Reaching out to potential guests to appear on your podcast, especially those on your dream guest list, can feel overwhelming. Where do you start to create the perfect email so that they’ll open up your email and say, “Yes!” Listen in as I unveil my blueprint for reaching out to potential guests so they’ll want to be on your show. Plus, make sure you stay until the end of the episode because you’ll hear a real life example of an email that was sent off, so you’ll see how this all works in real life.

Key points from this episode:

  • The step-by-step formula for creating the perfect reach-out email
  • How to make your dream guest jump at the chance to be a guest on your show
  • Why a relaxed follow-up is important

Links to Explore From This Episode:

Connect with Mary!

Podcast cover art by Emily Johnston of Artio Design Co.

Transcript with audio description:

[MUSIC IN // INTRO]

<< Ghosthood Featuring Sara Azriel “Let’s Go” BEGINS >>

MARY: Welcome to the Podcaster’s Guide to a Visible Voice.

<< WOMAN SINGS: Let’s go >>

MARY: Reveal and define your voice to speak your truth through the power of podcasting. And I’m your host, Mary Chan.

<< WOMAN SINGS: So so so so let’s go >>

MARY: Hello there, this is episode number 62, how to land someone from your dream guest list.

[MUSIC FADES // MUSIC IN]

MARY: You know, I do actually get this question quite a bit, and it’s not just about requesting somebody from a dream guest list, but what is an effective way to ask someone to come on your show? I mean, you could easily just say, hey, I have a podcast, would you like to come on my show? I think you’d sound great. And that could work. And it’s worked before, especially if you already know the person. There has been some sort of a tie or connection. But, what I really want to show you here is making a request from someone you actually don’t know. So I’ve got a little formula for you today. So get out your pen and paper. You know me. I like my pen and physical paper to write on. Jot down some notes because you can take the formula with you and use it for any time you’re going to request a guest to come on your show. Whether you know them quite well or you have no connection. And you’re hoping they’re going to open up your email and say yes. And make sure you stay until the end of the episode because I’m going to share with you a real life experience and read one of the emails that I sent off so you’ll see how this all works in real life. Okay? So stay to the end for that one. But first, let’s get you to that blueprint. What is the formula to send for a guest request on your podcast? 

[MUSIC OUT]

So part of this formula isn’t necessarily how to find that contact information. There’s different ways to go about doing that. But this specifically is what you’re going to do once you hit compose and start writing that email. Okay, so here’s the first thing. I want you to tell them your personal interest in them and how you’re connected. So one example actually, would be where I read the book Word Slut by Amanda Montel, years ago when it came out. And she had talked to Dr. Alexandra Darcy, who she mentions in the book, is a professor at UVIC, which is the local university where I live. And so I was like, oh, my gosh! I could actually talk to her, that is our connection. So in my email, I wrote to her about how I loved what she was saying in the book. It was so fresh, so new, and I would love for you to be on my podcast to talk about the same thing. So that was my connection to her. And I started with that. I was a fan. I’m telling her why she’s so great. Everyone loves a good compliment, right? But honing that in with your value of telling the truth. So I’m not going to expand on this and, you know, little white lies here and there. No, this is the truth. I read a book with her in it, mentioned the book, thought she was great. I really want to talk to her more about this subject. I am a fan of your work. This is essentially what that first paragraph needs to be about. 

[MUSIC IN]

The next paragraph you want to work on is, well, then who the heck are you? Here is where you’re going to introduce yourself again from my previous episodes, I’ve talked about bios and how I don’t want you to list off your resume. Introducing yourself is not about all the accolades and all the degrees or all the different lists and experiences that you’ve got. No, introducing yourself is, hey, I want you on my show. This is my show. So you’re going to talk about your show and the tie into this for your guest is if your guest is subconsciously thinking, well, what does your show have to do with me? You kind of want to answer this question in the second paragraph. So you’ll state your show name, who the show is for, your ideal listener, put that in here, and then quickly mention who you are and why you started your podcast in the first place. And then after this, if you wanted to substantiate your podcast a bit more and talk about your numbers or the size of your network and your social media presence and all of that more resume stuff, I would say, you can add a few things here if you’d like. But I find that clear why your podcast exists and why you created it is the pull that your guest wants to see. Because if they’re actually looking for more numbers to substantiate their time to be on your show, they will request it. And that is a step we put further down into the email. 

[MUSIC OUT]

So paragraph number three, this is where you’re going to talk about why they are so special. It’s a little tie in back to that very first paragraph. You can expand more about maybe a very specific topic they talked about and the example of why you loved it so much and why you think this would be such a great topic for your ideal listener. That’s the main theme there. Like, why is that topic the thing that your listener is going to crave and that they are the expert to share that expertise? 

[MUSIC IN]

The next step is the invitation, your official ask. This is where you actually put in, hey, so if this all sounds good, I would love for you to be on my show, here’s how to do it. And you give them your step by step process. So this way you don’t even have to go back and forth. Would you like to be on my show? Let me know! You hit send and you hope for a response. But if you just give them all the information at this point, you have told them how great they are, how much you love them, and if they’re all like yes, yes, yes, I want to be on your show, they’re going to want to click a link right away and schedule that time with you. So this invitation could be if you have a pre-chat on your show, just to get to know them a little better. This could be your link. If you go straight to the interview, this could be a link to schedule that time. This could also be the link if your workflow is to collect information from them first, send them that form link and then have it redirect to your schedule so they can schedule a time all in one step. It should all be there, but it would be great if you actually outlined all of those steps in that email. So essentially the invitation is, if yes, follow these steps to be on my show. And then step one, step two, step three, how to get on your show. 

[MUSIC OUT]

The last piece to this email is to say thank you, the closures, goodbye and include an attachment. And this attachment is your media kit. So in the closure first you’re going to say thank you again for considering to be on my show. You know, I look forward to hearing more about X-Y-Z the theme, the topics that they talk about and let them know if they have any questions. How can they respond? Do they reply back to this email? Do they email somebody else on your team? If you have a team member. How do they ask you a question if they’re a little confused about a step or something or they want more clarification? And then here with the attachment, you will mention that you’ve attached your media kit to your podcast in this email. And in that media kit we’ll have all the details with the numbers, the downloads, your social media size, all of that stuff that we were talking about in the previous step, goes in your media kit. So it’s not taking up valuable real estate of email. People want to skim, they don’t really want those numbers right off the top if they want to know how specifically big your show is, if numbers actually really matter after all of that stuff in the email, they’ll take a look at your attachment and find out more about your show. So making sure that you thank them in the closure, you give them a link to your show so where they can listen to it, let them know what they can do if they have more questions. And then finally the attachment of your media kit. 

[MUSIC IN]

One thing we didn’t talk about yet is actually the clear subject line. That’s something that you usually type right off the top, right? You’ve got your two and then your subject line and then the body of the email. But what I want you to do is actually get through the body of the email and then figure out, okay, what is that clear subject line. What you want to do right off the top is say request in all caps and then maybe a dash, and then you could put the rest of your subject line in sentence case. Or you don’t have to capitalize the rest of it. But the rest of the subject line is that teaser. What was the theme or ideas or subject that you wanted your guests to speak on? This is where you include it so it could say request in all caps, dash, podcast interview about and then you put in the theme or idea or the topics that your guest will speak about here. So in the past I’ve said podcast interview about your podcasting journey. That’s a more general I knew the person, so they already knew this was coming. Podcast interview about overcoming fear and speaking up behind the mic. Podcasting interview about choosing to speak up behind the mic. And I think I wrote choosing to speak up because that was one of the phrases that they had used in a previous talk they did. Podcast interview about dealing with rejection. So you get the idea there, right? Because if they speak about rejection, they’re going to see that and they’re like, oh yeah, I can talk about that. That’s kind of the feel that you want to get for the person. When they see that subject line, they’re going to be, they’re going to think to themselves, oh, that’s me, I should open that up. What is this about? So your subject lines are key

[MUSIC OUT]

And actually there is one more step, the follow up. I know sometimes we send the emails and we’re like, oh gosh, I just sent that, right? Okay. Phew, that was a lot of work because you’re like, oh, this person was on my dream guest list and then you forget about it. Well, the lovely feature in Gmail, I use Gmail. If you use a different email system, you might have this feature or a version of this feature, but there is a snooze feature in Gmail. What I’ll do is I’ll just snooze that sent email so it will remind me, say in a week or two weeks time, and then just give them a relaxed follow up and then a quick summary of what that request was. So you can just say, hey, reaching out again, just touching base to see if you’ve had a chance to schedule a time to be on my podcast because I would love for you to speak on XYZ, your theme, because my listeners really want to learn about XYZ, another theme or idea that the guest talks about. Then you can say, please see the email below, or you can just copy and paste the email and say, this was my original email. Thank you for your time. And then put in the original email so then you don’t have to retype everything. So a follow up or two is usually handy because you never know what the person is up to. And maybe they saw the email and they’re like, oh, this is going to be great, but there’s a couple of steps here and I want to take my time doing it, so I’m going to come back to it. And then they forget the email gets buried. Or they see the email, but they’re out and about doing their thing. So they think, I’ll come back to this later and fill this out. And then they don’t because life happens. So that follow up is sometimes pretty key. 

[MUSIC IN] 

So now that we’ve gone through that framework, you’re going to one, love on them, because what was that connection that made you go, oh, I need to email this person? Two, introduce yourself. This is where you give them details about your podcast, the name of the show where they can listen to it, your ideal listener, all the good stuff. Three, let them know why they are so special. Four, send that invitation, your actual request, the question to ask them, would you like to come on my show? Finally, the closure, saying goodbye. Thank you. Make your attachment of your media kit. And then lastly, the clear subject line. And then of course, if you need to, an extra step of just a nice little relaxed follow up. Like no big deal. I know we’re all busy, thought I’d email you one more time. 

[MUSIC OUT]

Okay, so now here is my real life example. This is a good one. Okay, so I had originally sent this email back in, oh, the fall of 2022, quite a while ago. And I had been following this person for a while and I had always thought this person would be great, on my dream list. And I had kind of been putting off the request for a while. Get busy, life gets in the way. And then one day, because I’m on her newsletter, her newsletter actually asked, what can I do for you? How can I help? Because she was launching a book in early 2023 and I thought, oh my gosh, this is it. This is my chance to make that ask. And it’s the perfect time because she’ll need to promote her book. My plan for my podcast at that time was to get some interviews banked for coming back after my winter break. So the idea would be that this episode would launch early March and her book would have been just published in late February. 

So, although timing really comes well into play here, that doesn’t always have to be the case when you make that ask. But just so you know, that was the background around here. And I made that ask with that plan in mind, I’ll share that exact wording of that email with you, actually in just a little bit. But she did say yes. Oh, my gosh, yes, she did say yes. So we had recorded in October. And then remember back in Episode 56 about my reliable backups? Yeah, you guessed it. My computer crashed and the interview was gone. Gone! Like, this was a week before it was supposed to publish. I was just going to put the intro and outro on it and send it on its way and it was gone. My backups didn’t work properly. So this person on my dream list, I had to ask again. [sigh], so again, speaking to the value of the truth, I just laid it all out. I didn’t know if she remembered that it was going to be published in early March. 

So I sent her an email and said, basically, I’m so sorry, my computer crashed. Even all my backups disappeared. It was ready to go and it’s gone. And just from following her Instagram account, I knew she was going on book tour. So I even put in there. I saw on Instagram that you’re going on book tour, but when you get a chance, or maybe when you get back, would you have time to have another conversation with me? You know, and then the thanks, sorry all over again, hit send, didn’t hear back, but then remembered, like I said to you, the relaxed follow up. Because I happened to be following her on social media, I knew that she was coming back from a book tour. And so I just replied back to that email I sent her and said, hey, I know you’ve been on book tour, so you’ve probably been so busy. So just a little nudge. If you had a chance, I would love for you to book a call so we can have another conversation and I can promote your book and your work. Thank you so much. Insert link to calendar. Right, let’s get it done. And, she did yay, yay!. 

So I am so pleased that the next episode, number 63 will be with Samara Bay, author of Permission to Speak. Now, I’m not going to do a full introduction on her here because you’ll hear all about her in the next episode. But you can get into my mind about how I used my guest request formula in the email that I sent her. So I want you to start listening for those steps that I talked about. Right? What was the connection between you and the guest, introducing yourself? Why they are special? The actual invitation, closure, attachment, that’s all in there. So here’s how it worked in real life, as I fan girl on my keyboard to Samara about how she could help her readers. 

[MUSIC IN // SFX: TYPING SOUNDS]

Samara, I’m so glad, you asked. It’s a permission that spearheads all the little voices in my head that says, oh, she’ll say, no, she’s too busy. I’ll ask her later. That sort of downplay stuff. Even though I do voice work as well for a living. Uh, the Struggle I’ve had your website up for like a week and was going to submit a request to have you on my podcast. So I feel like your email came at the perfect time. Your name is on my dream list of people to interview and I am really excited to get a copy of the audiobook when it’s ready. I had a concussion a while back and if there’s ever an option for audiobook, I’m all over that to ease the visual stress. I found you through your podcast when it came out and all the things you were saying spoke so much to me and the way I teach and coach podcasters and even when I was in radio back in the day, directing voices. You bring such a fresh perspective that I know my listeners on my podcast. The Podcaster’s Guide to a Visible Voice, who are new or emerging podcasters would love, love, love, to hear from you. Your work aligns so much with my own and my values to empower voices behind the mic that I’d love to share your work with them and let them know about your book. This week’s reel is bang on for one topic I’d love for you to expand upon because in the podcasting space, editors are removing all the filler words and hedging to sound, quote unquote professional, like an NPR show and I really need to change that in the industry for most podcasters. Here’s a link to the media kit for the show. If you’re interested in learning more about this niche podcast. If you’re game, I would be honored to have you on and you can start by filling out this guest form here. I’m booking for publishing episodes in late February, early March, but we can have the recording take place starting in the next month if that works better for your schedule. After completing the guest form, a link will be provided for you to schedule a time that aligns with your calendar. Let me know if you need anything else. Have a lovely rest of your day and I hope to hear from you. 

[SFX: TYPING SOUNDS // MUSIC OUT]

So that was my email to Samara, and I loosely used the formula there because I was fan girling a little bit, so it was a little bit of a personal email and a little bit formal request, all mashed into one. But did you hear the pieces in that email? I’ve laid out all the things that I learned from her just from following her Instagram or reading her newsletter. I knew she had a book coming up. I wanted to promote her work because of what I was seeing in the industry and because of all the work that I do with voices. It uh, aligns so much with what she does too. And then I let her know all the details. I made the actual ask, right? I gave her the guest form. I told her when I was publishing episodes so that she could align it with her marketing if she needed to. And it just aligned with my value of generosity. I just showed her how much I love her work and it was all in honesty because I do love her work. So now imagine if you are on the receiving end of the email you are about to get time and time again, I have gotten emails requests for being on podcasts where it’s all about them, it’s all about the host, why they’re qualified to host the show, how well the podcast is doing all these numbers. As a guest receiving that email, I feel like it’s just another thing in my inbox. It doesn’t entice me. It’s focused solely on them. What do I have to do with this? How do I play a role in your podcast? Will any of my talking points align with your show? I don’t know. So it’s easier for me to just skim and go, uh, come back to this later if I have time. So when sending out an email, always think of it in terms of if I got this email, how would I feel? 

[MUSIC IN]

So I hope these steps help you in your reach out for guests, whether they are on a dream list or not. I send this same formula out to people that I do know personally as well, just because they may not know everything about why I want them on the show. Sometimes guests think, oh, I’m going to talk about this or I talk about these things all the time, so I’m just going to talk about my talking points. But if you let them know, oh, I want you to share this perspective or this topic in relation to what you talk about, they might think, oh, whoa, I have never thought about it this way before. Where that is such an exciting twist and perspective on my topic, I would love to explore that with you. So make those emails, type them out, figure out what the email address is and send them out. Because you know what could be the worst thing ever? Not that they say no, not that it’s crickets and you don’t get a reply, but the fact that they actually say yes and they want to come on your show, because then the real work begins. Exciting and scary all at the same time. I love that feeling. 

[MUSIC OUT]

So if you use this formula, please let me know. If you have further questions about it, let me know as well. You can leave me a voice note on my website@visiblevoicepodcast.com. There’s a little send voicemail button. You can leave a little voice note for me and I just might share it on the show. Otherwise, the next episode, it’s going to be with Samara. I’m so excited to share this one with you. There’s so many nuggets and I’m like, oh my gosh, yes, yes. This, ah! You’re going to love it. All right, until then, work on that guest request email and I know you are going to get a couple yeses.

[MUSIC ENDS // PAUSE A BEAT // OUTRO – SHOW CLOSE]

<< Ghosthood Featuring Sara Azriel “Let’s Go” BEGINS >>

MARY: Thank you so much for listening to the Podcaster’s Guide to a Visible Voice. If you enjoyed this episode, I’d love it if you shared it with a podcasting friend. And to reveal more voicing and podcasting tips, click on over to visiblevoicepodcast.com.

<< WOMAN SINGS: Let’s go >>

[MUSIC ENDS]