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Hey, I'm surprised I got any work done this week. Summer is here, our new BBQ got christened, and the pool is officially open for the season. If that wasn't enough distraction, over a million people have descended on my new hometown for the Feria – five days of debauchery that even has this Irishman raising an eyebrow. It's fun during daylight – especially in this weather – but once the sun goes down it turns into Mad Max. Except where the dwindling resource threatening the future of humanity is sobriety. Anyway. I got lots of feedback from you on last week's email on growing your list with list building promos. Most of you also had a positive assessment of the list building promos at BookSweeps but there were plenty of other comments worth sharing with you all – in the interest of balance.
- Several of you expressed disappointment with some changes at BookSweeps recently – which I was a little behind the curve on, to be honest with you, so it’s only fair to share these views.
- It seems that the standard BookSweeps promos, which were great value and solid performers, haven’t been updated for a while – at least not for anyone without a Premium subscription. I don’t run BookSweeps promos regularly enough to justify Premium so I can’t speak to what is behind that paywall right now.
- A few of you also expressed disappointment with the new Everlasting List Builder promotions, complaining specifically that the performance of these subscribers isn’t matching the stellar numbers from the original BookSweeps promos that I was raving about – which is something I’d like to keep tracking, so please do reply with your feedback (positive or negative).
- I was happy to hear that multiple people had a good experience with Written Word Media’s Subscriber Surge Giveaways, with a couple of dissenters – again, for balance. (I wonder if there is some genre variance in play, so note your genre when giving feedback if you can!) You can check those out here.
- One or two of you also mentioned AuthorXP’s Mailing List Builder, which you can check out here.
Finally, quite a few of you mentioned BookFunnel’s newsletter swaps, and I think they are worth addressing separately as they are a little bit different. But also because they tie in with the two most common mistakes that people make with inorganic list building. Both of which involve balance. So, let's explore that today, and talk about how focusing too much on inorganics can lead to an imbalanced list - and can also skew your newsletter content too, leading to disengagement among your (even more) precious inorganic subscribers. author swapsBookFunnel is the company I generally recommend for reader magnet hosting and delivery – their main gig – and they do a fine job of that indeed. But one of the other services they provide to authors – free with your BookFunnel subscription – is the facilitation of newsletter swaps, where authors trade mentions in their newsletters. BookFunnel calls these Author Swaps. (StoryOrigin does something similar, and certainly has its fans if you want to check that out too, but I’m less familiar with it personally.) Since the introduction of Author Swaps in 2021, they have been popular among newer authors in particular because the barriers to entry are low. And on the face of it, everything seems positive. There’s no charge to participate – the service is a free benefit of your BookFunnel subscription – and you select the authors you wish to swap with, and basically pool readerships and grow together. The platform has lots of flexibility, even including nice features like being able to request KU or wide authors specifically, so, what’s not to like? Because the barriers to entry are low, the promos are often frequented by those with newer/smaller lists, often limiting the upside for those participating. This leads some authors into a classic trap – joining too many promos, which in turn can result in a newsletter being filled with promo mentions (and sometimes little else). This can trigger disengagement among core subscribers. There’s another danger too – one that applies to all sources of inorganic subscribers. If you overload your list with inorganics, this can cause you longer term deliverability issues, because as I mentioned last week, inorganic subscribers are of more variable quality by their nature. Without a carefully constructed welcome sequence to weed out the unserious or immediately disengaged, this will have a corrosive effect on the overall deliverability of your list. To put it in plainer English, being too aggressive with inorganics can cause issues with your organics, and you really don’t want that. This warning doesn't just apply to BookFunnel Author Swaps but to all inorganic list building.
- Always lean organic whenever possible.
- Ensure you have a special process of onboarding inorganics.
- Tag them so you can monitor performance separately over time.
- Bonus points for tagging each type of inorganic source so you know who the MVPs are.
- Be ruthless about cutting those who don’t cut the mustard.
I don’t want to dissuade anyone from BookFunnel Author Swaps, especially those starting out who have fewer options. But you should consider the above advice to minimize issues. Being a little strategic and judicious will also serve you well when you seek to turbocharge growth through things like the list building promos we covered last week or the viral giveaways and Facebook Ads we will cover next time. Dave P.S. Writing music this week is Baiano e Os Novos Caetanos and Selva de Feras. |
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