InstaFreebie
All the Options to Build Your Email List
Ever wanted to see the big picture? All the options laid out so you can make an informed decision?
As I was coaching an author the other day, I realized that I haven’t written a blog post that covers my full email list building strategy.
So today, we’re going to remedy that!
In any marketing efforts, you want to make sure you’re doing things to reach both your Existing Readers and New Readers. The good news is that if you’re growing your email list effectively, it will be a powerful tool to reach your existing readers, as well as introducing new readers to you and converting them to fans eager to purchase your next book.
Sound too good to be true? I won’t promise it’s easy or completely painless, but once you have your sign-up forms and your automated welcome sequence in place, most of the hard work is done.
Existing Readers:
People who sign up for your email list after reading a piece of your writing tend to be a high “quality” subscriber. Meaning they are likely to open the emails you send and click the links in the email. They are likely your target reader.
The two best methods to capture these readers on your email list are: Read the rest of this entry »
A Few of My Favorite Tools…
For authors today, we have so many fantastic tools to connect with readers – tools not available even a half-century ago. Things like websites, email lists, social media, giveaways, and more!
I thought it might be fun to take a moment to look at some of these helpful tools, and I’ll share what I use and why. Read the rest of this entry »
A Year of Email List Growth: 2017 in Review
As 2018 begins with a fresh dose of hope and a year full of possibilities, I’ve been working through my goals for the new year, and looking back on what worked last year and what didn’t. (I’ve also been reading an early copy of Michael Hyatt’s new book, Your Best Year Ever: A 5-Step Plan for Achieving Your Most Important Goals. I highly recommend it!)
One of my favorite studies each new year is a look back at my email list growth for the previous year. I did this in Jan., 2017 and shared the results on this blog post. It was insightful to see which ways of growing my list yielded the highest open and click rates!
For 2017, my goal was to grow my list by 6,000 reader emails. I’ll be honest, this was a less-than-ambitious goal considering I’d added 7,178 emails to my list in 2016. Perhaps I was feeling like I wouldn’t have the same list-building opportunities for 2017, but boy was I wrong! Read the rest of this entry »
Turn Freebie Subscribers into Buying Readers
With so many great opportunities for authors to grow their reader email list through giveaways, a new problem arises. (Or as we’re taught in project management, it’s not a problem, it’s an opportunity!)
When we gain subscribers by giving them a free book (or other giveaway), are we teaching readers to expect books for free?
Maybe. If we’re not using a series of onboarding emails.
But with an effective email automation sequence, you can teach those freebie readers to value your books and turn those new subscribers into fans! Read the rest of this entry »
Email List Growth – An In-Depth Look!
One of my goals for 2016 was to grow my reader email list – by a lot. I started the year with a list of 135 reader emails, and my goal was to add 7,500 new emails, while making sure those new emails were my target reader. As you can imagine, that goal would require a lot of focus and hard work!
I ended the year with a total of 7,313 subscribers on my fiction reader list, which means a net increase of 7,178 emails. Not quite my goal, but close enough I was happy. Of course, those don’t include people who have unsubscribed as I’ve sent emails to the list throughout the year (because those unsubscribes weren’t my target reader, right?), nor does it double-count people who have subscribed through multiple ways. (I use Groups in Mailchimp and consolidate all my reader emails to separate groups within a single list, so no email is duplicated. Otherwise, that would be a sure way to spam someone!)
I’ve talked about the importance of doing a postmortem for a book launch, so as I set my email list growth goals for 2017, I thought it might be helpful to see what efforts produced the best (and worst) results in 2016. The open and click rates for each category below are from the campaign I just sent on 12/27/16 for my new release, so it should be a fairly equal comparison.
Here’s the list:
• Organic sign-ups: 345 emails
Open rate: 61.6%. Click rate: 22.4%.
This is people who sign-up for my mailing list through links in the back of my books, my website, or social media profiles. These people have not received anything in exchange for signing up, except an excited welcome email from me. 🙂
• Sign-ups to receive my free short story that goes after book 5 in my Mountain Dreams Series: 506 emails
Open rate: 33.3%. Click rate: 11.1%.
This offer is in the back of all my ebooks and has a special page on my website. I don’t promote it anywhere else, because it’s helpful to have read that series to appreciate the short story.
• Facebook Lead Generation ads promoting my permafree, book 1 in the Mountain Dreams Series: 4,077 emails
Open rate: 26.1%. Click rate: 8%.
I’ve run these throughout most of the year at a low budget, usually between $5-7/day. I haven’t blogged specifically about this type of FB ad, but I plan to when time permits. It’s my favorite for mailing list growth for many reasons, including the fact that it’s great at helping authors narrow down their target audience and find pertinent keywords. I have a 3-email automation sequence that goes out to new sign-ups giving them the free book in email #1. Then email #2 gives the first few pages of book #2 in that series, along with the link to buy. Then email #3 announces my newest release. So I use these ads as a tool for both list growth and book sales.
• Ongoing Instafreebie giveaway for my permafree book. 835 emails
These were harder to get exact open and click rates because of the way I was tracking subscribers from Instafreebie. From what I can tell, it looks the open and click rates were approx. 33% and 11% respectively.
I blogged about the Instafreebie giveaway here. I was a little skeptical about how high the open and click rates would be, but I’ve been pleasantly surprised.
• Instafreebie group giveaway for my permafree book: 812 emails
Open and click rates appear to be similar to Instafreebie above.
This was a group of 8 authors who write Christian fiction in a variety of genres. Potential readers chose which (if any) author they wanted to follow in exchange for receiving that author’s free book. The giveaway was done right before Christmas, which is not always a time people are focused on reading or seeking out new books. I have a suspicion it may have been even better right after Christmas. I’m pleased with the results, though!
• Fall Author Mailing List Promo organized by Ryan Zee of BookSweeps: 603 emails
Open rate: 56.8%. Click rate: 19.3%.
This was geared toward fans of Inspirational historical romance (my specific genre), and I was really pleased with the outcome. Ryan’s team gave great ideas to the authors for how to onboard the sign-ups, and I had great interaction with the new readers. It was interesting to find that some of them were already on my list or had sent me reader emails previously. That goes to show this method of recruiting email address is successfully reaching my target audience. Ryan is doing another of these in the spring, and I’m already signed up. There are other similar services out there, but Ryan’s has the best targeting for my specific genre.
In a postmortem, my next step would be to analyze what I would change and what I definitely want to repeat. I won’t bore you with those details, but here’s a chance for you to analyze whether you’d like to try anything from this list!
And I’d love to hear from you now! Did you try any other approaches to growing your reader email list this year that I haven’t mentioned here? If so, what were the results? Or maybe you’ve tried something I did. If so, I’d love to hear about it!
Want real email examples and pro tips to set up your Welcome Email Sequence? Get these and more in my new course! 
The Ambitious Author 