Do you think your email marketing is ineffective? Haven’t tried ActiveCampaign yet? It might be the right one for your book email marketing.
You may be thinking that just because you're an author, you don't have to pay any attention to marketing and especially not email marketing. Will you be making a huge mistake and leaving a lot of money on the table if you choose to ignore this very powerful way of reaching your readers?
So, let's get into email marketing for authors. What do you need to know? Well, there are a couple of things, email is still one of the most open ways that people communicate. When you send somebody an email.
Now, granted they'll open an SMS. Even before, they do that, like a text message coming through. But emails are very high on top of that list of things that will do.
As opposed to if they send an ad or send something along those lines. In their social media feed, they post something on Facebook or Twitter. The probability of your followers seeing that is incredibly small.
When it comes to email, is a way of building relationships with our readers. So, you're trying to get in touch with your ideal readers. Your email is one of the ways that you're able to break through all of the other noise.
You have to keep in mind that the average person is being bombarded by so many communication messages at the same time. That it becomes difficult to hold their focus just for a second. To establish a dialogue with your ideal reader.
The open rates are so massive on email. When people get their emails, the open rates are incredibly high. Unless it's going to the spam folder which is one of the reasons why we don't just send direct emails from our email addresses.
But we send it from a service that can deliver those emails. We just need to make sure it doesn't end in the spam folder. The only people getting the emails are people who requested to get those emails.
The thing is, you are free to contact those people anytime you want. This is known as permission-based marketing. Because they are giving explicit permission for you to contact them via email to give them messages.
You may be wondering what types of messages you would be sending. The answer is you'd be sending all sorts of stuff. Telling them about your books, the latest books you're working on.
Tell them about books that you've already come out with if you're in the non-fiction area. Then maybe you're talking about other services and offers that you have related to your primary topic.
Now, remember, the one key rule with these emails is that we don't jump around from theme to theme that we're hitting through from an email. It’s only going to be one niche that we're targeting.
Check out this related article: Top 3 Book Marketing Strategies
So, even if you know a lot about taking care of puppies and you know a lot about gardening. We are not sending gardening and puppy emails to the same list. We're holding it to one topic and that topic is the very topic that your readers got on your list in the first place.
If you're sending out emails regarding your romance books, we're not going to be sending them sci-fi books. This is not a good way to go because when they open the email, they will be disappointed. Then, they will unsubscribe and mark you as spam or maybe just mark you as spam alone.
So, we want to avoid that happening to everyone. When it comes to email, mutually a win-win-win situation marketing. Because they got on the email list for a reason.
Usually, we're going to give them something for free. A free short story, a free checklist, or something free to get them on the email list. For me, I use a free checklist, I join people's email lists all the time and there's nothing wrong with that, it's permission-based.
The second a person doesn't want to receive any longer, at the bottom of the email, they just click the unsubscribe button and they will never hear from you again. In addition, I also will look to see who's not opened an email in the last 6 months or clicked on anything in the last 6 months.
I will just remove them from the list. Because I need to ensure that my email list is as clean as possible. I make sure that when people subscribe to my list, they're engaging. They're engaged with the list itself.
I do not want people on the email list who get the emails and don't open them. That sends a terrible message to Google and also to your email provider that you're not sending out useful emails. The goal is to send out useful emails.
Now, you are going to own this list that you're sending out. I'll tell you in a little bit who my recommended email provider is. But no matter who it is, if you for whatever reason violate some of the terms of agreements or they go bankrupt, you can move somewhere else.
The same goes if your books are having problems on Amazon or some other site. You can simply take your list; you can directly contact them. You can say, “Now moving my books here, now I'm selling them directly on my website.”
You're able to make contact with your readers without asking for permission. The other thing is you're not going to have a problem with spam folders. Your email ends up in spam because you're going to be using a high-quality, highly recommended service. The one I'm going to tell you about in a little bit.
The other thing is when you come out with new books, you're going to be able to tell these readers that are on your list exactly about these books as they're coming out. That's going to help you build sales.
With those sales, Amazon will see that they should push your books forward to even more people. As they're moving forward with this process it will cause you to get even more sales. Perhaps one of the most important things for authors is getting reviews for their books.
Giving A Free Thing Out
There is no easier way to get reviews than to have an email list. Call people to action, look I will give you a free copy of my book in exchange for an honest review of your email, okay?
So, there are a lot of different reasons. If you had to rank the order of priority when it comes to building an email list, your priority is getting a book on the market. If you have no book on the market, then there's nothing to do with the email list.
We're going to first get a book onto the market. Once that book is on the market, we want to put a lead generation. Where we're getting them on the email list and putting it right at the beginning of the book.
Give them something for free in exchange for their email address. It's already a person who likes your book. Now, remember the free thing that you're giving out to these people, we need to make sure that it's in alignment with our book itself.
So, it's not something that's completely off. We're not getting a contest to win free iPads because those people are not going to be your ideal reader. Even if they do join your email list, we want to make sure these are qualified prospects.
People are possibly going to purchase your book if you put the thing together. The free thing is in alignment with the book itself. So, they shouldn't be completely different.
This is just something that so many people make a mistake on when they're getting going on their email marketing. So, which one do I recommend? I recommend going with ActiveCampaign, this is by far my favorite pick.
So, this is by far the best. Now, I have tried MailChimp and I still have one list on MailChimp. But they were restricted in terms of who I could send things to and what types of links I could have like links to Amazon products and other things like that.
They had some problems with that. At the same time, I also tried using Aweber. But I found that it was a little bit clunkier and it was much more difficult to use. It’s hard to move the list around and do tags. Automation was a lot more difficult.
But let's get into exactly why ActiveCampaign is such a powerful tool. As an author, the ability to contact your email list of readers regularly. What makes it a powerful tool that you should consider?
One of them is Reach. It gives you all sorts of abilities from website tracking to do your email marketing. You're going to be able to break it into segments based on the types of readers you have.
Some will have purchased your book. Others may not have purchased your book and you wish to do some nurturing with them to build it up. You can even have your subscription forms right on the ActiveCampaign site.
Check out this related article: Self-Publishing Marketing Plan
So, this is even more important than setting up your website. An author's website which I would say is the third most important thing that you should be doing. But your first is getting the book on the market.
Then we set up the email list and we put that lead generation at the beginning. Then, our next thing is we're going to have the website. But you can use the lead generation where we get their emails in exchange for something right on ActiveCampaign itself.
The deliverability is fantastic. If you look at the different email services that are provided, ActiveCampaign scores incredibly high. Because they have one goal, which is to ensure that their emails do not end up in the spam folder.
And they do that by keeping things very clean. So, nobody's allowed to send spam from ActiveCampaign, they're tracking closely. What are we doing with these emails? Well, the answer is we are nurturing our audience.
We're going to use marketing automation to ensure if a person clicks here, you can send this email out. If a person goes this way, it'll send a different email out. Based upon which freebie we're giving out.
It may have a set of emails that can be sent out to them to nurture and build the relationship. Personally, I want to get on a 1-On-1 Program conversation as quickly as possible. So, I do all sorts of stuff in ActiveCampaign to do that.
You can just grab my free Checklist; you will very quickly see exactly how this game works as you're moving through the process here. I also joined people's email lists just so I can learn even better how to use these tools as effectively as possible.
The other thing is for conversions, where we're able to set up these landing pages. We're able to get people on our email list. We're able to build a relationship with them on a 1-On-1 basis where it feels very conversational between us and them.
Then we're able to sell them future books that we're coming out with. We can get the reviews that we're going to need. As we continue to grow things, we can do split testing.
Trying different emails with different parts of the audience. To see which emails, get more people to open based on the subject line and all these other advanced strategies. They're all inside of ActiveCampaign.
Helping You To Sell More
The other thing is that it's completely customizable. When you send emails out, you can make it. So, it just automatically chooses the name of the person or which city they live in. These sorts of things make it a lot more personal when you're sending it out.
Because we can look at the name of the person. I click the first name; I don't need a person's last name at all. I don't need phone numbers and all of this other stuff. We just want their first name, and their email address and that's it.
In exchange for that, they get something for free. If you don't want to be on an email list, you should just click the unsubscribe and you're gone. Or don't open your email and six months later, you'll also be taken off the list.
It's nothing personal, it's completely acceptable. But it's just so that you know exactly how this process works. For authors, this is such an important tool in terms of building the list.
The size of the list that you have will directly have an impact on how exactly your sales are going to go on Amazon. Especially when it's particularly targeted at that specific niche, not multiple niches.
The other thing is the automation as I was mentioning, it sort of splits between the two. Where you can say if they do this, then it'll show that this person purchased the book or clicked the link. It's able to then put even tags on those individuals.
Or wait a period and then send another email if a person didn't. The same would be true for the review things. You can set up complete automation.
It's such a powerful way to make sure that you don't have to personally think through. Should they get this email next or should they get that email next? You're able to set up automation.
So, the system can just go by itself. And for the people who just joined your list, they're able to write to you any time and you can respond back and forth. It is my ultimate goal.
But we continually are putting out regular content. Putting out about two emails a week which is the recommended amount. If you can't do that, then one email a week. But I would say, you have to email at least monthly, or else they will mark you as spam.
There's really no point. So, you definitely want to at least do that. So many people collect emails but then don't know what to do with them.
That's why one of the things I teach my clients in the 1-On-1 Program or my Coaching area is how to use email as effectively as possible. And to set up these forms to give somebody something for free. That will make them want to get on your email list.
Check out this related article: Creating an Email List For Self-Publishers
The other thing you find in ActiveCampaign is the sales automation that helps you sell more. Because it's got a full built-in Custom Relationship Management System, a whole CRM System that's built-in. So, you don't even have to go to your Gmail or whatever to check the emails.
You can go back and forth responding right from ActiveCampaign. It’s such a powerful tool. It also gives you the ability to follow up by asking people how's it going since the last time you've done it. Have you checked out my latest book?
These sorts of questions you might have on a one-on-one basis with people that have decided to join your email list. These people will stick with you for a very long time. As long as you continue to provide value.
So, the other thing I wanted to say is that you're going to see that everything is on one, it's like an everything package is really what it is. So, you've got between the CRM like we just talked about with the customer management.
The integrated embeddable forms are where you can choose how the forms exactly look. So, you don't even need a website to do this lead generation. You've got this pre-built-in automation.
They like recipes where you just pull them in and it automatically will link things up. You can test it out so you don't have to figure all this stuff out yourself. Then it's landing pages which are designed to convert which are fantastic.
It's got built-in Gmail and Outlook connections. You've got fantastic delivery, so it won't end up in the spam folder. As well as the advanced marketing and sales reporting you're able to see how things are going from month to month.
Maybe one of the most important and underrated things about most unknown things with ActiveCampaign is that they have an entire university, a whole camp system of course. As you can go through that, they will show you how to get the most out of ActiveCampaign as you're going through it.
As you can see, as we went through all of these things and I know it's a lot to take but we're learning. That's the thing with self-publishing agencies now, you're learning one thing at a time.
This is by far the absolute best email marketing program system that I've ever used. Of all of the different ones that I've used over the years. This is one that I stand behind, I'm an affiliate of their course.
Because I believe so much in the product that they have. I would encourage you to check out which pricing scheme they can even join for free. They have a guarantee on everything, it's a fantastic service.
I've been working with them all the time. I have a question to answer. You can check out below in the description of all of my YouTube videos, you'll find the link to this specific product. Check out which pricing works best for you.