’m talking to somebody and they’re like, okay, so I can actually go to a Powwow. Yeah, here, just go to powwows.com slash Powwow 101. It’ll tell you everything you need to know. And on that page, all there is is a form.

to sign up for our email list. That will convert so much better than sending them to your homepage. Yeah, I think it’s figuring out your call to actions and actually asking people. And then I use some other tools. I mentioned, I have Facebook groups and we’ve niched down. So we have a book club Facebook group. have a general Facebook group. have a travel Facebook group. have one for crafting and one for family heritage. I’m using group leads.

to collect email addresses when people sign up. From your look, have you ever used that? No, I haven’t, but I’m not. I don’t have a Facebook group. Okay, so for people who have a Facebook group, you’re allowed to ask three questions when people apply to be a member. One of those questions can be, what’s your email address? And when I first started out, I was just doing that, copying and pasting them into kit. Group leads is cool because it’s not a Facebook plugin. It doesn’t integrate with Facebook. It just integrates into Chrome.

All it’s doing is scraping where it knows the email address will be. So Facebook doesn’t know that you’re taking this. they’re not going to block you or change whatever. It’s just a Chrome feature. It collects all those, puts them in a Google sheet and then sends them to kit. It is fantastic. I’ve collected like 20,000 emails that way. That’s fantastic. How about, what leap like you were using?

Allea Grummert (36:25.437)
Drive cart for products. Are you using anything other than kit for maybe your landing pages or using kit landing pages? I’m using kit landing pages. I’m using grow for the the forms on the website as well as Convert box for some some things and then my other Big list grow thing is giveaways. I just said I was doing the explore native giveaway. We are doing we do a giveaway every single month

It’s a way to reward the people who are subscribed in the community, give them another thing to do. But it’s also an easy call to action to put out on social media is like, Hey, you want to win? Um, yeah, I’ve got native American blankets and all kinds you want to win a blanket here, powwows.com slash win. It’s always the same URL every month. And I just change where it goes. Are you also using the creator network as part of list growth? I do.

It doesn’t work as well for Powwows because we are so niche. mean, there’s a people that are sending us subscribers. I’m finding that I’m sending out a lot more people than I’m getting back for Powwows. Now on my coaching side, it’s a really good growth tool there because it’s a lot easier for people to recommend me for email and community and stuff like that. But the Powwows.com, I’m finding it hard for people to recommend me and convert.

Well, because you are you’re the premier. It’s different. Yeah, yeah, it’s different. Whereas like, there’s probably not a lot of folks in the same industry to write back and forth. Yeah, that makes sense. So, yeah, with landing pages. Well, within kit, you can just do like a little simple domain or whatever. But it’s like kit dot ck dot or do it dot kit, whatever. But like what I do and what sounds like what you do as well is just creating a URL page. You are a little bit like redirects to that page.

And so a little Pretty Link goes a long way. I use Pretty Link all the time. It’s great too, because you can also get the stats. So if I’m using it for a sponsor, for example, for one of these giveaways, I’ve been able to tell them, yeah, here’s how that converted for you. I love it. Paul, you take such good care of your audience.

Allea Grummert (38:41.531)
Thank you. I try. Yeah. Well, you do. And it is very evident. Do you want to refresh your email and see how many more replies you’ve gotten in the last 30 minutes? I don’t. We’re up to 20 something now. Oh, one of them is from Mediavine. Oh, Never mind. That’s stressful. That’s stressful. have a new dashboard. Look away. Oh, gosh. Yeah. So in today’s newsletter, and I’ve been doing this a lot lately, too,

begin because I want more extra work. I’m rewarding people who read the whole email. Maybe started doing this maybe six months ago. So at the bottom of the email, and I don’t do it every time, but bottom of the email, I’ll say, Hey, by the way, here’s a trivia question. I’ll take all the right answers this week and I’ll put you in a drawing for, and right now, uh, Native American coffee company sent me a box of samples. So I’m just going to give away the samples. And so that’s what, yeah.

to of these messages are people answering today’s trivia question. my goodness. I think that that’s so clever. And because yeah, because you are so niche, you’re just such in a great position where, you know, brands are saying, I know that this is the audience I want to be with. I love that. Can I ask a personal question as someone who’s as someone who’s not native? Am I welcome at Powwows.com?

That’s a great question. And at powwows in general? Yes. I really don’t know. Yeah, powwows are open to the public and a lot of, you know, the vendors, the food vendors, the artists, they depend on people coming in. These are, if you’ve ever been to a festival like here down in the South, we have a festival for everything. Yes, we do. We actually have a chitlin strut here close to where I am. People don’t know what chitlins are. I’m sorry. what that is either. I’ve only been in Tennessee for a year and a half. Fried chicken intestines.

yeah. So that’s what it is. It’s just a festival. It’s food, dancing artists. and then they, yeah, they’re open to the public. Come and watch some powwows will actually invite you out to, participate in like friendship dances or inner tribals. But yeah, you’re, you’re more than welcome. And they happen. There is at least one powwow in all 50 States and most Canadian provinces. you can, if you’re easy way to find it, you said you’re from Tennessee. that what you said? Yeah, I’m in Tennessee.

Allea Grummert (41:08.153)
Powwows.com slash Tennessee. We’ll take you right to your state’s page. Um, so yes. And as far as powwows.com, yeah, we are open to everyone. Um, you know, in the beginning, back in the, the late nineties, it was more of a, a powwow crowd. Now we’re because of social media, we’ve broadened out where, um, this weekend’s live stream. I haven’t done the final numbers, but we’re somewhere in like 3.5 million viewers, um, from 70 something countries. So.

It’s a much more global space now. And so, yeah, we’ve expanded our content and how we answer questions, all of that stuff, right? It’s more than just people in the native or in the powwow world. We’re really helping people just figure out ways to learn more about it, to shine the spotlight. So yes, we welcome everybody here. Same thing with this new Mighty Network I’m building. Here’s how…

Topher from Mighty Networks put it, native culture will be the vehicle that gets people into the community, but the community is going to be focused on connecting with each other. Hmm. Absolutely. Way to go. Topher. Topher. Topher, think. Topher. Topher Christopher. yes, Topher. We did meet him. Yeah. Brilliant, brilliant guy as far as building communities. I love that. Before we wrap up, know, like,

All of this is woven into what you’ve shared with me. But I always kind of like to ask, just to give you a chance to kind of be on your soapbox, if you will, about because we live in a world where there’s so much content and we are very driven by the work that we do. But can you reiterate why your work matters, like why powwows.com matters and how this may even help people listening think about how they view their own work?

So as I said, I’ve been to a lot of conferences this year and I hear people talk about, you need to find your why. For me, I think you need to find two parts of that. You need the why for your community and what you’re doing for your audience. But then you also need your personal why, like why you get up and do this work every day. So for the community, for me, I…

Allea Grummert (43:31.427)
Like I said, I started this because I was exploring it myself, learning more about it, and I just wanted to share. And I still think this stuff is exciting. And so I like to tell people, I love the fact that we can help elevate different artists and different companies and that many people wouldn’t have known about unless, you know, there are people talking about them. So that’s the why for me is just helping educate people. And there’s a Jacques Cousteau that said the more people

learn about something, the more they love it, the more they love it, the more they’ll take care of it. And there are so many issues with the native community. So I think it’s really important to educate and the more we can educate, the more people will have helping protect these issues. So on the personal side of why I continue to build, make all this extra work for myself, we, we decided, my wife and I decided as we were working this as a side job,

is if we’re going to spend all this time doing it, what’s in it for us? Right. And so we we prioritized even when we weren’t making money on side hustles, we prioritize it like we’re going to use our extra income to travel. And that’s that’s what we’ve done. Right. And so that’s why I continue. Powers isn’t the only thing I do. Right. There’s still have feel like I have like 10 different side jobs and doing this. All this stuff is because we we like to.

to and we wanted to with our daughter really prioritize having experiences over just getting her stuff. So yeah, so that’s why we for personally that’s why we do it. I love it. Thank you so much for the work that you’re doing. I love that you have that that core why within your family as well, but that does make it really motivating to keep doing the work that we’re doing and.

I love that one of my whys for this podcast is that I get to ask you those questions. And so thank you for sharing your personal experience. Lastly, though, before we jump off, where can listeners connect with you and learn more about your work, both as a consultant and for PowWows? In a podcast? You have a podcast. Yes. So let’s see. Here are all those landing page call to actions, right? So if you’re

Allea Grummert (45:51.029)
If you really want to experience a powwow that one I mentioned earlier, powwows.com slash powwow101 will tell you what to expect at your first powwow. If you’re just interested in learning about where they are near you, powwows.com slash powwows near me, and that will get you all of that information or just powwows.com slash your state and that’ll take you right there. On the other side, I do have an email opt in about all those tools that I mentioned to help you grow your list, powwows.com slash email tools.

And, yeah, I’ve got some courses and other stuff too, but just paulgatter.com slash email tools and that’ll get you in the, in the system. And you’ll, you’ll see some of the other stuff I do. My personal podcast, you know, I struggle with being consistent with it. So we’ll talk about that another time after I have some more episodes out, but. Sounds good. We’ll leave the podcast in its infancy state. can always circle back.

Well, cool. We will include the links to all those things that you’ve shared in the show notes. Everybody can check that out. Go follow along with Paul. Are you on social media where you want people to follow along as well? Yeah, they can. I think it’s Facebook.com slash Paul Gowder. But yeah, Paul Gowder.com will get you to all that stuff. Get you everywhere. Awesome. Thank you so much for sharing your expertise and experience with us, Paul. I appreciate it.

thank you for the opportunity. love sharing. love talking email with somebody who’s in it like you. So this was fun. I agree. was a great time.

Allea Grummert (47:23.095)
Thanks so much for listening to happy subscribers and our conversation about email marketing today. I hope you feel inspired to take action, even if it’s a small change, so you can more confidently share your valuable message with your community through email. Special thanks goes to my team who makes it possible to produce and share these episodes with you. Seriously, thank you guys. If you want to hear more email marketing tips, strategies, and success stories to help you develop deeper, more meaningful relationships with your email subscribers,

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