How To Start And Grow Your Email List With YouTube with Trena Little

Last updated on June 15th, 2024

Trena Little is an expert in using YouTube to drive the creation of her email list, and from there using her funnel to drive purchases on her courses on how to do YouTube better. Today she breaks down her funnel in detail, providing some insider secrets on how any business can use this system to grow.

SPONSORS: This episode is brought to you by our affiliate partners, including: TubeBuddy, VidIQ, MorningFame, Rev.com, and other products and services we recommend.

PRODUCER: Jason Perrier of Phizzy Studios

TRANSCRIPT

Trena Little:
As marketers, we know if we are ponying up or hitching our cart to YouTube or Instagram or any other social platform, we don’t really own that and anything could happen where it disappears tomorrow. And so it’s really important to have that email list, because that is something that you own no matter what else happens out in the world and it’s such a great place for you to also engage and connect with your audience on a deeper level.

Dane Golden:
It’s time for the Video Marketing Value podcast. This is the podcast where we help marketers and business owners just like you get more value out of your video marketing efforts. My name is Dane Golden from VidAction.tv. That’s V-I-D-I-U-P.tv, where we help you up your game on YouTube for business and transform your viewers into loyal customers. And I also have a business called VidTarget.io, where we help you get a higher return on your YouTube ad spend with targeted YouTube video placements. And for you, the listener, you should know that as always, you can follow along on your podcast app with the transcript and the links and send us a message on social media to let us know how you like the show. I’m @danegolden and today we have a special guest. It’s Trena Little. Welcome, Trena.

Trena Little:
Hello. Thanks for having me today.

Dane Golden:
I’m excited. We had you on one of our very first episodes and excited to have you back. Trena Little, we asked you on the Video Marketing Value podcast today because you help marketers and business owners grow their YouTube channels and make reliable income. And you have some courses. One course you teach is about how to start and grow your email list. And since you’re also a YouTube expert, I’d like to help our listeners understand how YouTube and email can interact. Does this topic work today?

Trena Little:
Absolutely. I’m ready to dive in.

Dane Golden:
All right. Great. Let’s start with some real basic questions. How does a YouTube channel help create an email list? Or how can it?

Trena Little:
Yeah, as marketers, we know if we are kind of ponying up or hitching our cart to YouTube or Instagram or any other social platform, we don’t really own that and anything could happen where it disappears tomorrow. And so it’s really important to have that email list, because that is something that you own no matter what else happens out in the world and it’s a great place for you to also engage and connect with your audience on a deeper level. By getting in their inbox, that’s a much deeper level than just saying popping up on YouTube. It’s really important to have that email, to like I said, create those lasting relationships with them.

Dane Golden:
What’s a good relationship via email?

Trena Little:
Yeah. I find for me, I do weekly, I don’t obviously want to fill their inboxes up. There are times if I’m going through a launch, it’s a little bit different of an email strategy, but I like to give my audience pretty much weekly, value driven content. And that’s where my YouTube content really comes into play because my hub of my content is YouTube and so I will then send them an email, just giving them a brief synopsis about all the amazing value that I just shared in this YouTube video and then I put the link to go watch it. And my audience is actually signing up for my list, knowing they’re going to get weekly emails about my content on YouTube.

Dane Golden:
Your email you send, here’s the tip of the week. This is my video of the week. Here’s a link to the video. And here’s a little bit about what you’re going to see in this video, if you click.

Trena Little:
Yeah. You got to also remember when you’re sending an email that you’re really fighting for eyes, just like you are on YouTube. And so you kind of have to think it out in advance, think about a good subject line that’s people are going to want to open. Also, if you look at your email on your mobile device, mostly where people are reading their emails, you’ll see that you can see the first couple of lines of an email. You got to really utilize that to your opportunity too, to get people to actually click on your email too, because if they’re not clicking on your email and reading it, then they’re not even going to know what kind of amazing content you have. And so I’m a huge proponent of working smarter, not harder. And so that’s why I really just use that YouTube video as many places as possible and that’s what I’m putting in that email.

Dane Golden:
Does your email come out the same day as the YouTube video? The day before? Is it pointing to an unlisted video? Is it sometime after?

Trena Little:
Great question, we publish our videos every Wednesday at 11:00 AM and then we send the emails out about 30 minutes later. We’re thinking East Coast wise it’s getting to lunchtime. We try to get people to incorporate our Wednesday video in with their Wednesday lunchtime routine so that we can also give that boost to our YouTube video as well within that first hour, we publish it.

Dane Golden:
For your particular viewers and customers, they may be full-time, they may have it as a side gig, but if they are watching the video on their lunch hour, that’s a space that you’re thinking in advance of when someone might have that time and then that’s they’ve allotted that time, both either going to the YouTube channel or the email and that’s why you’ve picked that time.

Trena Little:
Yeah, because we know that the YouTube notifications aren’t always going to every single subscriber. Basically our email is also another reminder, by the way, our new video is out. This is why it’s so awesome. This is why you need to go watch it.

Dane Golden:
That’s really interesting. How do you get people on the list to begin with? What’s the incentive for them to join the list that you are presenting at the time?

Trena Little:
Yeah, that’s really key. A lot of people think, I need a newsletter and so they just ask people, “Sign up for my newsletter,” and that really doesn’t entice people. People don’t want to sign up for another newsletter. A newsletter could be seen as kind of a negative connotation. You want to give them some kind of value. Give them something that they can have, not physical, but maybe a checklist or a free mini series. Maybe you have some unlisted video that you could share with them. What is that extra value that you can provide to them in return for them sharing their email address with you? You can’t just say, “Newsletter, it’s going to be awesome.” But if you give them a reason to want to give you their email address, that’s where you’re going to be able to see your email list grow.

Dane Golden:
And where are you telling them about this? Do you mention it in the video? Do you mention it in the description? Only if they go to your website? How do they find out about this checklist?

Trena Little:
Yes. Great question. We know as people on YouTube that we can’t always send people off the platform because we need people to binge watch our channels. And so I generally do about one video a month or maybe every other video where I talk about this opt in. I only have one opt in that I talk about a lot because once they’re on your list, you don’t have to get them to sign up every single time. I don’t need to have all these different ways to get on my email list. I will talk about it in my YouTube video once, maybe twice a month. I also always have it in my description box. It’s part of my description box default. It says, “Do you need a script template for your YouTube channel? Click here to grab mine. I’ll email it to you.” One of our biggest lead generators actually, how we grow our email list has been Pinterest. Pinterest is huge.

Dane Golden:
Really?

Trena Little:
It is a huge traffic source. It is my second largest external traffic source to my YouTube channel and it’s my number one traffic source to my website. And we get just under 300,000 monthly impressions on my Pinterest account. We create pins about this opt in on Pinterest all the time, just because you create one pin for that opt in, you can keep creating different pins with that link to go sign up for it and so Pinterest is really huge for us too.

Dane Golden:
Well, I’m going to link both your Pinterest account in the show notes, but also to the page where people go to, to get that script template so people can see what, and by doing this, they will be on your list of course, by signing up to get it. They’ll understand the full experience of what’s going on, how you walk them through this. Could you explain to us what a landing page funnel is? What are some of the key parts of it?

Trena Little:
Yeah, so this is predominantly, probably 80% of my income is doing a, I guess you’re saying a landing page funnel. What we do is when you do opt in for my script template, I know I have, what’s called a funnel. I know you’re coming into my email list from a script template that you’re probably thinking about video, you just aren’t sure how to get started. And so I have a series of about five emails already loaded up, ready to go automated inside my email system called ConvertKit that really address your pain points, that provide you value.

Trena Little:
And then towards the end of it, I tell you how I can solve this. I have a course, I have Video Strategy Academy. I have it available for you to purchase. And this goes into a much deeper funnel strategy, but there are ways to make that funnel only available for so many days so you’re putting that a sense of urgency that you only have so many days to buy this course at this price point, since you did get in my funnel. That’s honestly how I make my quote unquote passive income is having these email funnels in place.

Dane Golden:
Okay. I just want to go up to big picture because you’ve got a lot of working parts here and I think it’s amazing. Let’s say someone finds Trena Little based on her tip, they want to know how to do something and they go to YouTube, they find it. They may see a call to action to go get this checklist from there. Or they may say, “Oh, I like Trina on YouTube. I might follow her on Pinterest,” and they get a link to it there. That’s the entry points, right?

Trena Little:
Yeah. We have quite a few entry points, but those, yeah, you’re top of the funnel, how many people can you reach? What’s your biggest reach that you can get to then get them to funnel down next step, next step, next step?

Dane Golden:
And so when they actually go to get the checklist, is that a landing page?

Trena Little:
Yes. That’s a landing page, sorry. And so on the landing page, it just tells them what they’re going to get. It may have a photo. We will take a graphic and make it look real life. Even though it’s a PDF download or a Google Doc, we will put it on an iPad, flat lay, so a picture of an iPad so that they can really get a sense of what this is going to look like in their hands and tell them kind of what that benefit is when they get this. And then there’s a box for them to put their email and their name and then we automatically send it to them once they submit that.

Dane Golden:
Is there a video on this landing page of any type?

Trena Little:
Actually, we have found our landing pages without video do much better so we don’t have any videos on our landing pages.

Dane Golden:
Oh, really interesting. Okay. Now they have to give a accurate email to get the…

Trena Little:
Correct.

Dane Golden:
Okay. If they don’t give one, they don’t get it.

Trena Little:
Right. Yeah. Because we need to know where to send it. It’s all automated. I’m not manually sitting here through the middle of the night, sending out these templates. It’s all automated. You have to submit an email and then our system sends it out.

Dane Golden:
Well, some folks have a form and then you just fill it out with gibberish and you get the PDF anyway. I just want to make sure that’s not what’s happening and do they have to opt in a second time, not a second time, but I guess it’s the second time, but they fill it out and then it comes to them. Does it say, “Here’s your PDF,” and they’re on the list? Or does it say, “Do you agree to be on Trena’s list?”

Trena Little:
Yeah. There is terms and conditions on our landing page, actually that we have linked to. We have a terms and condition on our landing page that breaks down the full terms and conditions when you opt in. ConvertKit, the email provider that I use does have an option within the system to make it GDPR compliant as well. There is additional things in place to make it all legal.

Dane Golden:
And when you have landing pages, it’s just a webpage you set up manually? Or do you use one of the systems?

Trena Little:
Yeah. My website is on Squarespace. I could absolutely create a landing page on Squarespace, but what I use is a program called Leadpages, just because it gives me a little more statistical analysis of how many people are landing on the page? How many people are clicking on the button? How many people are actually opting in? How many people visited that day? That’s why we use a system or a program called Leadpages, just because of the additional analysis that we get.

Dane Golden:
Okay. Then they select it, they get the PDF. And how long after they get the PDF, do you start them on this five email automated series? Is it right now? Is that the next day?

Trena Little:
For the script template, what I’m trying to think because we have, we’re setting up our funnels, we’re updating them so some of them are a little bit different. For the script template, they’ll get the script template immediately. And then I think it’s one day later they’ll get another email.

Trena Little:
And then one day after that email, they’ll get another email. It’s basically spaced out a day for about five to six days. Reason being, when people opt in to your email list, that’s when they’re most excited about learning from you. Something caused them to want to sign up and that’s when they’re most excited. And so that’s when you want to show up the most. That’s when they’re basically your hottest lead is when they first opt in. It’s pretty important for you to show up a little bit more at the beginning, because again, you want to get this hot lead to ultimately go where you want them to go.

Dane Golden:
And these, as you said, their value, they’re more things about great insider tips that Trena Little is providing for them? Is that what they are generally?

Trena Little:
Yeah. You want to just continue building know, like and trust with them. And since I have a library of videos, I can talk about different ones, send them to a video, even a playlist of three videos that I can send to and let them know. Once you create this script template, maybe you’re wondering what you should do next. I actually have a three video series on my YouTube channel that walks through those next steps for you.

Trena Little:
Click this link. It’ll take you to three quick videos. Again, I just want to show them that I’m going to give them good value, show them that they can trust me so that when I do drop a pitch later through the funnel, they’re like, you know what? She’s already helped me this much for free. I can only imagine what she has for behind paid walls.

Dane Golden:
Okay. We’ve shown how the top of funnel works. You’re providing this value content on YouTube and on other social, they come into the landing page, they subscribe to the checklist, they get the checklist and also get helpful emails and then they’re started on a weekly email, and then the email’s telling them about the weekly video so they get informed there and value. Where are you discussing these paid courses?

Trena Little:
Right. When they’re in the funnel and they’re that hot lead, that’s when we start dropping tips. When we start dropping information about these paid for courses. We have tried and we test this out multiple times a year to see what’s actually converting better. Is it easier to just pitch them in email form for my course? Or should I get them to go to a quote unquote webinar or masterclass where they can learn even more from me and then be pitched at the end of that masterclass? And so we have actually found that it is a little bit higher of a conversion rate when we do tell them, “Hey, we’ve got a free workshop for you. I know you’re learning some great things these past couple days, this workshop actually goes into even more detail. There are actionable items inside of here. Here’s why you need to watch this masterclass.” And then that’s where they get pitched the course.

Dane Golden:
They go to an automated webinar. And do you have, when they go to sign up, do you have some sort of timer, it says, “You have to sign up in two days,” or it just says, “Would you like to sign up?” And here it is.

Trena Little:
If they are already in the funnel and they’ve already given me their email address, I don’t need to ask for that again. What happens is they’ll click on a link to that webinar and our system allows us to tag them and that trips another sequence that moves them in the sequence. This is all set up behind scenes so that they’re not getting repetitive emails and they’re not like, “Well, why am I getting this and that email?” If they click on it, they’re immediately moved over into that webinar sequence so that we can say, “Hey, we noticed you checked out that webinar yesterday. Did you get a chance to watch it all? Make sure you see this. It’s only going to be available for 48 more hours.” And then we start pitching the course and sharing case studies throughout two to three days of emails.

Dane Golden:
Wow, this is really sophisticated. It must’ve taken you a while to set all this up.

Trena Little:
It does take a little bit of time, but what worked well for me is if you do it live, so when I live launch, it’s basically all of the emails that I’ve used live launching and then I just tweak it for evergreen funnels. An evergreen is something that runs behind the scenes. I had live launched many a times and just used the content that I had created for a live launch and put it into this system.

Dane Golden:
When you say live launch, you mean you did a live webinar, you did a number of emails and it was the first time, but now you tweak them a bit because they were well written, but you just wanted to make them a little bit more agnostic as far as the date.

Trena Little:
Right. I usually live launch my programs twice a year still now, but from live launch to live launch, that space between I don’t want to keep live launching. Because it’s a lot of work. I just wrapped up a live launch in October and then I am drained for about two weeks because I’m showing up a lot, I’m answering a lot of questions. And so we will take the data from every live launch and see if we tweak something, what was better? How should we incorporate this now into the evergreen funnel?

Dane Golden:
And the webinar is let’s say how long?

Trena Little:
It generally is about an hour. Yeah, I’m usually hitting between an hour. Sometimes if I’m really digging into specific questions that I think need to be asked to get that conversion, I’ll do a little bit longer of a webinar where I’m making sure every single question that I generally get is answered and I show them examples. Again, to continue to show them, knock down those hurdles that are standing between them and actually buying my product.

Dane Golden:
And do you use any sort of service writer for the webinar? Or just use a normal YouTube video on that?

Trena Little:
Yeah, so I’ve tried different ones. I’ve hated them. And so I do, I use a YouTube video on a lead page and then that lead page can just expire after so many days. And since the YouTube video is unlisted, they can’t see it unless they obviously save the link and whatnot. But if they want to go that distance to save the webinar, go for it.

Dane Golden:
All right. And the webinar is structured, you said the pitch is at entire end of the entire video so they wouldn’t know about your pitch for a course until one hour into the video?

Trena Little:
I like to be really upfront and honest. I don’t like the sleazy type webinars where you’re brought in and you’re given all this fluff content. You’re like, “Where’s the content I sign up for?” I tell people usually within the first five minutes, that just so you know, at the end of this class, I’m going to tell you how you can enroll in my program, Video Strategy Academy, because I am a true believer of being open and honest with my audience and they need to know upfront what they’re signing up for.

Dane Golden:
And it doesn’t say there anywhere else on that page, it doesn’t say sign up for the course? Or it does?

Trena Little:
They will have a button that says, “Enroll in Video Strategy Academy.” Yeah.

Dane Golden:
Okay. This is so amazing and sophisticated. What would you say to a business of any type, either a high ticket business or a B to C business? What would you say if they said, “Listen, this seems like a lot of work. I’m just going to make a video. I’m going to have a link and if they want to buy my product, they’ll buy it. And if they don’t, they don’t. Or I’m just going to run an ad.” Why is this process that you’ve refined for your business, why is it so crucial?

Trena Little:
People aren’t going to take action unless they’re forced to. They can sit and think about it. They can say, “I’m going to sleep on it, then never come back to it.” If you put some kind of deadline on it or some kind of reason why they have to take an action, that’s where you’re going to see the conversions. If you just have something available all the time, what’s the added value in buying now? And so there are different strategies where you can leave a course available on your website, but maybe in your funnel, you say, “You get this special bonus when you enroll in the next two days.” You can have your products available all the time, but you need to give an incentive for people to purchase. Like I said, if you’re doing a funnel, it doesn’t necessarily have to be you’re closing the doors.

Trena Little:
You can only get this available inside this funnel. You can just say, “Look, you’re going to get this extra bonus if you decide to sign up in the next two days. This isn’t a bonus that I give to everybody, this is something special for you.”

Dane Golden:
You’re a believer after doing this for a while, you’re a believer in this entire system you’ve come up with. Not only just talking about it in your videos, having people find out about it on your social, then getting into the landing page that drives them to the checklist, to the email sequence and then potentially to the webinar and the course, you’re a believer in the system 100%?

Trena Little:
Absolutely. I’ve been able to double my business revenue for the past three years consistently and work less. It sounds cliche, but literally this year we’ve doubled from last year already. We hit our revenue goal in October and I had children at home all of well, when did we shut down, middle of March? All of April, all of May. I didn’t have any childcare. My time working this year was cut by about a third of what I normally work and we still doubled our revenue and hit our revenue goal in October.

Dane Golden:
Wow.

Trena Little:
Something’s working.

Dane Golden:
You’ve proven that this system works and can work with a lot of different types of businesses. Let me ask just about the lead magnet part of it. And that’s the part that encourages someone to get on your email to begin with. How do know if it’s good or not?

Trena Little:
You really want to think about what could help that viewer? For me, I need to get into the mind of my potential student, because my goal in this lead magnet is to ultimately get them to buy my course. What do I need to get them to overcome, to buy that paid for product that I have? And so one of the biggest hurdles people have is not knowing what to say in their video. If I give that to them upfront, that’s one less hurdle for them to overcome when I pitch them a course. I have another lead magnet that walks them through 15 pages of how to make sure their YouTube channel is set up. That’s another hurdle. If your YouTube channel is set up, okay, game on, you’re ready to get started. Oh, I have a course that helps you do that.
Okay. There’s another reason why they would want to join. just want to think about the ultimate goal, the end goal, what they’re buying, what is one problem that you could solve with something free? And it doesn’t have to be a PDF, a checklist, anything like that. It could be a video series. It could be an ebook, just a pain point that you’re solving for them to build that know, like and trust factor and ultimately get them to realize they can achieve what you’re promising in your paid for product.

Dane Golden:
Wow. That’s really amazing. I’m going to ask you one, either tough question. I don’t know if you’ll know the answer or if you want to reveal the answer, but it’s about conversion percentages. Do you have any, anywhere along the line? I know you look at a lot of stuff. I don’t know if you’re willing to say, but what percentage of people who come to the original checklist landing page actually provide their email for instance?

Trena Little:
Right. We have a variety of conversions on our landing pages based on the product. A script template, that one is our highest converter. I think we are around 70% of people that land on it opt in and that’s extraordinarily high.

Dane Golden:
Amazing.

Trena Little:
Yeah, we have our roadmap, which shows people how to sign, get started with YouTube. That’s lower. I think that’s around 50%. And then you’ll notice webinars. If you’re sending people to a landing page that’s getting them to sign up for a webinar, are probably lower than that. I think webinar signups stand at about a 30% conversion rate is industry average.

Dane Golden:
Okay. All right. And then, so when you’re saying the webinar signup is 30%, that’s to get them to sign up for the webinar. And once the webinar people sign up, what percentage of people sign up for the course?

Trena Little:
Industry standard is about two to 3%. That’s why a lot of business owners come to me and they’re like, “I need to feed more to my funnel,” Knowing that two to 3% is your industry average.

Dane Golden:
Got it.

Trena Little:
You need to get more funnel in to get more sales, because it’s only a two to 3% industry average that complete the funnel and buy.

Dane Golden:
Any other important percentages, either in email conversion or anywhere along this funnel that we should know about? Or is that pretty much it?

Trena Little:
Keeping an eye on your open rates, because there’s no point in you sending emails that people aren’t opening. If people aren’t opening your email, it could be because it’s going to spam. One thing that we do to combat that is as soon as they put their email in the landing page, they’re taken to a thank you page immediately that says, “Hey, your script template is on the way. Just a reminder, our email might have gone to your spam or promotions tab, double check there and if it did, make sure you move it to your inbox, so you continue to get our emails.” That could happen so you want to check your open rates. And again, it could also be your subject lines because subject lines are just as important as YouTube titles. You got to be keeping an eye on those open rates.

Dane Golden:
What are some tips for the subject lines? Use all emojis? Use exclamation points? Don’t use exclamation points? What are some of them?

Trena Little:
Know your audience. What are they going to click on? Test. I like to go to Buzzfeed and see kind of what their headlines are. I also keep a file in my inbox full of emails that I’ve got, that the subject lines have grabbed my attention so that I can just tweak them to my content. That’s pretty much the best way, keeping a swipe file of subject line headlines, subject line ideas.

Dane Golden:
Okay, great. Well, Trena Little, this is really, you’ve just given us a whole course of great tips and people should sign up for your courses, including the one that’s about how to grow your email list. And we’re going to have all that in the show notes. How can people find out more about your YouTube teachings and marketing and coaching and all the other stuff you’re up to?

Trena Little:
Yeah, my website is trenalittle.com. You can also watch my YouTube channel, just trenalittle.com/youtube. And I hang out a lot on Instagram. A lot of my people are always interested to see how do I balance it all with a three and a five year old and a business. And so trenalittle.com/instagram is also where I share more of behind the scenes of how I keep moving.

Dane Golden:
And it’s T-R-E-N-A-L-I-T-T-L-E, is your name.

Trena Little:
Correct.

Dane Golden:
Okay, excellent. Thank you, Trena Little. My name is Dane Golden and I want to invite you the listener to review us on Apple Podcasts or share the podcast or just, hey, tweet me @danegolden. I do this podcast and our various other YouTube videos and projects because we love helping marketers and business owners just like you do YouTube and video marketing better. Thanks to our special guest, Trena Little. Thank you, Trena.

Trena Little:
Thank you.

Dane Golden:
Until next week, here’s to helping you help your customers through video.