Why Email Lists Outlast Social Followers in the Long Run

Robby Bryant:0:02
Scott, what would you say to agencies out there who are still selling clients on follower growth like it's the whole game?

Scott A. Shuford:0:10
Well, I mean, for me, follower growth is is more about renting followers than obtaining actual potential leads. so we're a big fan of of lead generation where we're capturing emails or text numbers and prefer that far more than collecting followers on any individual platform where we're paying to get the follower and then we have to pay again in order to reach that same follower.

Robby Bryant:0:43
See. Ladies and gentlemen, this is the High Ticket AI Systems podcast where we talk with real coaches, cult consultants, and agency owners about what is really helping them scale their businesses. Today I am here with Mr. Scott Schuford, owner of Frontgate Media. Scott, it's great to have you on.

Scott A. Shuford:1:01
Thank you so much. It's good to be here.

Robby Bryant:1:04
And for the people who don't know you yet, would you mind just giving us an overview of what exactly your agency does and, you know, who you're trying to sell to?

Scott A. Shuford:1:15
Yeah, so we are we're a full service agency that specializes in the Christian market audience. so that's a very broad audience. It's you know, religious people of religious faith that are both Protestant or Catholic. It expands into the conservative world, the military community and veterans, and we have other subgroups within our our Christian space, African American Christians, Hispanic Christians. So we're formed like an ethnic agency basically, even though Christianity obviously is not an ethnicity. it is still a very identifiable group. And we have our own media outlets, we have somewhat of our own language and slang that is used in the market space. So we basically spend all day talking to clients, whether they're for-profit or non-profit, who are trying to access Christians who are either individual consumers, church leaders, or pastors. or donors to relevant causes or families like homeschooling families and other you know Christian families who are looking for things for their kids or for their family as a whole.

Robby Bryant:2:41
Could give me an example of some of the businesses that you specifically work with? I know you mentioned some are are looking for donors or some are specifically trying to reach clergy members. who are those companies and what are they trying to achieve?

Scott A. Shuford:2:57
Yeah, so we actually work in about eight different industry verticals. with the the eighth one being other. If you didn't fit in the first seven, then you're in other. so a lot of our client base are either general market or specifically Christian market book publishers or authors, for example. We do a lot of film and television work. so companies like Sony A firm or any film basically that's trying to reach the Christian andor family audience, our potential clients. the nonprofit world, we were World Vision's number one e-media partner for many years. So we work with organizations like Advancing Native Missions and others. various causes of all kinds. They don't have to be specifically Christian causes, but we work with causes of all types, colleges and universities and so on and so forth. There's you know, there's a lot of different categories that we work in. Basically anybody who wants to reach Christians andor families is in our our wheelhouse.

Robby Bryant:4:13
Okay. And when a brand comes to you and says, Hey, we have X, Y, or Z product or service and we want to reach, you know, a Christian database, what are you specifically doing as far as fulfillment to help them get the audience that they're looking for?

Scott A. Shuford:4:33
So it really depends on each individual client. You know, we have every range of client from brand new startup organizations or first time authors, first time filmmakers, you know, there's all the way up to the largest companies in the space. So, you know, like for example, we could be working with an independent author like LG Nixon, who writes fish fiction books, or we're working for Simon and Schuster or Harper Collins. So it really depends on the client and what they need. for some clients we start out with basic lead generation so we would just start building their audience. For others, you know, we have a whole media group that includes the Washington Times and Christian Post, Prey.com, Family Research Council, a lot of entertainment media. So we do Media buying across every possible area from radio to digital to print to out-of-home billboards, television, you name it. and then we have individual outlets that are part of our family that we do advertising through. But we also provide full-service PR. We have a Christian podcast tour, we have a music podcast tour service.

And then everything in social media. So we do you know ad ad management within all of the social platforms, whether it's you know the traditional Facebook, Instagram, meta platforms, Twitter X, Rumble, Truth Social, you know, we're we're very active in that space. Plus, we have our own influencer group, we have our own blogger product review network.

Scott A. Shuford:6:20
So we are truly full service across the spectrum.

Robby Bryant:6:22
Very full service, yeah.

Awesome. I'm I'm curious, when a brand comes to you and says like, Hey, we want to reach Christians, how do you push them to get more specific than that? I'd have to imagine there are obviously like you listed off earlier, there are tons of sub audiences in there that probably behave really differently and react differently to different messaging.

Scott A. Shuford:6:48
Yeah, for sure. I mean, the my first question, when someone says, Hey, I want to reach Christians is okay, do you want a sixty-five year old man or a thirteen year old girl? You know, what what are you looking for? 'cause clearly there are very, you know, different audiences there. and so we just try to drill down into a a specific definition of their best target audiences, not just the average kind of Christian label.

And so we'll ask questions. We we can kind of tell from the product, service, or cause who the best potential audiences are. But we like to have an idea, obviously, from them of who they think their best audience is. And in a lot of cases, you know, folks have have either not done testing yet, or they're early on in their testing. So they may not know what their best target audience is. And we're able to help them kind of move forward in that learning curve from our own experience.

Robby Bryant:7:49
Yeah, and you mentioned you work a variety of different solutions for a variety of of different sized clients. So when a client comes to you, tell me a little bit more about your I guess onboarding process. What do you need to figure out first so that you can figure out okay, is this going to be good for radio and TV? Is this going to be good for meta ads? how do you find out where you're going with each client?

Scott A. Shuford:8:18
Yeah, we have kind of three basic questions at the beginning, and that is who do you want to reach? When do you want to reach them? And what budget are you looking to allocate toward that campaign? and from that, we can really expand into a much deeper set of questions. But if we know those three things, we've got a real good start. and we are very modular in our approach. So rather than working as a you know retainer-based agency, we really try to give a marketing menu to each individual client client that's tailored to that client so that their marketing director, whoever we're talking to, can plug and play. whatever programs they want from within our system b based on whatever marketing they're already doing. So if they're already managing their own meta campaigns, obviously they don't need us to do that. But there could be another ten things they're not doing.

That we could do. So we do work on retainer for PR because of the nature of PR. But in most cases, we try not to work on retainer. And we have very modular solutions where somebody can book the Christian podcast tour. And that is a flat fee structure. It's set up in advance. So it's very simple for marketing directors to plug us into their campaigns.

Robby Bryant:9:47
I see. And would you mind expanding a little more on kind of your pricing model and and how you break it down for different size clients? And you know, I'm not very well versed in something like radio. What does what does that look like as far as pricing for a customer, as far as what it's gonna cost them to advertise and what they're gonna have to pay you to get it all done?

Scott A. Shuford:10:12
Yeah, so that we again we kind of run the spectrum there. So if it's a national radio buy, a traditional media buy, then you know, we we take the typical fifteen percent agency fee and and we do that buy nationally and execute it from creative From the creative beginning to the final report at the end. But if their budget is not big enough to do a national radio by, then we can narrow down and do a s a specific radio channel. For example, Worship Road Radio is the fastest growing Christian radio station in North America. It's all digital. and we have probably ten to fifteen different packages that a any individual client could consider. So there's a featured package for the movie industry. There's a a featured package for the book industry. So it just depends on that client which you know which packages are relevant, but we can scale up or down very easily.

Robby Bryant:11:21
Awesome. And would you mind help helping me get a scope of the the size and the magnitude of your company right now? One, how many people are are actually working for the company or is it just you and a couple other people under the hood? and then so we can kind of get an understanding of how you are, you know, really operating, w the ticket sizes, what's kind of like the low end and what's kind of the larger end and and where do most people fall?

Scott A. Shuford:11:49
Yeah, so we have 20 team members working in various capacities, literally all over the world. and so with regard to ticket sizes, typically you kind of can't do much effectively without at least a fifteen hundred dollar budget. But you know, we manage budgets up to millions of dollars. So it it really does depend on that client. when I founded the company 25 years ago, we're celebrating our 25th anniversary this year. but when I founded the company, thank you, I I wanted to be able to help anybody at any level. So I kind of avoided the 80-20 rule, you know, where where you're going after the biggest companies and and that's where you're getting the majority of your revenue. I wanted us to be scalable and be able to help.

Robby Bryant:12:21
congrats.

Scott A. Shuford:12:42
that you know that individual author as much as we could help Simon and Schuster. So we we really are tr we have a lot of different options, but what I've noticed over time is that really, I mean, you can't do almost anything for less than fifteen hundred dollars minimum. and that's not the best place to be, but it is at least a you know, kind of a floor. that can be established. But really, depending on what you're doing, you're gonna want to in in any advertising or marketing scenario, you're gonna want to run a a multi-month campaign, probably at least three months. so the more budget you have to run your testing, the better off you are.

Robby Bryant:13:30
Yeah, and obviously it's completely different whether it is a book or, you know, something looking for fundraising.

Scott A. Shuford:13:38
Absolutely. Yeah. Trying to reach donors is a completely different campaign than trying to sell a book or some other kind of physical product. you know, it's just they're yeah, they're completely different worlds.

Robby Bryant:13:51
Yeah. And then when you have all these services pointed at, you know, various different types of people and businesses, how do you attract clients? W what are you doing to bring in clients? Do you have some type of big lead magnet that just says, Hey, if you want Christian audiences in any domain, come to us? How does that work?

Scott A. Shuford:14:14
Yeah, so what we do for ourselves is actually what we do for our clients too. So we we use several different processes. So we do do meta ads, we do Google ads. we are big fans right now of AEO and SEO, as we're training the different AI systems to you know include us in their answers. it's been you know very effective for us. So you know Google is great for providing a quicker close on good leads. LinkedIn we use a lot we do a lot of harvesting from LinkedIn. and it's good for establishing relationships with the right types of contacts. and then Facebook and and Instagram They're good for generating a lot of leads, but the quality level is lower for a business-to-business type situation like us. so we'll get some good leads, but Google's a better source in terms of qualified leads. we work with events, so we sponsor a lot of events that reach marketing directors in our various industries. and as I said, you know, AEO and SEO is very important for us.

Plus, we do a lot of in what I would call internal outreach where we're we do an email newsletter every week. We're very active on our own social content creation across YouTube, TikTok, the traditional social platforms, et cetera. So we do get a fair amount of referrals and and definitely a lot of repeat business as well. So we we definitely don't stick all our eggs in one basket. We're we're working hard. to generate our own leads just as hard as we do for our clients.

Robby Bryant:16:14
Yeah. Yeah. And and you mentioned the sales side. Are you still the one taking most of like the the sales calls?

Scott A. Shuford:16:22
No, actually I worked myself out of that a long time ago. so most of our sales calls are going to our sales team. and we we have an excellent AI driven immediate response scenario. So as soon as someone hits our landing page, fills out our form, our AI system immediately starts appointment setting.

Robby Bryant:16:26
Good.

Scott A. Shuford:16:49
So as soon as they set an appointment, the AI system's job is done and our sales team takes over and and has direct conversation, you know, asks a couple key questions, evaluates what the the organization is trying to do, and then we manually provide a marketing menu for them to look at that's customized to what they do.

Robby Bryant:17:11
Okay, wow. So you guys you guys are very built out. Excellent. can we kinda get back into the email list? I know that that's a big thing for you. W why do you bank so heavily on that and where do you think other people who are running agencies kinda go wrong?

Scott A. Shuford:17:29
Yeah, so email what I love about email is I own the list, right? If I build an email list, it's mine. Nobody can censor it, nobody can take it away. You know, if MailChimp for some reason thinks I did something they don't like, I could just take it to constant contact, right? or any other you know, a hundred email list management providers.

So that's a big benefit in our world, because you know, depending on the political climate at any given time, organizations in our space maybe have a a nice open gate. And other times they're getting censored and shadow banned and they can't get any content out through through Meta, for example, or any of the other social platforms, again, depending on what's going on out out in the rest of the world.

So, you know, the email list, once we own an email, or once our client owns an email, it's theirs. Other than a fixed fee for list management, there's no additional cost. Nobody can take it away from them. You know, it it's a you actually have a hard lead. whereas if we're generating Facebook followers or Instagram followers, And you know, Facebook doesn't like something we posted or they're getting pressure from an outside source to downplay certain messaging, which we've all seen in the the news reporting, then you know we're not only are we paying Facebook and Meta to give us those people, we have to pay them again to get them to show our content to our own people. So We're in essence paying twice, and in some cases it's being ratcheted down even if we're paying a budget. So that makes for me, you know, having emails and using an email newsletter much safer and gives us full control. And the same with texting, although obviously you can't communicate via text as as often as you can with email.

Robby Bryant:19:37
Mm hmm. As often, how do you mean that?

Scott A. Shuford:19:43
Well, like we send a different email newsletter every single week. so for our own clients, you know, we'll email a newsletter on Tuesday and we do a resend to the non-openers on Thursday. and we'll get, you know, probably a fifty to sixty-five percent open rate by the end of that week. And the following week we'll have a completely different newsletter and we'll go through that process again. So, With texting, we wouldn't send that same thing, you know, in the same way. We would send it once. And we wouldn't do something we haven't traditionally done something every week, just because we don't want to appear like we're you know a pest on text. in terms of routine communication. Like texting is left primarily to really urgent super critical things. versus newsletters which give us a little more frequency.

Robby Bryant:20:50
Yeah, okay, I understand. jumping gears a little bit out of the technicals, can you kind of take me back to before you founded Frontgate Media? What were you doing and what kind of you know walked you into the door of starting a media company?

Scott A. Shuford:21:06
Yeah, so I actually kind of traces all the way back to college. I I went to school for marketing. I have a marketing degree. and when I got out, I I moved into working in the Christian music industry in sales and marketing. And that was my kind of my first career path. I started out in telephone sales, I did field sales, I moved into sales management. I started a marketing department. it kind of, you know, up rose up in my space until I was working directly under the owner of a of a music distributor. And I realized that, okay, well, the music lifestyle, working for record labels, working for distribu distributors, that wasn't sustainable long term. So I I thought I was gonna get out of the music industry. I ended up sidestepping into a startup that was at that time one of the first two Christian music internet sites. And I ran that for one year and then we sold it to a Nasdaq company. And when we did that, I started a full service secular agency while I continued to consult for the NASDAQ company.

And so my secular agency was a traditional agency. We you know, we had the traditional model where you pick your three key industries. We worked restaurants, entertainment, and banking.

And got most of our clients in that space. But about three years into that company, I realized that my Christian market friends and colleagues, they just need a lot, a lot of help with marketing. And so I started thinking: is there a way I could do more than just volunteer for one or two companies? And out of that, I I founded this company, Frontgate Media, ran them both concurrently. So I had my general market agency and my Christian market specialized agency.

Scott A. Shuford:23:08
ran them for ten years and seven years concurrently and then I was tired because everything had grown. So I had to pick a direction and I ended up deciding I I was more passionate about my Christian market company.

So I merged away my secular agency and and you know had had a great 10-year run working for companies like IHOP and Del Taco and for America's First Credit Union and OC Teachers Credit Union and others, you know, big Southern California-based companies. But that just wasn't my passion after after 10 years. And I I merged it away and kept my Christian market company.

Robby Bryant:23:50
Yeah, so you kind of started this all as you saw almost like a hole in the market. You saw your friends who needed help with this and luckily your your passions kinda overlapped with their pain, it sounds like and the rest was history.

Scott A. Shuford:24:04
Exactly, exactly. You know, I got I got lucky. Sometimes you're lucky, right? Timing is a part of everything. And so, you know, when I was ready to shift, the internet was this new thing for you know, you get a a a five to ten year window of something being new. Like of course, we're in the AI window right now. It's brand spanking new.

And but I was able to kind of ride that internet wave and get unique experiences that other people didn't have, or at least very few other people relative to the workforce. So, you know, when I came in with the internet wave, but I saw the app wave, I saw the social media wave, you know, now we're in the AI wave. You know, there's there's when you can latch on to a trend, you end up gaining unique experience and that. can propel you forward into new things you would have never thought of. Nobody there was no career choice to go to a Christian market agency when I was graduating from college. It just didn't exist out there in the way that it does now.

Robby Bryant:25:07
Right.

Robby Bryant:25:11
Yeah, well they they say if you build it they will come.

Scott A. Shuford:25:14
A little bit there's so little bit of truth to that, yep.

Robby Bryant:25:18
Yeah. What's with all this experience that you've amassed over the years, what's something for someone who's never thought about marketing to a faith based audience specifically, what what's one thing that they get wrong?

Scott A. Shuford:25:33
a lot of organizations feel like they have to have a direct alignment. Like if, we're not a Christian company, so we can't advertise to Christians. that's a ginormous fallacy. you know, companies like Ford and and I'm sorry, not Ford, Chevy and Toyota have advertised their cars very successfully to the Christian market space.

And you know, it would be the same as saying, well, I have to be African American to market to African Americans, or I have to be Hispanic to market to Hispanics. It's it's not true. you know, if your product is applicable and there's no barrier to why that product would be relevant, then it's really just a matter of tailoring your messaging to the right target audience, right?

So obviously if I was going to advertise an African American product, I wouldn't advertise using my face. Right. It'd be I would have l authentic African American voices, you know, for my brand. but you know, a lot of people think that a lot of marketing directors, they kind of discount the, you know, the trillion dollar purchasing power of our audience, thinking that they have to be a religious product. And that's not the case.

Robby Bryant:26:35
Yeah, yeah.

Robby Bryant:27:00
That was really insightful. and you kind of dispelled some of my misconceptions about it right then and there too. How do you incorporate that into your market or into your client attraction? when people they might come and see your branding and think, I have to be a Christian brand to market to this audience? How do you kind of get over that and reach the people who don't necessarily have a a faith-based product or service, but they want to push it to that market because it still fits.

Scott A. Shuford:27:31
Yeah, so we provide a lot of case studies. We do a case study, at least one case study every single month. and your goal with that is to show data on general response. And then hopefully what you know different organizations will see is that they'll see themselves in our other clients, right? In our results. They'll see their audience in the case study results. and they could they'll realize, that could be me, right? So you know, I that's we really try to to help people see themselves in what we're doing already, versus trying to convince them of anything.

Robby Bryant:28:19
Yeah, makes sense. Awesome. Well, Scott, we are running short on time here, but I do want to end on a high note. What is next for Frontgate Media or just for you in general over the next twelve months as far as visions, numbers, goals? What are you looking forward to? What are you trying to do?

Scott A. Shuford:28:42
Yeah, we're we're well on our way to doubling our size this year. we've been working for the last well, let's call it this year and and last year. So for the last two years, we've been working on on growth, real solid, significant growth. So we've expanded our unique product offerings. we had launched a Christian podcast tour. we've realized that the music industry needs a more specialized podcast tour. So we're in the process of launching that. we've added more media to our group. So things like Family Research Council or Prey.com or very specialized markets-based organizations like Faith on Film, which is a television show and a podcast. So I'm I'm always looking for things that work. and we are good at finding things that work. So I'm excited for our our growth in our streaming television division, which is advertising on streaming television, not actual streaming. We're not a streamer, but I see a lot of potential for growth in advertising success within the the streaming television space. So there's a lot of different initiatives right now between aver app creating new services. adding additional effective media outlets and just magnifying some of the things we're already doing that are working, like the podcast tour, that's really our our our goal is to double.

Robby Bryant:30:18
Amazing. So there are absolutely no signs of slowing down for front game media right now.

Scott A. Shuford:30:23
No, not at all. I I definitely see us in a heavy growth phase still. I I don't see any reason we would s need to or expect a slowdown regardless of what's going on in the economy. probably for the next, I don't know, three to five years. There's there's a lot of space for us to grow from where we are today.

Robby Bryant:30:46
Amazing. Awesome, Scott. This has been an awesome conversation. I really appreciate all the the tidbits you've been throwing out, specifically for you know, I think I learned a lot about marketing, not even just for faith-based marketing, but you said some things that are I think could help a lot of people as they look for who their clients could be versus what they think their clients should be. little shameless self promotion, where can people find you if they want to learn more or, you know, get involved in any any of your services?

Scott A. Shuford:31:16
Yeah, the the best place to go is our website, which is frontgatemedia.com. So that's that's the single best place to go. We've got a lot of information on the site. We've got a great chat bot that can answer basic and initial questions. And then of course our contact form is the best way to reach our team.

Robby Bryant:31:39
Awesome. Scott, genuinely appreciate you getting into the weeds of all the stuff that you do. I think it's a lot of stuff that people don't typically hear. To everyone listening, that's the episode, and we will see you on the next one.

Scott A. Shuford:31:52
Thanks so much.