Hey, I got a lot of responses to last week's email — which showed you how to level up your email game, no matter which level you are at. We covered Levels 1-5 last week, and we are going big this week. Before we move to the higher levels, I wanted to point you towards a really cool resource to help you figure out what to put in all these extra emails you will now be sending to readers, after I convinced you so convincingly last time. Because this seems to be the tricky Boss Fight where people get stuck.
Tammi Labrecque — aka The Newsletter Ninja — has put together some cool free resources to help you figure all that out, and you can sign up here. Pop your email address in over there at Tammi's site, and you'll get a 30 minute video/presentation, and a couple of cool downloadables to get you started — all free BTW. I watched the presentation this morning and I think you won't be short of content after watching this. In fact, I think you'll be brimming with ideas for emails which will hook your readers and help you sell more books. Tammi does also sell courses and whatnot, as well as her own books, but this isn't an affiliate link or anything like that. Just something useful to help you with generating all this new content tailored to your very own subscribers. This week on Decoders we are covering Levels 6-10 of email marketing prowess, and things get pretty wild today. I'm sure there are new ideas in here, even for the most advanced users, and I'm excited to hear what you think of them (do Reply and let me know — that comes direct to me, and I read all responses personally!). Well, to be 100% accurate, it's Level 10 where things get truly wild, but if you just skip ahead... it's not going to go well, for reasons I will explain along the way. This is a long email so feel free to skim the parts you already have nailed down.
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Claim Your Plottr Discount Here Those Expert Tricks...Email is not a one-size-fits-all scenario — especially true as you get more advanced. Some of stuff here will be more useful for fiction authors vs. the non-fiction crowd, and vice versa, but I have flagged that where appropriate. Most important is to stick to things you love. Yes, sometimes you must push yourself out of your comfort zone and try something new, but don't keep doing something you really don't enjoy. That's my approach anyway — you do you; select whatever catches your eye from this progressively elaborate smorgasbord. Even more than last week, the order you do things in is not the most important, you can always circle back and fill in the blanks. Just be careful not to jump too far ahead; the flashier things require a solid foundation. Things will start tame enough, and then get pretty darn exciting by the end (or your virtual money back). Level 6You're frustrated, honestly. Doing everything right hasn't paid off. At least according to the "gurus." Who elected them anyway? That's how you feel some days because you have built a little email machine which isn't really growing. Was all this for nothing? Okay, maybe not nothing but shouldn't it be… better? Level Up!First, you need to eat some kind of cake; Pecan Pie is a solid choice. While seducing that pie, plan your next book promo. Doing a 99¢ promo or — even better — a free run on your series entry point will start pouring lots of new readers into your glorious funnel. You should see improved results now if you have implemented all the best practices from Levels 1-5 — more sign-ups and improved retention, now that you have polished all that pesky piping. Improving your landing pages and automations and cookies and newsletter content can be hard to get motivated for; they don't immediately turn into readers and dollars after all. But this is your moment. This is when you reap the rewards from building all that stuff properly, from soup to nuts. And if you haven't done that yet… you know what to do, right? Extra CreditDon't just hit one freebie site, build a full-on free promo using my guide, and really see how many sign-ups you can drive — while also generating lots of new readers for the rest of your series too. This is my favorite way of driving newsletter subscribers BTW, and the one with the best return on investment too. Your results will vary, of course, depending on: · The robustness of your reader capturing apparatus · How hooky the calls-to-action (CTAs) are at The End · Whether readers find your cookie desirable · If you welcome them properly. But that's all in your hands, and if you set it up right, and then pour traffic at it, you will see results. No ifs and buts. Sorry, Sir Mixalot. Level 7You have plateaued with freebies and 99¢ deals and, outside of increasingly hard-to-get BookBub deals, you feel like the reader-well is dry. You need a fresh approach. Level Up!Explore the world of "inorganic" list building methods. Group promos and listbuilders are popular places to start as you don't really need to learn anything new and many are either free or very reasonably priced. A warning though: some authors go totally overboard with these, especially when starting out. I think they are very useful indeed, but only if used sparingly. Try BookSweeps promos first. That's an affiliate link, but after trying lots of different sites and services, it's the best by some stretch. The quality of a "cold" subscriber won't usually be as high as a "warm" one but BookSweeps gets pretty darn close. Again, don't overuse this tactic, but I find most value when using it sparingly. These are paid listbuilders where you don't have to do much more than turn up and look pretty. For more free/hands-on/participatory/grassroots promos, look into BookFunnel (the same company I recommend for delivering your cookie to readers). Lots of people love StoryOrigin for this kind of thing too so check that out also. Extra CreditIf you're racking up all this extra credit, I'm going to do you a solid here: you get a gold star for not doing something at this level. One of the issues I see with authors and listbuilders and group promos and Facebook Ads is that they only focus on inorganic approaches to building their list. I have done all these things and see worth in them, but also great danger in overusing this tactic. If your list is mostly inorganic, you will almost certainly have lower open rates and a worse sender rep. Not in a way that's going to kill your deliverability, but it will act as a drag on that, and it is worth flagging in case you have issues on that front. There's also a deeper point about how you start to view the subscribers on your list when you go big on these kinds of things — there's a danger here that you just start seeing all these PEOPLE on your list as mere numbers. That's something you are just going to have to watch for yourself, but another reason why leaning organic is always a good default. Finally, please consider the subscriber experience if you engage in a lot of group promos. This is one of the biggest mistakes that savvy beginners make, in my opinion. A newsletter where the content is just one group promo after another is just not appealing for subscribers and you will see a high attrition rate over time and/or reduced response to any "ask" you have, like a book launch or review request. You will see this kick in the more you keep using this same tactic. Be judicious, and always make sure you have a healthy proportion of organic subscribers as well. Level 8You have a good set-up now, your list has grown nicely through a balanced mix of organic and inorganic subscribers, and your newsletter is fun and engaging — right??? — with great content emailed to all those subscribers regularly. Go you. However, you still see readers disengage over time. It still feels like something of a leaky bucket. Better than before, sure, and bigger too. So maybe we have graduated to pipes over a humble bucket. But they are leaky. Feels like running to stand still all over again, just with a better view. Which is… fine, I guess. Although you can't escape the feeling that there's more to squeeze that you're just not squeezin'. Sound familiar? Level Up!Maybe it's time for a Deliverability Audit. This isn't a service you can buy anywhere BTW — it's something you have to do for yourself. The process can be technical (and super boring) but also very lucrative indeed… over time. Which is also boring but you need to suck it up. All the cool stuff is in the next couple of levels but you need to find those leaks in your network of reader pipelines, and fix them. Doing this before you attach rockets to your email list is wise. Otherwise you might crash and burn. Problem is, it can be hard to find the leak. Lert's do what plumbers do and follow the water from the moment it enters our house until the moment it leaves — aghast at the horrors it witnessed. The order is important, so I'll make you a list. You need to look at your:
That's the content side of things, which can be quite subjective but the data will guide you too. I'm talking:
And then to round out the picture you will probably need to look at:
Some problems can be a simple fix on your end — but catastrophic for your list until you discover the issue. To give a simple example, I once tried to get fancy with my confirmation email — the automatic double opt-in email that goes out once they sign up. I inadvertently introduced a spammy word into my subject line so a huge portion of those emails were going into Promotions and Spam, rather than Inbox. Which was a problem, because if they didn't click the big red CONFIRM button in that email, they didn't receive their cookie and didn't join my list. Some of them even then thought they had been scammed in some way because I didn't deliver the promised book and… yeah. It's a mess. I don't want to tell you how many subscribers I wasted in this manner… so I won't. Let's just say it was a lot and I made this kind of high-pitched noise for about five minutes like I was some type of human table saw. In case you think that's the kind of dumb error a fella only makes once… I then proceeded to do the exact same thing with the first email of my welcome sequence as well. The first emails to new subscribers are the most sensitive, in deliverability terms, so this was especially damaging. Also to my liver, but that's a story for another day. Lesson learned, eventually. That was my leak. You need to find yours. And then be ruthless about plugging it. Your #1 resource here is my Email Archive. I've covered the issue of deliverability there in great depth. Extra CreditThis will sound like a pain right now, as you are reading it, but once you get into the deliverability weeds, and your sleeves are already rolled up, it's not so bad — and totally worth it. What you should do is optimize it all. Go through your entire pipeline and make it all better, not just the leaky bits. MailerLite has some good deliverability resources in their Help pages if you dig around a bit, but for my money ConvertKit's are the best in the industry by far on this topic — and anyone can peruse them whether they are a ConvertKit customer or not, so do check them out. This will especially benefit you when we get to the real fireworks at the end. Promise! Level 9Wow you actually did a Deliverability Audit; most people don't bother, and never truly see the full power of email marketing. If you have launched a book or run a promo since you fixed up all your leaky pipes, you will know exactly what I mean. But this has awakened a hunger in you now. With those pipes all sparkly and your open rates climbing and your revenue growing, you want moaaaarrrrrr. And regular promos only take you so far. Level Up!It's time to pour some fuel in that engine of yours and Facebook has the market cornered and red diesel. Or does it? Yes, Facebook is the only (viable) platform where you can run ads to boost your list. You can't do it with Amazon Ads as you can only point readers towards products on Amazon. You can't do it with BookBub Ads as they have a hard prohibition against lead generation ads (and will shut you down, so don't even try). But you can still generate sign-ups with Amazon Ads and BookBub Ads indirectly. Run a promo like before — 99¢ is better for immediate ROI but a free promotion will get you more downloads and sign-ups. Book the same recommended promo sites as before — don't skip this step, even if you have a significant budget for advertising. Now turn up the juice with your ad platform of choice: Facebook, Amazon, or BookBub, and watch the sign-ups roll in. This kind of indirect lead generation campaign is my favorite way to grow my inorganic subscribers. However, Facebook is much more flexible than Amazon or BookBub and allows you to also run direct lead generation ads as well. These can be great too — and I use them a fair bit. My advice though: learn how to sell books with Facebook Ads first before getting too deep into lead generation ads. My free video tutorial is on my YouTube channel. I'd link to that directly — and everything else mentioned — but I'm really pushing the limits in these last couple of emails in terms of the amount of links you can get away with in an email, so apologies but it's easy to find. When you have learned the ropes, leadgen ads can be a great way to freshen things up, or to keep sign-ups rolling in when you don't have a launch or a sale to push to entice new readers. I often rotate between "book sale" campaigns and "mailing list" campaigns — with suitable gaps between each — so that I don't tire out my audiences, but also so I can scoop up new people with a different offer, with fresh graphics and sales copy. Extra CreditThis one can be really powerful if you take the time to do it correctly. When you are doing those lead generation ads, make sure everything aligns:
What do I mean by that? Same tone, same branding, same visuals, same style of sales copy, and all optimized up the wazoo. It really does make a difference. BTW I do the same thing when selling books with Facebook Ads — I ensure the ad graphics, ad text, and landing page on Amazon all align. This really improves conversion in my experience. Just a free bonus tip for you which should put some money in your pocket! Level 10If you have maxed out on cookies, promos, automations, deliverability, and ads, I… don't believe you because I always see value in reviewing this stuff. But I'm not going to palm you off with that lame closer, so let's look at ways to blow things up even further — let's take your list into the stratosphere. Just remember, if you try these advanced techniques without having everything else in good shape, you won't see the results. What I'm saying is, you can't skip to the part where you are a superstar – you gotta do the work. Level up. Win your boss fights. Once you have buffed your stuff, these are the cool things you can start playing with. There's no leveling up or extra credit here at the rarified air of Level 10 — just five cool ideas for you to explore to accelerate your mailing list growth. Choose the path which suits you best — just one of these could be huge for you. 1. Viral giveawaysIf you have reached Level 10 you have probably done a competition or a giveaway at some point, or participated in a group promotion, or used a listbuilding service like BookSweeps. Viral giveaways are the same idea, just turned up to the max. A good promotion like this can net you a couple of thousand subscribers, rather than a few hundred, because they encourage readers to share the competition on their own socials, which helps it go viral. Clever choice of prizes here goes a long way BTW. There's a few different apps or services where you can run a viral competition but probably the most popular is King Sumo. That's an affiliate link, but this product comes from AppSumo itself — indeed it is the very product they used to build their 9-figure app business. There are alternatives, and some are fancier, but this is significantly cheaper — it's on a lifetime deal for $49 right now, which saves you a whopping 79% off sticker price. Other services are significantly more expensive and some charge a recurring subscription fee — for example, Viral Loops charges $49… a month — so you do save quite a bit with this lifetime deal. Plus, it's AppSumo so you know you can get a refund within 60 days if it doesn't suit your needs. Get your lifetime deal here. 2. Creator networksIf you want to make new connections with people playing at your level, and are tapped out with forums or Facebook groups, then look at something like the ConvertKit Creator Network. This one is probably more for non-fiction authors or anyone else who might consider themselves a creator in the YouTube sense (rather than the biblical one). I've just started playing with this over the last few weeks and I see real potential in it. Officially, it hasn't launched to the public yet but I do have access to some parts of it and I'm interested to see where they take this. In short, it's a built-in way of partnering with other creators to share audiences and grow together and you can read more about it here, where you can join the waitlist. 3. VideoVideo is a big plank of my strategy for 2023. Facebook, Insta, YouTube, Tiktok, both long-form and short-form video are huge right now and are only going to grow more and more. Of course, video is tricky for a few reasons, but it does bring you an entirely new audience and can give you a real edge over your competitors who might be reticent to jump in. If you are a content creator or non-fiction author, you are probably mulling this already (or doing it already) — and you probably know that your stuff needs to be pretty good quality if it is going to capture attention in the increasingly competitive world of creators. But every author — fiction or non-fiction — can dip their toe in this world without any specialist knowledge or equipment. For example, everyone can record a personal welcome video for readers who subscribe to their list. For example, here's mine for example. You can just shoot yours on your phone, and for fiction authors especially, don't worry if it's a little janky — honestly, that can add to the relatability. Indeed, if you watch that video above you'll see a made a mistake, and just kind of made a joke out of it. This doesn't need to be perfect! All you need to do is upload it to YouTube, and set it to private, and embed the video on a private page of your website, then redirect readers to this welcome page as soon as they hit Confirm when subscribing. And you catch the video bug, there is so much more you can do with video. You can start a YouTube channel (also a great source of email sign-ups for me), you can record videos for your list to maintain engagement inbetween launches, you can record video messages for fans on social media, you can have exclusive video content as a bonus for your biggest superfans, or you can record video ads for your books and/or your list which can be very effective on Facebook and really jump out of people's crowded feeds. That's just the tip of the iceberg, honestly. Test it out! 4. VIP email swapsEmail swaps are things authors tend to do more in the early-to-middle stages of their list building but often then let slide as their list gets properly big — understandably. But if you are experienced, and your list has grown to an attractive size, then you should consider a VIP email swap. This is just like a regular email swap but taken to the extreme by choosing one strong comp author and truly partnering with them. You can do a whole thing where you have the list swap, but then turn up the juice by adding something like a Facebook takeover, a podcast where you interview each other, or any kind of social media collaboration to bring both sets of fans together. Add in launching a book around the same time and/or running a sale on earlier series books around the same time, and you can kickstart Amazon into taking this pooling of audiences even further again. Also Boughts, yo. 5. Incentive schemesIncentive schemes are super interesting to me because it's a way of growing your list AND rewarding your most engaged readers at the same time. In simple terms, the way they work is that you add a bit of code to your newsletters which gives each subscriber an individual referral link, so they can share your newsletters easily with their friends – and each time a share turns into a sign-up, they get points. You then dole out treats to your readers based on the points they accumulate. Those might be stickers or mugs or beanies or whatever merch you like. Or it could be exclusive digital content like a free short story or some deleted scenes. Reader swag basically. And the best part is that all of this is automated. Readers earn points automatically, and get sent their prizes automatically too – once you set it up, you are totally hands off. There are a few referral programs around which you can check out, but Sparkloop looks the best to me. Only drawback is that Sparkloop is expensive. Like $99 a month type of expensive, which might limit the appeal, even for big sellers. However, you get Sparkloop free as part of the ConvertKit Creator Pro plan these days — and I'll be talking about this in more detail in a future email so hang tight for that. That's an affiliate link also, but if you want to check out the ConvertKit Creator Pro plan yourself, you can get a free trial to have a nose around — existing CK customers can get the upgrade as a free trial also before they commit, which is great. But so as not to bury the lede, yup, you're getting MERCH. I'm so excited! Tell Me Your Favorite IdeaI'd love to know which idea was your favorite – please hit Reply and let me know. I'll do a deep dive on the most popular ones, so do pitch in and let me know your opinion! OK, now I'm going back to getting excited about all this merch I am making for you. Oh yes. Dave P.S. Writing music this week is Del Shannon with Hats Off To Larry.
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Friday, April 7, 2023
Expert tricks for reader kicks 😎
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