6 Effective Email Marketing Campaign Strategies For Authors

Email marketing was, is, and will be an effective method of improving the performance of your business. Are you using email marketing for book promotion?

As a self-published author, you have to pay attention to all the aspects that surround your activity and book promotion strategies.

Simply put, you shouldn’t perceive yourself just as the author of your book.

You are, in fact, the entrepreneur who must be in control of everything that’s going on around your self-publishing activity.

How to start email marketing for book promotion

Unfortunately, the majority of self-published authors neglect one crucial aspect of their business, which is the responsibility of developing and maintaining an email list.

Yes, social media and a Facebook page are big trends now. Content marketing via your blog posts, too.

However, you should never forget that email marketing for authors is still a “big player” that contributes to your business’s sales performance and long-term sustainability.

Just to give you a clue, a recent study suggests that email marketing is 40 times more effective than Facebook or Twitter when it comes to acquiring new customers.

In case you haven’t yet approached email marketing because you are unsure how to approach it, here are six effective email marketing strategies that you can leverage as a self-published author.

Let’s dive into email as a book marketing strategy.

Email strategies for authors

1. Offer Incentives

Think of your email marketing for book promotion as an investment.

You pay time, money, and effort to create a database of loyal customers and followers who are always available to receive emails from you.

Yet, to acquire these subscribers, your business, a.k.a. your personal branding, must give your potential subscribers a good reason to sign up.

A common strategy that professional email marketers use looks like this: You give away something for free (a free book, a report, a case study, etc.)

If the person who’s interested signs up to your email list, they will instantly receive your freebie. This type of incentive is helpful in more ways.

First of all, the freebie you’re giving away will show your competency in your field. If it is useful, the person who got it should be interested in reading more from you.

So they’re more likely to open your emails, engage with you, and buy your books.

2. Build Authority Through Value

Here’s one important aspect you should keep in mind: a business that doesn’t offer value to its customers is not a business.

As previously mentioned, self-publishing is more like a business rather than anything else.

Therefore, you must perceive it and treat it that way if you want to sell more books.

A successful business manages to satisfy the needs of its customers by offering what’s been promised in the first place.

However, you can improve the performance of your self-publishing activity by improving your authority in the eyes of your customers.

You establish authority when the customer trusts your business and your products or services.

When you establish authority in the field, people will choose your products over someone else. That’s because you are the expert.

And as you may very well know, an authoritative figure always creates more impact.

So, how can you get this type of authority?

The answer is quite simple: do your best to provide a lot of value to your customers and future customers.

3. Make Your Emails Impeccable

You are the author of a book.

Imagine how much of a negative impact you’ll make the moment you send poor-quality emails. By poor quality, I’m referring to more things.

First of all, your grammar and spelling must always be perfect.

Secondly, the structure of your emails must be easily digestible—no blocks of text, no random ideas, and obviously no misinformation.

Ideally, you should work on each email separately.

Create the final version of each email and add it to your automated sequence. Proceed with all of your emails following the same way and mark them all as “final” versions.

Michelle Becker, E-mail Marketing Manager at SuperiorPapers, suggests:

“If you want to own an impeccable business and build a reputable name in the marketplace, you must show signs of professionalism.

That is why all of your emails must also be impeccable. Try to add as much value as you possibly can. When your subscribers observe your involvement and interest in their needs, they’re more likely to trust and appreciate you better.”

4. Create an Email Sequence Schedule

When you’re a self-published author, time is not a luxury.

You need to deal with so many things at once. You are paying attention to when, how, and to whom to send your emails is painful and time-consuming.

That is why most of today’s email marketing autoresponder services are offering built-in features that can make your email marketing for book promotion sustainable and easier to deal with.

Imagine your target audience and potential reader, and think about your final product. The space between these two parties is represented by your email sequence.

When a person subscribes to your email list, they’re signing up for your automated sequence.

As a short explanation, an automated sequence is simply a collection of follow-up emails that your subscribers receive the moment they agree to be a part of your list.

Once you get enough data that reflects the behavior of your subscribers, you can find patterns that will help you tweak and optimize your campaigns.

Optimize it once, and all of your new subscribers will go through the “best version” of your email sequence.

5. Test, Measure, Tweak, Optimize

An email marketing campaign that isn’t well-tested, measured, and optimized will rarely bring relevancy or good results.

One of the primary benefits of owning a targeted email list is that you can learn more about your customers while improving your sales funnel.

Most email marketing software comes with professional tracking and analyzing features.

When you notice how your subscribers react to your emails (open rates, click-through rates, etc.), you can immediately make changes. Perhaps your subject line was a little weak.

After applying the changes, notice how your list reacts to them. If they have a positive impact, keep them. If not, try something new.

That’s why testing is so important. It helps you develop the best possible version of an automated email sequence.

When you’ve done enough testing, you can settle for a final version of an automated sequence that will perform well for months or even years.

6. Develop a Genuine Relationship with Your List

If you want to develop a profitable relationship between you and your followers, you should really start caring more about them.

Don’t perceive them as numbers or stats that show on your email autoresponder service. They’re not just that!

They’re real people who have preferences, expectations, and needs. One important need, for example, is the need for trust.

For the customer to feel safe when purchasing your products or services, you must grow and nurture a genuine relationship.

How do you do that? Offer value when sending emails. It’s as easy as that.

Conclusion

Building a list around your personal brand is such an effective way to create more opportunities for your business as an author.

Your branding is heavily influenced by the impression you give to your prospects and customers.

Managing to build a strong relationship with your customers, which is all based on trust and value, will automatically boost your sales performance and your overall brand reputation.

Joan Selby is a content marketer, former teacher, and fancy shoe lover. A writer by day and reader by night. Find her on Twitter and Facebook.

The views expressed in this guest post are solely those of the author and may not reflect the views of Just Publishing Advice.

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