The Proffitt Podcast
Are you thinking about starting a podcast? Launching a YouTube channel? Repurposing your old blog content into something fresh? Hi, I'm Krystal - host of "The Proffitt Podcast." And I'm happy to say you've come to the right place!
Business owners and content creators dream of building a platform where they can connect deeply with their audience, and marketing feels easy. But I also know what it's like to feel confused and overwhelmed.
Join us weekly as we strip down those processes and remove all the overwhelm with new tips, simple strategies, and great conversations with creators like you. Tune in to hear how I help creators start, launch, and market their content confidently. The motto here is, "We all have to start somewhere."
The Proffitt Podcast
Email Marketing for Content Creators: 5 Mistakes Killing Your Open Rates (And How to Fix Them)
Are your emails getting lost in crowded inboxes? After years of helping creators leverage their podcasts and YouTube channels to build thriving email lists, I've identified five common mistakes that can drastically hurt your open rates and connection with your audience.
The first mistake is launching email marketing without clear goals. You need to understand why you're building your list—whether for sponsorships, product launches, or community building. For me, consistent weekly emails serve as a vital touchpoint that fosters lasting relationships.
Another key area to focus on is your subject lines, which are often treated as an afterthought yet are crucial for engagement. I recommend generating multiple options for every email and even testing them with AI tools to find the one that will intrigue your audience the most.
Also, be cautious about over-relying on AI to craft your emails. While tools like ChatGPT can assist, outsourcing your voice can lead to generic messages. I've had success in creating authentic communication by starting with handwritten notes to maintain a personal touch.
Lastly, every email should include a clear call to action, guiding readers on what steps to take next. Simple engagement tactics, like encouraging replies, can foster deeper connections. Additionally, tracking your email performance is essential. By understanding your baseline metrics and experimenting with improvements, including consistent sending times, you’ll see a significant boost in your open rates. Ready to transform your email strategy? Grab our free PREP'M Method guide at krystalproffitt.com/prepm to get started.
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So, after years of helping creators use their podcast and YouTube to grow their email list, I see these mistakes all the time and I want to make sure that you're not making these same mistakes, because even just one of them just one can kill your open rates and make it so much harder for you to grow your content, have a bigger impact with your customers and the business that you're trying to grow. So let's talk about those mistakes and make sure that you're not making them. So today we're going to walk through the top mistakes that I see all the time, how to avoid them and how you can actually implement strategies that will help you save time, make more money and have a bigger impact. So let's get right to it. Welcome to the Profit Podcast, where we teach you how to start, launch and market your content with confidence. I'm your host, crystal Profit, and I'm so excited that you're here. Thanks for hanging out with me today, because if you've been trying to figure out the world of content creation, this is the show that will help be your time-saving shortcut. So let's get right to it, shall we? So we're just going to dive right into.
Krystal Proffitt:Mistake number one is you're trying to send emails or grow an email list with no clear goals for why you're writing these emails. So you've probably heard all over the internet you need an email list, you need to look into email marketing, you need to learn email marketing. You need to spend thousands of dollars on courses to learn email marketing. But let me give you just the two seconds. That you really need to know is what is your goal? That's what you need to figure out. You don't need to go buy another book. Read more blogs, watch more YouTube videos all about email marketing. You just need to know what is your goal. What are you trying to do? And if you don't know, then that's the first thing you have to figure out. So I always tell people when they come to me with their content. They're like Crystal, I'm creating this content. I have to figure out a way to weave in building my email list into my podcast strategy or the weekly YouTube videos that I want to put out, and I say well, what is your goal? Are you trying to grow an email list so that you can have sponsored content and you can grow a list of 20,000 people and you can have, and you can grow a list of 20,000 people and you can have. You know this is brought to you by X, y and Z sponsor. What are you trying to do? Or are you trying to grow an email list so that you can launch a book, you can sell a product, you can start a membership? What are you trying to do? So that's mistake number one is you just jump into email marketing and you just have no strategy behind it, and that often leads to you don't know what to write, because if you don't have a strategy behind what you're doing, you're like you sit down and the cursor is just blinking at you and you're like what am I supposed to say? Like what is actually happening? Well, that gets fixed when you have a clear strategy.
Krystal Proffitt:So for me, I have a weekly newsletter I send every single Friday. I've done this for years, years and years. I have been sending a weekly newsletter come rain or shine, come hell or high water, every single Friday morning I was going to say afternoon. It goes out in the morning and it's just one of my favorite parts of my week and I send it. And my main goal to send that is to get people to my content or tell them about a promotion that we have. But the strategy piece is just to have a weekly connection with my audience. That's it. Yes, there's pieces of it that can be, you know, higher priority than others throughout the year, depending on what's happening in the business, but for me, the number one priority for my email list is to have a connection point with my audience. That is not dependent on hopefully algorithms don't change, or I hope my audience sees this post that I made on the social media platform no, I'm going to their inbox every single Friday. Rain or shine, hell or high water, it is happening and they get that connection point with me. So that is my goal for my email list. But I would love to know do you have a goal for yours, or do you have one that you want to have for a future email list of yours? But you have to have a clear goal. Why are you doing this? Why do you want to start email marketing? And if you don't have that? That's the first piece of the puzzle that you have to figure out.
Krystal Proffitt:The second mistake that I see so often with email marketing is people ignoring their subject lines or writing something. That's just so boring, and the quick test for me is or? I'm actually going to give this advice to you like this is your assignment very early on in this is go look at your emails, like the ones that you're receiving as a consumer, and see what are the ones that you actually want to open, because those are signs that that is what is intriguing to you as a consumer. Now put yourself in your audience's shoes. Are you bored by your own subject lines? There's a good chance that you are.
Krystal Proffitt:I was for a long time and I didn't even realize this was a problem until I started really looking at my content and thinking like why is this compelling? Why would this compel anyone to do this? So what I see often is people will write things that are like blog post titles. It's like three simple steps to blank or how I did this, and it's like that's not compelling, like why would I care? Like what is the thing that I'm going to get from this? Or, even better, I like to think of it as like if I were writing this to a friend, what would I write to them that would make them go? Oh, I want to know about this immediately. I wrote an email recently that had the sentence in quotes that said damn, that was good with the trophy. So it was. So it was. It was very simple. And immediately you're like, well, that was good. Like I want to know. I want to know what that was Like. It piques your curiosity. You're like, well, what is she talking about? What is this in reference to? I want to know more about it.
Krystal Proffitt:And so you have to get out of the boring like this is what everyone else is doing. Or if your email subject lines, when you look in your own emails, looks like everyone else's, why would someone open it? Why would someone click on it and read it? So you could spend hours on this incredible email. Maybe you wrote this awesome story about your journey or something that happened to you. That would be really impactful for your audience. But if they don't open it because you put a boring subject line in there, that's a problem. That's a problem. So you have to spend more time.
Krystal Proffitt:Subject lines can't just be the afterthought. It's like, oh, I spent all this time writing this email and now it's just like I'll just throw something out there. Let's just no, it should not be an afterthought. You should have so many options. I actually use Quad or ChatGPT to. I'll write my whole email, then I'll throw it in one of the AI apps that I use and say one of the AI apps that I use and say give me five to 10, depends on how I'm feeling that day. Sometimes I'll do 10, give me 10 subject lines and preview text, because I want someone to see this in their inbox and say, ooh, what is this? So it's not just a one and done. I don't think that you should just pick the first thing that comes to mind, write it up and then it's gone. I want you to put it in your email service provider.
Krystal Proffitt:Like kid, I send myself a preview of what my email is going to look like to myself, to my email address. Then I open it and I pretend like, oh, like, I'm one of my readers and it's like oh, this is how they would see it. So I open it, I read it and then I will make changes. I will test it, I will test it again and I will try to see what is that most compelling thing? So mistake number two is ignoring your email subject lines. You cannot do this anymore. It shouldn't be an afterthought. So if it's something you've been ignoring today, right now, pause this video, go look at the emails in your inbox and ask yourself what are the ones that I am most compelled to open and what are the ones that I think are totally vanilla and basic and I would never open these in a million years. They go straight to my spam, straight to my inbox. You want to ignore those email subject lines? Okay, mistake number three is probably going to be a little controversial and that's okay, but it's. You're writing like a robot. Come on Y'all.
Krystal Proffitt:You cannot outsource your emails to your audience, to Chad, gpt or Claude. You can't and you shouldn't. This is not something that you should just outsource and say I created a podcast episode about this and write me an email. Or, even worse, there's other apps out there that you will upload your content and it will spit out a generic newsletter and you think like, well, this is good enough, I can just send this to my audience. No, no, it's not good enough, it's not and that's not where you should start with your content. I will say I use Claude and ChatGPT to help me refine it or to make whether it's like impacting a story or like inserting a story that's impactful. That's the way I meant to say that, in a way that can really tie in the story better or take you from the big top to bottom, the beginning to end, and really have something that's like a lot meatier. I will use AI to help me boost something or make it sound better, but I'm not having it right for me. Actually, it's right over here, like I have this little book behind me, this little bookshelf, my little cabinet where I write every morning and every single week. I know it's gonna be super nerdy. Stick with me for a second.
Krystal Proffitt:I handwrite my emails. I do, I've done this for years. So what I actually do in my process is I sit down, I handwrite my emails, because then it sounds like it comes from a pen pal mindset for me, so that I'm actually thinking of you when I'm writing these emails, and it is just coming from a different state than if I were to sit there, stare at a blank Google Doc and say what am I supposed to write this day? It just it doesn't work for me that way. So the creative outlet for me is to handwrite my emails. Then I put it in a Google Doc, then I zhuzh it up, I make it better, I make it sound so fancy and so gorgeous with all of these wonderful stories, but I at least start from a place of I'm writing to one person.
Krystal Proffitt:This is the other part. If you're writing like a robot, it's probably because you're trying to talk to 5,000 people. Why don't you just talk to the one person on the other side that's going to read that email and it will resonate so much deeper than if you just use AI to write it, because it's probably going to spit back something that doesn't sound like you anyway and you can't make it just be so generic that someone opens it and says what's the takeaway for me? Why does this apply to me? So make sure that you're not writing like a robot and you're not outsourcing those creative pieces that you need to make your content sound more like you. You need to make your content sound more like you.
Krystal Proffitt:And then mistake number four that I see email marketing content folks making is you don't have a call to action or your CTA. What are you trying to get someone to do so? Every single email, I told you all. I send emails every single Friday and I want someone to do something after they read this email, like, even if it's just hit reply and share your thoughts on this email, or hit reply and just say yes, me too, or yes, interested, or yes, this was great. I mean, it could be the simplest thing, but having a call to action gets people actively engaged. So so many of you will be familiar with posting on social media. Maybe you post on Instagram because you're hoping to get a like, a share, a comment. It's the same with email. You should have a call to action that tells people what to do.
Krystal Proffitt:And so often for me, I set my emails up like it's story and it has an impactful piece that people should take action on. But sometimes it's not until the very bottom of the email where I share in my section called new resources this week, that's where I will share a piece of content. So I shared this episode recently where I was talking about speaking on stage and I was sharing the behind the scenes of my podcast movement talk, and in that email the whole story was set up to be about planning and promotion and preparation and my experience with speaking on stage, and all of it led up to a call to action for people to go watch my latest YouTube video about how I prepped to speak on stage a podcast movement. So it was all intentional and the main call to action was go watch this YouTube video that I created. So it doesn't have to be buy my product in every single email that you send, because I think that that gets old after a while.
Krystal Proffitt:Anyway, I want people to open my emails and say what's Crystal up to this week, what is this story that she's going to share and what is the supporting resource that she's also going to put in there for me? That's what I want my audience to think immediately is there's going to be something of value in here? And I know she's going to ask me to do something. Do they always do it? No, absolutely not. But more often than not, people are finding my content. If they've never seen it before, they've never listened to my podcast, they've never watched my YouTube videos, they're going to find it in my email every single week. There is always a call to action. So for you, if you haven't previously had any calls to action in your email, consider what could you add in there. Could you have a link to your latest podcast episode? Could you have people go follow you on Instagram? Go watch your YouTube video. Go download your freebie. I mean it could be go buy my product or sign up for my membership or schedule a coaching call, like whatever it is for you and the season of content and life and business that you're in, but you must have a call to action in every single email that you send to your audience.
Krystal Proffitt:And the final mistake, mistake number five, is you're not tracking or testing the things that you're doing. Therefore, you're just guessing and that's essentially just wasting your time. So one thing that I always tell people is, once you start getting those emails like you're consistently sending them out, you need to consider what is my baseline Like, what are those percentages that I can expect? So, whether that's your open rate, it's your click rate, how big your audience is like. If you know that if I send this email at this time, you can start to actually forecast what your results are going to be. And it's funny because you know the operations and metrics and KPIs, like all of that stuff really used to bother me and I used to just be like numbers, am I right? Like this is too much for me. But I started to fall in love with metrics the more I started to become obsessed with what these click rates and what these open rates and what these A-B test conversions meant for me because it actually became really fun once I started playing with how I could improve those, how could I tweak those, and the one thing I found for me specifically was being able to send at the exact same time. This took a few years to really dial in, but I send at the exact same time every single Friday and that has consistently kept my open rate the same. If I go and send promotions at different times, I will see my open rate and my click rate fluctuate when I go through promotions because people are like, oh wait, she's emailing more than she normally does, or oh, this is a time when she normally doesn't send emails, so it's not as consistent. But you throw in a Friday email at the normal time I send it, those things skyrocket again. So it's that predictability, and that only comes from testing and tracking.
Krystal Proffitt:But speaking of testing, so I use Kit. This is my email service provider. You can go to crystalprofitcom forward slash Kit to learn more. This is my favorite tool and one thing that I love about it is I can actually A-B test subject lines. I don't do this for every single email, but I will do it when I'm not sure. So remember we were talking about subject lines earlier. If I'm not sure which one I really love or which one that I want to go with, which one would be most impactful, I'd take the decision making off of my plate and I will actually do A-B tests to see, well, which one does my audience love? And what's cool about it is you can put a few different ones in there. You can test it for 30 minutes up to, I think, two hours Maybe it's even longer than that and so as people start to receive your email and open it, it gets really smart and intelligent in how it knows like oh, this one's getting more clicks, this is the one that you should go with and you should send that to the larger majority of your audience. So I have become a full blown nerd on metrics and A-B testing and I love to test and experiment with what works, and I think that it's just something that really tracking these can help you become a better email marketer over time.
Krystal Proffitt:If you're just getting started, just start emailing your list consistently. You don't have to worry about all the metrics or understanding all of them. Just get in that habit of consistency and then you can start to look at your metrics and track what's working and what's not. But please, please, please, start tracking and looking at those metrics. All right, let's do a quick recap of all of these mistakes, that way you are not making them when you're done with this video today. One you don't have a clear goal. We're going to have a clear goal. We're going to have a clear strategy from right, but, yes, you're nodding with me, okay, good.
Krystal Proffitt:The second one is you're ignoring your subject lines. Please consider how they can be so much more impactful. Go look at your own email right now. Go look at your inbox and see which ones are compelling to you and just enlist ChatGPT or Claude to help you write better subject lines. Okay, let's just go with that.
Krystal Proffitt:The third one is writing like a robot. Don't fully let Claude and ChatGPT do everything for your email, but you can enlist them to help you a little bit. So don't write like a robot for every single thing that you send out to your audience. Please, please, please. I beg of you. You will get so many unsubscribes.
Krystal Proffitt:The fourth mistake is no call to action. If anything, you should have people reply back to you and, speaking of CTAs, if you have not liked and subscribed to the channel, make sure you do that now, because it will be very important so you get more content like this that helps you avoid all the mistakes that I have made in my content journey. And the fifth mistake is not tracking or testing or experimenting with your content. This is something that I cannot stress to you how important it was whenever I did start launching and promoting and doing a lot of affiliates and sponsorships. Metrics matter in a way that maybe you don't see at the very beginning, but over time they are so important to help you grow and scale and find other opportunities that you can with your content. So please don't ignore your metrics. They are something that you should absolutely be paying attention to. But that's all I have for you today.
Krystal Proffitt:I hope you enjoyed this mini course on email marketing. Please leave any questions or comments below. If you want to know more about any of the things we talked about here today, or even how your podcast and your YouTube channel can integrate into your email marketing strategies, I actually have a free guide that I want you to go download. It's at crystalprofitcom. Forward slash prepm P-R-E-P-M. This is our guide on the five-step content system process that we use here at Profit Media. It's called the PREPA method and it will give you the basics of how we approach content and how we can make it so much easier for you to work smarter and not harder. But, like I said, that's all I have for you today. So make sure you like and subscribe, follow wherever you're watching, listening today and, as always, remember, keep it up. We all have to start somewhere.
