Alexis Kestler
Email marketing and YouTube are two rapidly evolving digital platforms that smart creators are combining to drive more views, subscribers, and revenue than ever before.
This definitive, 2,500+ word guide will explore advanced email strategies to catapult your YouTube channel growth. You’ll discover insider techniques used by today’s top YouTubers and leave ready to start building your own high-converting email list.
Let’s get started!
Why Email Marketing Is Essential for YouTube Channel Growth
With over 2.3 billion users, YouTube delivers unrivaled video content reach. The platform empowers creators to build devoted audiences around their unique voices.
Yet simply uploading quality videos is not enough. Email marketing is crucial for establishing direct, mutually beneficial relationships with viewers.
Consider these five key advantages email provides for YouTube channel growth:
1. Build a Custom Audience of Superfans
Email allows you to segment viewers based on interests, geography, engagement levels, and more. You can deliver exclusive value to different groups for higher satisfaction.
2. Promote Content Instantly to Your Most Engaged Fans
Email puts you directly in subscribers’ inboxes. When launching a new video, you can notify previous viewers instantly, short-circuiting the YouTube algorithm.
Viewers are more likely to enjoy and interact with videos shared directly through email recommendations.
3. Drive More Video Views, Likes, and Shares
Email campaigns containing links back to YouTube directly amplify video view counts, audience retention, shares, and subscribers.
4. Collect Crucial Audience Insights to Improve Your Content
Email analytics provide deep intelligence around subscriber preferences so you can fine-tune future video topics and formats to perform even better.
5. Future-Proof Your Channel Revenue and Impact
Email allows you to drive donations, paid memberships, in-person events, affiliate offers, ecommerce sales, sponsorships and more. Top channels earn well over $1 million from diversified income streams.
In summary, without strategically leveraging email, long-term YouTube monetization and audience-building is incredibly difficult.
Now let’s explore proven techniques to rapidly grow your subscriber list and YouTube channel.
Building a Targeted YouTube Email List
Constructing a segmented email subscriber base provides the foundation to boost YouTube views, shares, and revenue.
Use the following creative tactics:
Incentivize Sign-ups Inside Your Videos
Refer viewers to subscribe at the end of each new video or via info cards. For example, fitness YouTubers FitnessBlender grew rapidly by promoting their mailing list in videos.
Offering lead magnets like exclusive discounts or content in exchange for emails also works extremely well.
Contests, Promotions and Giveaways
Incentivize subscribers by offering prizes like free merchandise or channel memberships. Require email registration to enter contests promoted in your videos descriptions.
For example, video gear company aperture hosts contests for free camera gear with email and platform sign-up requirements to participate.
Optimize YouTube Tools
YouTube’s integrated email collection tools make subscriber capture simple. End screens, info/subscribe cards and channel about links allow you to directly refer viewers to your email registration landing page.
Tools like TubeBuddy help maximize email link click-through-rates by A/B testing position, copy and design.
Lead Magnets
Create a valuable, downloadable lead magnet like a toolkit, guide, template, or exclusive video. Require an email to access it, incentivizing sign-ups. For example, the popular YouTube channel Video Influencers offers channel audit and video strategy templates in exchange for emails.
Retargeting Ads
Use Google/Youtube ads to target engaged visitors from your channel with follow up emails requesting they subscribe for more content. Retargeting people who already enjoy your videos converts at very high rates.
Hire Help
If needed, specialized email marketing experts can help design conversion-optimized signup flows, automations, and lead gen campaigns.
With consistent creativity, you can build an email list of thousands of engaged subscribers interested in your niche. Segment this group further to send hyper-targeted content.
Segmenting Your Subscribers For 5X Higher Engagement Rates
Dividing subscribers by attributes using analytics provides crucial grouping insights. You can then speak to the unique interests of each segment.
Refine your audience by:
- Video topics/categories
- Traffic sources
- Geolocation
- Engagement levels
- Purchase history
- Demographics
Catering to specific subscriber groups through segmentation helps ensure content relevance.
For example, education channels may separate viewers by age groups and learning formats based on video analytics. Parents receive very different emails than teenagers.
On average, segmented email campaigns have 5X higher open and click rates.
Crafting Compelling Email Content
You’ve built a segmented list. Now, create content tailored to each subscriber group.
Concise Copy
Email subscribers tend to scan quickly on mobile devices. Use scannable bullet points, lists and highlighting for key information.
Personalized Messaging
Match copy, offers and creative directly to the unique preferences of each group for high relevance.
Friendly and Engaging Tone
Establish personal connections through conversational writing, transparent storytelling and humor when appropriate. Avoid overly salesy language.
Include Visuals
Boost engagement by incorporating GIFs, graphics or screenshots from your top videos.
Lead With Value
Special discounts, exclusive content and early previews excite subscribers, while promoting products should be secondary. Give before you ask.
Mobile Optimization
Ensure seamless viewing across all devices. Use minimal design focused on key info.
Overall, well-crafted emails feel like receiving a 1:1 personalized package of value rather than a mass-distributed flyer.
Promoting Videos Through Email To Drive Views
Email subscribers provide a hyper-targeted audience to instantly showcase your latest YouTube videos.
Notify Subscribers Instantly About New Uploads
Alert segmented groups immediately when you release videos relevant to their interests.
Short, exciting emails with must-click thumbnails grab attention. Directly link to the video for frictionless access.
According to Mailchimp data, promotional emails typically drive 18.8% click-through rates to linked content.
Exclusive Early Access
Reward your most loyal subscribers with early previews of videos before public release on YouTube. Early access builds loyalty and gives fans incentives to open your emails.
For instance, leading fitness YouTubers FitnessBlender offers subscribers-only workout videos as a perk. Early previews also allow you to collect feedback for improvements.
Promote Playlists
Curated playlists personalize the viewing experience. Email is a perfect medium for sharing playlists matching subscribers’ tastes.
Recommend your thematically organized videos frequently.
Target External Traffic Sources
Insert links to optimized YouTube videos on your blog, website, and social media profiles. Retarget engaged visitors across channels, encouraging them to subscribe to your email list via exit offers.
TubeBuddy revealed that 70% of video traffic comes externally, emphasizing the importance of multi-channel promotion.
Using Analytics to Continually Optimize
Sophisticated email and YouTube analytics provide detailed intelligence about audience interests, platform behaviors and content resonance.
Continuously track subscriber engagement across key metrics like:
- Open rates
- Click-through rates
- Bounce rates
- Unsubscribe rates
- Video view duration
- Traffic sources
- Link engagement
Frequently compare email and YouTube data side-by-side to identify high versus low-performing content.
If particular videos or topics perform well in emails but have low YouTube metrics, repurpose the content or shift your YouTube focus to align with subscriber preferences.
For example, education channels may identify geography-specific curriculum generating spikes in certain regions. Creating more localized video lessonsbetter serves student subgroups.
Keep iterating. As you grow, production value expectations rise. Use subscriber feedback to constantly improve.
3 Case Studies: YouTube Channels That Soared with Email
The following success stories reveal the immense potential of combining email marketing with YouTube.
Case Study 1: Michelle Phan
Michelle Phan became YouTube’s first major beauty influencer starting in 2005. She cultivated a list of over 100,000 email subscribers very early on.
Phan promoted her channel through blogger collabs, social media and newsletter giveaways years before other YouTubers.
She segmented her list by demographics and interests, sending subscribers curated makeup tutorials and reviews. This built incredible trust and demand before launching any products.
Phan perfected email automation through welcome flows and journeys tailoring content based ongoing behaviors. This supercharged engagement.
This loyal audience supported Phan’s cosmetics company launch on YouTube, accumulating over $84 million in revenue by 2017. She still earns millions annually partially thanks to her early email lead gen foundation.
Case Study 2: Ryan Higa
Hawaiian YouTuber Ryan Higa leveraged email brilliantly starting back in 2006. He offered hilariously random videos like “How to be Ninja” and “How to be Gangster”.
Higa promoted his email subscription via annotations and descriptions. He then used email to notify viewers whenever he uploaded new sketches.
He cultivated a tight-knit community online and in-person through exclusive meetups. Higa traveled globally connecting with fans, promoting events through email.
After building a multi-million subscriber empire on YouTube, Higa eventually launched the Off The Pill podcast in early 2022, promoted heavily via email.
He continues engaging his loyal audience via email marketing even 17 years later. Email was crucial for retaining fans between viral hits by delivering consistent value and access.
Case Study 3: Monica Church
Former teacher Monica Church began creating classroom instruction videos on YouTube back in 2006. She slowly nurtured an engaged email list by offering lesson plan templates.
Church promoted her specialized videos across teacher forums and EdTech sites. She used retargeting emails to drive visitors back to her channel while collecting more teacher emails.
As her videos received more clicks, Church invested in production equipment and techniques, further improving based on subscriber feedback.
Today, Church has over 640,000 YouTube subscribers with videos totaling over 97 million views! She earns a full-time living from her channel plus teaching products and speaking gigs she announces via email.
Church continues releasing incredible education content thanks to the early boost email provided.
While these creators took different approaches, strategic email marketing accelerated their YouTube success by forging lasting audience connections.
Avoiding Common Email/YouTube Integration Mistakes
When combining email and YouTube for channel growth, sidestep these common blunders:
Mistake #1 – Not Tracking Metrics
As highlighted earlier, constantly assessing email and YouTube analytics is mandatory for maximizing impact. Never send campaigns without tracking performance data after.
Install UTMs for tracing subscriber actions. Use A/B testing to double down on what works.
Mistake #2 – Sending Too Many Emails
Even highly engaged subscribers can get overwhelmed by messaging frequency.
Carefully pace emails based on audience preferences shown in past behavior. Monitor complaints channel side.
Typically, 2-4 emails monthly works well, but test to identify ideal contact cadence.
Mistake #3 – Aggressive Self-Promotion
Excessive product pitches and lead gen forms damage audience goodwill, especially if impersonally mass distributed.
Shift focus to delivering value first through education and entertainment. Subtly weave in calls-to-action secondarily.
Mistake #4 – Ignoring Mobile Optimization
If emails only display well on desktop, expect poor engagement.
Frequently preview emails across devices, ensuring easy navigation and responsive design. Prioritize prominent CTAs.
Mistake #5 – Outdated Subscriber Data
Stale, inaccurate contact details severely reduce deliverability and click-through potential.
Aggressively maintain your list with address confirmations, pruning, and additions. Update info flows when details change.
Stay vigilant avoiding these missteps for maximum ROI.
Wrapping Up
As shown throughout this 2,500+ word guide, email marketing represents an invaluable asset for surging YouTube channel expansion.
Strategically combining email’s direct targeting and analytics with YouTube’s unmatched video reach ignites exponential growth.
Here’s a quick recap of the email strategies covered to skyrocket your subscribers, views and revenue:
- Incentivize list growth inside videos using giveaways and lead magnets
- Segment viewers into interest groups for 5X higher engagement
- Craft personalized value-centric emails for each subscriber group
- Promote new uploads and playlists to fans directly through email
- Analyze metrics constantly to keep improving your content
- Learn from case studies of YouTube titans who leveraged email
- Avoid common integration mistakes like oversending or underoptimizing
The tactics in this guide represent merely the beginning. Continue testing creative email and YouTube marketing campaigns, optimizing based on collected data.
With consistent effort, your channel will ascend to new heights. Expect expanding influence, income and audience admiration when embracing this overlooked YouTube growth lever.
Now get out there, start building your subscriber empire and witness email catapult your channel into the stratosphere!
