AUDIO - Referrals V2

Chenell Basilio: [00:00:00] What if every time someone joined your email list, they brought a friend or 10? Growth isn't always about more traffic. It's often about what happens after someone joins. And so today on the show, we wanted to talk through how you can turn your one subscriber into 10 with some simple tactics and strategies you can use.

Welcome back to the Growth and Reverse podcast. I'm Chanel.

Dylan Redekop: And I'm Dylan. I like how you've also titled this as the underrated growth strategy that every newsletter should be using because not only is that like a nice hooky kind of sub headline, it's also like super true.

Chenell Basilio: So true. I, I say this all the time, but retention and like getting your subscribers to share is one of the most underrated ways you can grow.

And so today we wanna dig even deeper into that and say like, what does that actually mean? What does that look like? How can you do that?

Dylan Redekop: Of course, since we're talking about it, we both are doing this all the time really well, right?

Chenell Basilio: All the time. Yep. Eating our own, own dog food or whatever they say, oh yeah.

Most newsletters treat subscribers like the end goal, but they often forget that you can actually [00:01:00] use your subscriber as a distribution channel. So this isn't the most straightforward and obvious thing, but I'm sure you've seen a ton of people do it. You know, referral programs, all that good stuff. But there are some easy ways to do this as well that don't require a ton of setup.

Dylan Redekop: I think the, the whole point here is like creating this sort of subscriber flywheel. Effect, right? The flywheel is a pretty hot buzzword lately. Um, all in the creative space, especially kind of in the kit, uh, community. We heard it a lot when we were at Craft and Commerce. So the idea is like every subscriber, the spy, the flywheel turns to get, you know, if you could get 10 from those and then from those 10 they could you get another 10, right?

So it can create this real sort of exponential growth if it's done properly. So. Very important if you can execute this and uh, and do it well,

Chenell Basilio: definitely, and this isn't a silver bullet strategy, but it's something you can set up pretty much one time. Maybe tweak it here and there, but you set it up once and you end up with more subscribers incrementally over time.

This isn't, again, like, you're not going viral in a sense, but if you can get one [00:02:00] subscriber to add an extra subscriber, you can over time, like effectively double your list in a way. So I think this is a pretty powerful tool.

Dylan Redekop: Yeah. It's like, um, it's not a silver bullet, but maybe it's a copper bullet.

Copper's pretty, it's worth, worth something. It's not quite as valuable as silver, but it's, it's

Chenell Basilio: pretty good.

Dylan Redekop: It's pretty good.

Chenell Basilio: I don't know. People steal copper out of pipes and stuff, don't they? They do. They do that in Canada too,

Dylan Redekop: but it's, they do, but if there's silver in those pipes, people would be just like taking houses down and like, you know, I think, I think it would be that much worse, so.

Got it. Yeah. But copper definitely has some value to it.

Chenell Basilio: I like it. So the copper

Dylan Redekop: bullet strategy, this is the copper bullet strategy? Yeah.

Chenell Basilio: New title?

Dylan Redekop: Mm-hmm. No.

Chenell Basilio: Yeah. We'll put a penny emoji next to it or something.

Dylan Redekop: What president's on the penny? Lincoln.

Chenell Basilio: It is Lincoln, yeah. Boom.

Dylan Redekop: The, the, the Canadian. Got it right.

Chenell Basilio: Cool. So I wrote down a couple of, of these ways that I've seen referrals happening and ways I've used myself, so I thought we could walk through those. Is there anything we should touch on before we get into this or just jump right in?

Dylan Redekop: I think we need to touch on, I think this can be done in some [00:03:00] ways with just about any ESP.

Um, even if you're using something like Substack, which doesn't have like a really robust automation system set up inside it, you could still just use your, your words and your messaging and a link in your welcome email to, to make this work. So don't write this off just because you're not using an ESP that has, that has that lacks automation.

I think it's still very powerful and useful.

Chenell Basilio: Great call out. Just jumping into some of the tactical ways that we can talk through. 'cause I feel like people hear referral programs or they hear. Get your readers to share and it's like cool referral program. That's it. We're done. There's nothing else. But I think I've written down like at least six or seven other ways that we could do this.

And I'm sure as we talk through them we'll brainstorm a couple more. So, and we'll jump into the referral system after that. But I think the first one that comes to mind for me, um, and we actually had Tyler Cook come into the growth and reverse Pro community. He's a deliverability guy, but he was sharing how he.

Gets all of his clients to try and get shares within their welcome sequence. Mm-hmm. And so I think that's the number one thing.

Tyler Cook: And so in the welcome [00:04:00] flow, because we know that statistically their engagement is gonna be highest here, we want to leverage that. We want the most amount of people to see that we want referrals from them as possible.

The second thing is this is also when they are most likely to take action on any number of our requests. And so by asking them now, we are trying to make sure that we kind of leverage that emotional, mental thing for them on getting referrals.

Chenell Basilio: Um, I'm gonna start doing this more. I think I call this out at the bottom of every email, and I'm sure it's a link that no one reads.

So if I can make this more intentional and that kind of thing, I think it's gonna actually do well. So this first one is just like adding a call out in your welcome sequence. Like ask people to forward, share, reply, uh, to a friend. And, uh, I think you can do that right away.

Dylan Redekop: And I think Tyler had said he does it.

Even twice in his onboarding sequence quite often. Yeah. Um, he's got, which made me cringe. [00:05:00] I know, right? He shared a seven step, uh, onboarding sequence for a new subscribers. So there's seven different emails in there, and two of them, I think it was the fifth and the seventh email is you're asking for a referral.

And so that feels like a lot. But at the same time he's seen it, he's worked with a lot of companies and he's seen this work. So, um. If it's got his backing, it's got, it's got mine. And I think at the very least, if we can just add it, even just once in our welcome sequence, we're already kind of ahead of the game.

'cause I know it's something that I don't currently do. As I joked before that, of course, you know, I eat my own dog food and I do this all the time and really well, but. I don't actually do this.

Chenell Basilio: Yeah, same. And I think when he said the, the two shares, that really did make me cringe a little bit. But maybe you just put yourself out there or maybe you try and start with one, and then maybe you add an extra if it's actually working, um, and you can see what links get clicked or how many people share from that.

So I think it's a pretty interesting way to kind of experiment with this. What's next? The next one, it comes from, uh, the recent 30 days of growth. We did, [00:06:00] um, Dan Hinky talked about how with his clients, he often just asks them to, he'll create like a templated email. And so you can use a tool, um, I'll have to pull up the exact one he used, but you can use a tool to create, like a mail to link so that when someone actually clicks on this link, it actually opens up a new email in Gmail or whatever system you're using, and it will have like the body of the email filled out.

The subject line. Subject line, if you include it. Yeah. Yeah. And so you, you essentially are writing the email for them. So these people, your readers don't have to think about like, okay, how do I ask a friend to sign up for this? You know what I mean? Mm-hmm. Like, it's hard to come up with that wording if you're not doing this every day.

So as the author of the newsletter, you can create that, um, wording and phrasing for them. So I think that's a pretty powerful thing to do.

Dylan Redekop: Yeah. It's really easy. Even if you just, you can even hint at that saying like, click this link and. Your, the email that you send to friends is already created. You just have to like, add your name to it kind of thing.

Like, it's, it's really simple and um, [00:07:00] it definitely reduces the friction of getting, um, somebody to take action on something like that. For sure. I really like that one. As

Chenell Basilio: you were saying that, I envision like a sentence that just like, click this link and I will magically write the email for you or something.

Yeah. And they click, they click it and it's open and it's done. I think that could be interesting. Mm-hmm. Yeah. Mm-hmm. But he said this has gotten people. From one email, like over a hundred subscribers, like I think that's pretty powerful. Even if you can get a 10th of that, I think that's pretty, pretty cool.

Dylan Redekop: Yeah. Yeah. It doesn't take a lot of work. I think, if I'm not mistaken, you have the code, or not the code, but there's like Link UTMs or. Uh, something you have to add in the, in that link, right? To make sure that it fills everything in properly. But all that, um, we can provide, uh, in the show notes or it should be at that, um, at that link that Dan shared with us, right?

Chenell Basilio: The tool. Yeah. Yeah. Um, I'll have to find which one it was, but we'll put that in the show notes. But yeah, it's such a powerful tool. I think it's. Again, it's such an underrated one. Like you don't think about this stuff. It's like you ask people to share, but then you [00:08:00] forget about like the mental toll it's gonna take on them to like actually come up with phrasing and wording and like, how do I talk about this thing and, oh, what's the link I share again?

And so it's just like, make it simple and they might actually share it and

Dylan Redekop: you could even prompt them like share with a friend. It's like, that's super vague. Be more specific. If you wanna be like, Hey, share with like somebody in your community, uh, online community or share with. Share with your community, share with your coworker or colleague if you're more specific.

Right. That's gonna be that much more helpful.

Chenell Basilio: Yeah. I was gonna say like if you're in the plant space, 'cause you were just playing with your plants, right? If you're in the plant space, you could say, Hey, send this to your plant bestie, or something like that. Yeah, just like call out the specific person.

That would be a good reader.

Dylan Redekop: Exactly. I think that's, that's one other way to, to get this done because I see, I see the, the benefit in like, oh, I just have to click and then opens up this email. Um, with everything prefilled except the email address you're gonna forward it to, is there still a bit of friction there, right?

Like, who am I gonna send this to? So that's where I think the prompt of who [00:09:00] get them already thinking about ideas of who. Might find this valuable and they, a lot of people already know, but I think it's still, I think it's still worth worth, um, trying to add that prompt for them.

Chenell Basilio: As we're talking through this, I'm thinking this could be super powerful with lead magnets.

Like if I sent someone a lead magnet and then. Instead of asking them like, Hey, did you see this? Maybe like the next day or two days later, I'm like, Hey, I, I saw that you clicked on this. I hope you really enjoyed it. I think it could be powerful if you send this to a friend or send this link to a friend and they'll get it for free or something.

Mm-hmm. Like some kind of phrasing that way. I think that could be pretty cool.

Dylan Redekop: That could be very powerful too. Then you get, you're getting people to share, which some people might be doing already, but just like giving them the idea like, oh, hey, you could be like a hero too to someone, or maybe they're gonna share it in their newsletter or.

On social media or anything like that, if it's a. Quality lead magnet, which you should be creating quality lead magnet, lead magnets that are shareworthy. Um, then that would be a great way to do it too, which

Chenell Basilio: is another touch point. Like you don't just have to do this as soon as someone signs [00:10:00] up or at a specific cadence.

Like it could be done after they download something or you give them a freebie or something like that. So just another good reminder.

Dylan Redekop: Yes, yes. I kind of, I I think that's, it should be almost like a, a default, Hey, don't forget to share this. If it helps you you's free, it's gonna help someone else. Yeah.

It's free. Yeah, totally. I like that. And I know

Chenell Basilio: like. Some of the, some of the reasons people don't do these is 'cause you feel salesy and you're like, oh, I don't wanna ask people to like essentially sell my stuff for me. But at the same time, especially for something free, like I think, I think you can get over that hump.

Like you're not asking them to buy something. You're not asking them to. You know, whatever.

Dylan Redekop: No. And again, like if it's, if it's something that is helpful and fun and cool, if it's a new tool or a new, like custom GPT bot or you know, who knows what, then I think anything like that is gonna be, uh, interesting for, for people to share and fun for people to share as opposed to a general, like in art articles used to be like a thing that people would share, but, um.

I dunno, those have kind of become less exciting as more and more articles are written [00:11:00] every day and more and less and less by humans. Uh, I think the quality of the thing that, not the quality, but the, the type of thing that people wanna share is, is evolving and changing. Again, I think if it's, if it is something worth sharing and valuable, then people are gonna be more inclined to do it.

And, um, again, you have the opportunity, it'll be like even have the messaging, like, you know, be a hero to a friend who needs this or something like that. Right. Like, if you can really like. Position them as like doing their friends or their colleagues or whomever a favor by sharing it, then that's gonna help that much more too.

Chenell Basilio: And I had this one written down separately, but it kind of ties in here. Um, including social share moments essentially. So if you are big on social media, maybe you're on Instagram or you wrote this like really epic LinkedIn post, you could even embed that in your content and get people to share that.

Like they don't necessarily have to share your content or your email. They could also just share your. Like your really good content on social, which some people will then filter into becoming email subscribers. So I don't want people to think it's just [00:12:00] sharing your email either. Um, I think if you can ask people to share, like, and we talk about this all the time with Growth Loops.

Uh, Harry Dry did this really well with marketing examples. Um, he would, you know, in his email he would link to the. The LinkedIn post or the Twitter post that he just wrote. Mm-hmm. And so people would go back over there and engage with it and share that. So it's just a good reminder that like, it doesn't have to be a landing page that you're asking them to share or something super concrete.

It can just be like a social post.

Dylan Redekop: Yeah. Or the, the classic shared my newsletter with a friend. It's just like. Uninspiring, like be more creative with it. Totally. And that's a good way to do it.

Chenell Basilio: The other one I was thinking about is, um, because you clicked email, so essentially you know it as mm-hmm.

Newsletter operators, email operators, you can see who's clicking on certain links or emails or that kind of thing. So you can go through and like. Segment people based on what they're clicking on, how many clicks they've had or that kind of thing. And so if you see someone clicking on a specific type of content that you post a lot, or [00:13:00] like a lead magnet like we were just talking about, uh, you can have email system like automatically send them something like 20 minutes later and be like, Hey, I saw you really enjoyed this thing.

Would you mind sharing it with a friend? It took me X hours to create. I would love if you could just like, promote it to someone else or something like that. I think that's just like a little roundabout way to do this. Also,

Dylan Redekop: actually one of those emails today. So that's, that's funny that, that you mentioned that.

I think that's, um, another kinda low hanging fruit missed opportunity. That one you would need an ESB that has some kind of tag in your automation features built in. Mm-hmm. But, um, but it's still, it's not too hard to put together. And with, with, you know, tagging links and stuff like that. So I think that could be a, again, a pretty low lift.

Um, and something that a, a new subscriber who's clicked on something, again, you're just getting that flywheel spinning of having them share that, um, they clicked on it, they've shown interest. I guess my question comes, uh, comes to mind is like, how do spam bots or inbox. Email clients [00:14:00] who click on everything like apple mail, how does that work with this?

Would that, would they get triggered into getting one of these? Um, because you clicked emails,

Chenell Basilio: it's gonna happen. I think it sometimes it's like an edge case that you're kind of working towards. And like, like for this, for instance, this, this week I was testing out a new thing at the bottom of my email and I put, if you need a break from these emails, click this link.

And like over 400 people click the link. Now, are all of those people? Probably not. However, I'm going to keep like using that as a, hopefully not. Yeah, I know. Yeah. Ouch guys. Yeah, no. Um, so essentially I'm just gonna like, snooze those emails for a month and see what happens. Could it hurt my deliverability?

Maybe. I don't know. It might also help because people don't want to necessarily get those emails every week. Um, I might actually change this to be a poll moving forward. Like I don't know how that would look or work, but I feel like there's something there to like make it more effective. Uh, so for people that don't know in Kit, you can use polls instead of.

A link [00:15:00] trigger essentially. So you can have a poll embedded to say like, Hey, do you wanna like skip these emails for a month? But the UI there is a little, it's bigger than I want it to be.

Dylan Redekop: Uh, how do you mean the ui? So if I embedded a poll,

Chenell Basilio: like Yeah, like near the unsubscribe link, it would be a little weird.

If

Dylan Redekop: it's in the foot of your email though, I think it could be valuable. Despite the size of it, and you could just frame it as like, are you getting too many emails? I am too. That's why I give you the option to pause these emails for, um, the amount of time you choose from these options. And you can give 'em 1, 2, 3, 4, however many options the kid allows or that you feel like giving them is like, pause these for a month.

Pause these for, uh, you know, six weeks or Don't pause at all. Or, or something like that. You could, you, you could go that route too

Chenell Basilio: as we're talking through it. I think I could just set up a separate form. And like have people click the link and just enter their email and then I'll snoo them a little easier.

Definitely more friction on their end,

Dylan Redekop: but they'll be annoyed that they have to actually enter their email address.

Chenell Basilio: Oh,

Dylan Redekop: well

Chenell Basilio: I'll see if I can like get it autopopulated or something.

Dylan Redekop: The other thing I just wanted to say too [00:16:00] about say the Apple Mail, who's clicking these links and then that person is then triggered to receive the, because you clicked.

Email from you. Half the time, like I get so many emails and I'm clicking through emails all the time. I don't even remember what I clicked on and what I didn't like that email that said, because you showed interest. I'm like, did I? I don't remember. Like, maybe I did. I, I don't know. Yeah. So I guess my whole point is like, don't overthink it and be too concerned about what people are, are, and are not clicking on.

Yeah. Some people will know exactly what they click on and what they don't, and those people are probably already a little bit, uh, touchy when it comes to email marketing and all the inbox behavior. But I guess my point is I wouldn't, I guess too worry, worry too much about it because they probably will be like, oh, what did I click on?

And then they'll, they'll open the email and see the request and probably not be overly upset that, uh, that they, that you're asking that a small favor. So I guess i's my way of just saying. I wouldn't worry too much about it.

Chenell Basilio: The next one I was thinking through is adding just a PS line to every email. So it doesn't have to be every email [00:17:00] either.

It could be every third email or whatever you feel comfortable with, but mm-hmm. You're sending out broadcast emails all the time. Uh, the PS line is often one of the most read things by your raving fans. So people who are going to share are probably going to get to the bottom of your email. So if you ask them like, Hey, uh, I spent so much time on this piece, I would really appreciate it if you could just share it with one person or share the newsletter, or whatever the phrasing is.

I think, um, just having that call out is, and like being direct about it, I think is a really good idea.

Dylan Redekop: Yeah, it is again, going back to kind of the verbiage that Harry Dries used in the past is like, Hey, it take me a long time to put together this free email for you. It would mean so much to me if, if you were able to kinda return the favor and just share it with a friend.

We talked before hopping on this call about. Call before hopping on the podcast, we talked about kind of the law of reciprocity and as when you're giving something somebody something of value, they're gonna be more likely to reciprocate a favor. And sometimes you people take advantage of that and ask [00:18:00] for a purchase of something, um, or something big, but just sharing it with a friend or sharing it on social media, I think that's a.

Pretty low lift, especially if you've been delivering, like we said, a lot of value. If it's in a lead magnet especially, that's free, easy to share. It's like, oh yeah, I'll share this with somebody. This was really great. I love this. I love this. I got tons of value out of it. I'll share it. So going back to the ps, having that verbiage in that kind of, uh, context in there could be helpful too.

Would you put this in every email or would you kinda like switch it up? Switch it up? For sure. Yeah.

Chenell Basilio: I think I wrote every email, but. I think switching it up like every third, like I mentioned, or when you are really, really proud of that piece, I think that's a good idea,

Dylan Redekop: a really high value one. Yeah. I like the idea of keeping a PS fresh because otherwise it just becomes part of the scenery, like part of the background.

Um, and it just kind of blends in. So yeah, if you can always leave like. Some kind of, um, what do they call 'em? Easter eggs or something interesting or fun kind of in your Ps I think that's where this strategy's gonna work that much better is if people know to go check out your ps. You just [00:19:00] always have something useful or something interesting or something funny or engaging to, I dunno, check out.

This could be, this could be a place to do that. Uh,

Chenell Basilio: on the same token, you can also put this in your email signature, so if people are replying to your welcome email, which is something you should be trying to get more of if you aren't Yeah. Actively doing. So, um, if someone's replying to your welcome email, you can say, Hey, really appreciate you replying.

And then in your email signature, like mine has my picture, it says growth and reverse. And then it talks about kind of what I do, but I could also say like, or even just have like a text expander thing to include that in every welcome email reply to be like, Hey, if you know someone else that would enjoy this, like, would really appreciate you sharing

Dylan Redekop: not even the signature, you could add as a PS text expander in your, like in Gmail or something like that.

Right.

Chenell Basilio: Exactly. So I think that's a really powerful one, especially if you're, you know, you're replying to every welcome email, which again, you should, which you should be. Um, yeah. Uh, it gets unwieldy after a while, but if you use text expander, I think you [00:20:00] can actually

Dylan Redekop: have

Chenell Basilio: something. Yeah. That could be pretty powerful.

And it's,

Dylan Redekop: be honest, it's a good problem to have. If, if it's taking a lot of time to respond to all of your emails, uh, welcome emails from subscribers. That's a, that is a good, is a good problem to have. And then you can figure out ways to. Make that faster, like using a text expander tool or hot auto hotkeys.

If you're on, uh, windows, which I use, all that stuff can be really helpful.

Chenell Basilio: Windows,

Dylan Redekop: windows, baby going strong since 95. Wow. Oh

Chenell Basilio: man.

Dylan Redekop: You know, this iteration of windows. Wait when 95 man, 30 years Windows is Oh wow. Windows is like moved past the young adult stage. It's gonna start getting married, having kids soon.

Good for you Windows. You're really growing up.

Chenell Basilio: Oh boy. Um, yes. Anyway, congrats Windows.

Dylan Redekop: I like this Next point you have here, um, about Lean Magix. Can you explain that one a little bit more? I'm curious what what you mean by that.

Chenell Basilio: Yeah, so I put, uh, create a lead magnet that they only get when they share it with [00:21:00] a friend.

Um, so I know often we talk about referral programs and like having some robust system that like auto tracks if someone shares something. But I think you can make it simple like that. You can do this manually, like just have people reply to your email and be like, Hey, shared. Brett or John or whoever. Um, and then you can give them a specific thing that they can only get if they refer someone.

So this isn't your typical lead magnet. This isn't something they see all the time. This is like something unique that they only get if they refer a friend.

Dylan Redekop: Okay, I like this. Let's build on this a little bit. Okay. How about, um, how do you feel about this? First they cc you in in the forward or B, C, C.

Whatever they're comfortable with doing. So then you actually see it, it's like legit. Mm-hmm. The challenge there at course is then you have their email address and that might be some privacy issues there. So take this idea with a grain of salt. I'm literally just spit balling. Um, so that's one way you can guarantee that they did send it.

And you could also, um, up the ante by saying, you and the person you're forwarding my newsletter to, um, [00:22:00] we'll both get this free lead magnet.

Chenell Basilio: So it's almost like giving them something free because you shared

Dylan Redekop: Yeah. It's kinda like, um, when somebody uses a affiliate code, for example, and the affiliate code goes to the SaaS tool or whatever, it doesn't do anything for the person who gets the code.

Like they don't get any discount or any kind of advantage of using your affiliate code. And it's always boggled my mind why people do that. As opposed to when you actually probably work with a brand or a partner and you get anybody who uses your affiliate code, like a 20% discount. I feel like this is kind of in that same ballpark.

Like, hey, share it with a friend. Yeah. But actually share it with a friend and you both win 'cause you both get this, uh, lead magnet for lack of a better term, or. Whatever it might be. Yeah,

Chenell Basilio: yeah. I, the only downside to this that I could see is that like, now that new person is not gonna have an incentive to share with anyone else 'cause they already have that thing, but they won't.

But I still think it's a good idea.

Dylan Redekop: But if it increases the amount of people that share it by a certain amount, then you're, then you're ahead of the game anyway. Totally. Because if only one in three [00:23:00] people were gonna share it. Now two in three people are gonna share it, then I'm not a mathematician. But it feels like that's, those are good, those are better numbers.

Chenell Basilio: Yeah. The other thing I come back to a lot is in the early days of growth in reverse, I used to, um, ask people to share it with X number of friends. In the beginning it was five. And then I would link to their newsletter. In my own newsletter. So at the bottom of every email, there was like a community spotlight section.

And I would say. Like, Hey, this person writes this newsletter. Go check it out. It's about X, Y, Z. Um, and so they would get subscribers from that. Like people would actually go from those links and subscribe to their newsletter. So they actually ended up getting way more than five. Um, but they also got to see their name in my email and I think a lot of people really enjoyed that so much.

So that one pretty. Decent sized copywriter. Uh, he was like, I saw that section for weeks and weeks and weeks. He's like, eventually I was like, I don't even need the subscribers from you, but I'm just gonna share this in my newsletter so that I can get over that hump and then see my [00:24:00] name in your newsletter.

And I got like 150 email subscribers from that one share. From

Dylan Redekop: this one copywriter.

Chenell Basilio: One copywriter.

Dylan Redekop: Wow.

Chenell Basilio: I should probably bring that back. I think that was a really interesting, uh, referral program, and I actually stole that from, uh, Ali Abata, who runs, uh, first one thousand.co. He did something similar to this in the beginning of his newsletter.

He eventually shifted it to be like every month there was a new lead magnet, so you'd have to share 10 people within a month. Share with 10 people in a single month to get like Apple's pitch deck or whatever the company was. 'cause he was, yeah, that, like VCs and that kind of thing, were reading his newsletter.

Dylan Redekop: Interesting. I like that. That puts some urgency, time, scarcity, and

Chenell Basilio: a lot of pressure on the creed or,

Dylan Redekop: yeah. Yeah.

Chenell Basilio: Because you'd have to create something new every month.

Dylan Redekop: Yeah. I mean that, that itself is a whole other conversation. But I mean, if you can even plan, even plan it out for like six months, see how you can see if you can create six months worth of lead magnet [00:25:00] or products or whatever it might be.

And uh, yeah, that can be really fun. Yeah.

Chenell Basilio: Because then you're still, I was just gonna say, 'cause then you're still getting like. If person A shared it with five people in the, the first month and then the next month they shared it again with another like 10 folks, you're getting way more referrals. Mm-hmm.

However, if your folks that are readers don't actually have that many like contacts or people in their audience, it could be kind of frustrating for them. How

Dylan Redekop: would you track all this? Can't

Chenell Basilio: you like set up a new. Campaign or something. I think he built his own system. It was like custom coded, but maybe AI could help you build something.

Dylan Redekop: You could probably use a tool like Spark Loop or would you use Viral Loops for 30 days? 30 days of growth?

Chenell Basilio: I did use viral Loops. Yeah. I dunno, it wasn't like the best tool ever. I had, I think I bought like a lifetime license like eight years ago or something, and I was like, oh, this thing's still alive.

Let me see if it works. And it worked. Yeah. Okay. But it just wasn't like the most like intuitive.

Dylan Redekop: That's fair. I think you could probably, like you said with like [00:26:00] Google sheets and chat GBT, like create a really simple Google script in sheets and get it to track things there for you if you need to. Nice.

That channel your

Chenell Basilio: inner Ben Collins.

Dylan Redekop: Yeah, exactly. Um, if we don't wanna do that, if that sounds like a nightmare. I like the community spotlight idea as well and I think that is something that you could probably like turn on and off. As you're doing your newsletter, like once you kind of feel like it's sort of run its course for a little while, turn it off for like a year or six months or whatever, and then kind of relaunch it.

And it can be exciting, especially to all the new subscribers you've gained in that period of time where you've had it off. And then that can kind of reignite the excitement forward or, or change it up, make it, make it a little bit. Different, more interesting. Put it at the top of your newsletter, the middle instead of at the end, wherever it might be.

So, um, there's a lot of different ways that you can switch this up if you just spend a few minutes getting creative.

Chenell Basilio: I think I wanna bring it back. I think that'd be fun.

Dylan Redekop: Bring it back.

Chenell Basilio: Uh,

Dylan Redekop: let's go to this one. Is this the last one? Last idea here.

Chenell Basilio: And it was [00:27:00] kind of just like tagging off of a referral program in general.

Like we talked about how referral programs are obviously like the natural thing you could probably think of if you're like, oh, how to get people to share. But I think the one thing I, I heard a lot was like from, I think you and Louis and all the people were like, like the easiest. Tier of sharing is one share.

So like, have a gift that people get if they just share it with one person. And so I did this with 30 days of growth and I, I gave away like the private podcast feed if you just shared it with one person. And that was great. Like a ton of people love that. Mm-hmm. And I, I think that was just like, I could have given it to everyone, but I'm like, if you can't share it with one person, like everybody's gotta know one person.

Right.

Dylan Redekop: Everybody

Chenell & Dylan: has really

Chenell Basilio: hard second email. Exactly. Yeah, exactly.

Dylan Redekop: I'll send this to my Hotmail or uh, Yahoo or work editor. Totally. Yeah, no, I, and some people I'm sure did that, but then there is legitimately other people who will share it with actual decent email subscribers. So, um, I think the one thing you'd wanna do here is [00:28:00] just make sure you have a bit of a, kind of a cleaning, subscriber cleaning sort of system set up for, for these recommendations because.

I could see it getting sort of unwieldy if the thing you're, if the thing that you are are giving away for that one reward, um, is like super valuable and really coveted, uh, a you probably should not be giving it away, but you're just gonna get that many more people who are just gonna like, do the bare minimum just to get it right and.

Use their, their alias, uh, Gmail account or whatever it is, just to get it. And then you'll have all these kind of duplicate email addresses, which could be problematic. So my whole point is just make sure you have on your backend system something set up where you're, you're protecting yourself against a bunch of random email addresses that are not actually gonna be.

The right subscribers

Chenell Basilio: moving to a different type of referring. 'cause I know we talked about these are mostly like very intentional ones, uh, very like mm-hmm. Direct, asking people to share. I think this one just sticks with me. We bring this up all the time, just like in our calls or talking to other people, and that is, uh, getting people to [00:29:00] subconsciously refer and so you don't have to rely on people.

I'm pushing people to refer others. You can also just get them without directly asking for them. So Akash Gupta from, um, he writes a newsletter about product and product strategy. He actually optimizes for the internal share, and we had him on a recent episode that, we'll, we'll link that below to if you wanna go, listen.

Mm-hmm.

Aakash Gupta: About 50% of my content is a really good fit. Not just for product managers and growth people, but for developers, designers, executives, founders, other people within tech companies. And so for me, as I think about how do I kind of grow out of my niche, like any creator naturally will grow out of their initial niche of.

Product and growth. For me, the internal share is enabling a lot of that. And so I

Chenell Basilio: think if you can be more strategic and think deeply about who your reader is, this becomes so much easier. 'cause you know who you're talking to and what they enjoy and what they're gonna share. So I think that one always just sticks with me.

Yeah,

Dylan Redekop: and this is kind of like, this is kind of real growth in reverse, right? Like [00:30:00] you're reverse engineering what's gonna get somebody to share and working backwards to that point, right? So yeah. Um, I think this is really smart. You're, you don't have to outwardly ask people to, I mean, you still can, but if you're creating something that is gonna be useful and helpful to a group of people, um, especially if you're in the B2B space, but even if you're not, I'm sure you can, in your niche, you can figure out something or a topic that, uh, your subscribers would be most likely to share with their cohort of people of the same interest.

If you're not sure, again, we've called out chat GBTA few times or any other AI system, just like if you're ask them, ask it, whatever, uh, you wanna refer to chat, GBT as, ask it what you should, um, what you should create. And I'm sure it's going to probably give you some. Meh ideas, but it'll probably give you some decent ideas that you can build off of too.

Chenell Basilio: Yeah, and the other thing you can think about is, so I'm often like sending Instagram stories to my wife and vice versa. Like this is like, I don't know, we do this all the time. So if you can think through, like, I, I get a lot of this

Dylan Redekop: [00:31:00] every day for mine too.

Chenell Basilio: Yeah. So it doesn't have to be, the internal share could also just be like, who would I share this?

Or what would I share on Instagram with X person, right? Mm-hmm. So like think through like what somebody would share in their dms, because that could be a really killer piece of content too. And so I, I don't know, I just think that's another way to, to think about it if you're not in the B2B space or working with teams and that kind of thing.

Dylan Redekop: Yeah, I, I, like I go back to that, Sean Pur, um, he's got those, like, he wants your content to spark a specific reaction in people or emotion in people. Um. I'm trying to Google right now 'cause I can't remember them all. But they're, they're essentially like, uh, different emotions that people will see with your content.

Like it has to make them either like laugh or make them kind of like angry or upset or want to like, see whatever you're sharing change or to make them like, oh my God, I can't believe that. Like surprising shock value. Um, did you find them? No. Did you? I,

Chenell Basilio: I found it. Yeah. So it's seven key emotions. So it was like LOL.

That's so funny. Uh oh, now [00:32:00] I get it. The third one is, wow, that's amazing. Fourth is awe. That's so cute. Which is often what I'm, I'm sending number five is, yay. That's great news. Number six is WTF. That pisses me off. And lastly, finally, someone said it. Yeah,

Dylan Redekop: so

Chenell Basilio: those are like seven of those. And we can throw them on the screen too.

But um, I think that's such an interesting Yeah. List of emotions.

Dylan Redekop: Good call out. Thank you. Yes. And there's a prompt I just found, it's called the Sean Pur emotion. Elicit or prompt for chat. G Bt of course there is, we're just going full circle here. So. Um, I'm gonna try this prompt. I don't know if we'll share this because I haven't tested it yet, but, um, if it, if it works, well then maybe, we'll, we'll share this prompt too.

Um, but you could also probably just search the thing I just said and, and try it yourself. So I guess my whole point is if you can't think of ideas, AI can help brainstorm ideas for you and then you just like run with some of those. I'm sure that we can, um, we're smart enough to figure that sort of stuff out.

Chenell Basilio: That's a good one. Um, yeah, [00:33:00] I forgot he, I forgot he put that together. That's a really good, I think that's a YouTube video too. He is created it into, yeah, at this point. Yeah.

Dylan Redekop: Yeah. He's, he's leaned on that for a while. And the funny thing is he got that from somebody that's not even his thing. Like he's brought this, he brought this up on a podcast episode, like, oh, my friend, when I was, you know, doing my first startup, he told me, you gotta create content that he just adopted it sort of as his own.

And it's all like, I just referenced him as the person who said it, even though he wasn't, but. I mean, when he, you have the platform and you have the voice to share it. You become known for things that even you didn't necessarily come up with. So, um, but it is a good one.

Chenell Basilio: If you've made it this far in the episode, I think that you would probably love to, to Congratulations.

Congrats for listening to us ramble for this long. Yeah, yeah. Um, but you're probably as nerdy about the stuff as we are. I recently launched this thing called the Growth Vault, where I've just documented dozens of these interesting subscriber flywheel tactics and things you can use. Uh, fun little things you can insert into your emails or different ways to, um, phrase things and what to say, how to set them [00:34:00] up.

Uh, I include like automations that you can copy and paste. Um, so if you want to check that out, you can do so@growthandreverse.com slash vault. And uh, yeah. I'd love to see you in there. I'm constantly adding to this. This is stuff like, we're finding these things all the time. I'll just record a quick video and pop it in there so you get access to them all.

Um, if you're interested in that, go for it.

Dylan Redekop: The coolest part about this is it's not a PDF or like just a one-off thing. It's like something that is. Evolving and growing. Um, and so it's like, it's, it's a library, it's a vault, right? You can, you can always put more, add more into it. And I like, I really love that idea that it's just kind of like a, an ever living, evolving, growing, breathing document or I guess not document, uh, app tool lesson, uh, whatever you want to call it.

It is, it is not just like you pay for it and um, that's all you get. It's like going to consistently. Return more ROI because, um, you just pay once. It's not a subscription either, right? [00:35:00] This is just like a pay once and this thing keeps growing and getting better.

Chenell Basilio: And if you find fun stuff that you think I should include in there, let me know.

I'm always open to adding in different things. Um, who maybe you, you can

Dylan Redekop: provide a little discovery discount for people who are sharing really cool things in there. Mm-hmm.

Chenell Basilio: Oh, you could also end up in there if you do something cool and share it. So that would be fun. Get yourself some. Discovery mechanisms or something.

Yeah. Get, get more. Yeah. I like that. Uh, subscribers through the growth vault.

Dylan Redekop: Well, I mean, you do shout out quite a number of different creators who've been using some of these tactics in there, so it's um, totally,

Chenell Basilio: yeah. I love it. Even like that thing at the end of the emails where I'm saying like, give, take a break from the emails.

I found that through it in the vault included the automation I'm using to tag and remove people. That's it.

Dylan Redekop: I like that. I need to go check that one out.

Chenell Basilio: Yes. You do.

Dylan Redekop: Mm-hmm. Amazing. Cool. Cool.

Chenell Basilio: Well, I think this was fun. Um, I enjoyed kind of walking through this, brainstorming some things with you. Maybe we'll do more of these.

Yeah,

Dylan Redekop: yeah. It was, it was kind of off the cuff to some degree 'cause Totally. We went to record this episode and you're like, I actually want, [00:36:00] I don't want to talk about the thing that we had planned to talk about. I want to talk about this instead. And I was like, alright, I hijacked it. I am not prepared, but this is great.

I think it, I think it turned out all right. So, yeah. Thank you for, um, the last minute pivot.

Chenell Basilio: Yeah, you got it. All right. Well, is that the pod? We'll see you next time. Yeah, that's the pod or something. Alright. Something.