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Hey, Last week we were all cautious and methodical and BORING. This week, however, we gun through the junction of life while tapping our dashboard Jesus for protection. Yes, we’re covering how to boost inorganic sign-ups today. Even though we will be throwing caution to the wind, inviting a few blows along the way, we have set ourselves up for success with all the careful preparation last week. Because all these inorganics will also end up on a landing page, sign up on a form connected to our Email Marketing Service, receive a lovingly crafted reader magnet, and get funneled through a hand-crafted welcome sequence. Remember that? No? Okay! quick recapLast week, we established the following maxim – which I would triple underline if the cowards running the internet would allow it.
Organic sign-ups are a function of sales.
Want to increase organic sign-ups? Increase your sales. But here’s the twist: to increase the rate you convert those sales into sign-ups, you must build a better mousetrap:
- a book
- with hooky text right after THE END encouraging readers to sign up and dangling something to seal the deal
- a sexy reader magnet, pointing to
- a clean and snappy landing page on your website making signing up as frictionless as possible.
I didn’t mention this specifically last week, but when I encounter people having problems with their mousetrap, it’s often because they use something like Substack which make doing some of these things tricky. Or they are executing the above sub-optimally because they are using a service like SendFox – which, for example, will do things like only send your emails to the subscribers it deems as engaged (taking critical control away from you and giving you little chance to re-engage anyone who has gone dark). I strongly suggest using a dedicated, established, legitimate Email Marketing Service like one of the two I personally use and recommend:
- MailerLite (probably the best choice for most fiction authors), and
- Kit (more expensive plans but perhaps a better choice for non-fiction authors, those with more complex needs, or anyone who wants to avail of a really generous free plan of up to 10,000 subscribers).
Those are affiliate links, but I’ve happily used both these services for years, for my fiction and non-fiction pen names respectively (for exactly the reasons stated above). Feel free to reply if you are struggling to choose between them and I’ll give you a steer. These services both cost money once you grow out of the free plans, but it’s the most effective marketing dollar you will spend – and it’s not even close IMHO. And if you want to read more about that and see all the email marketing tools I recommend – most of which are free – then check out this subscriber-exclusive resource on my site: What A Bunch of Tools. (Yes, I’m 6 years old.)
Anyway, organic sign-ups are the best but optimizing your landing pages and crafting the perfect reader magnet or welcome sequence will only take you so far, and you can’t organize a sales campaign every week. Sometimes you need to juice things a little. Here’s how. inorganic optionsAs with marketing generally, your options here run the full gamut from ineffective to shady. There are a few worth pursuing but those still come with caveats – or a price tag. Which I guess is a form of economic caveat.
- Facebook leadgen ads
- Listbuilding promo services
- (Homebrew) Viral giveaways
Let’s embrace our true chaotic good nature and start in the middle – with apology to my OCD boyz. 1. Listbuilding PromosI used to be super skeptical about listbuilding promos but many years ago I did some consulting for a bestselling SF author who had been happy to experiment with a range of inorganic listbuilding methods, including various dedicated listbuilding promo sites like BookSweeps – and who had diligently tagged his sources (a great tip BTW). This allowed me to see how organics performed vs. Facebook Ad leads vs. BookSweeps when we launched his next book. I was so surprised at how his BookSweeps sign-ups performed that I had to check the numbers thrice. Thrice, I say! It’s safe to say I can happily recommend BookSweeps listbuilding promos to you all. You can get 100s of sign-ups in one fell sweep and the quality of them is pretty great. That’s an affiliate link but this is a service I can personally recommend because I subsequently tested their promos myself in a range of genres for myself and various clients working in a variety of niches and was delighted to see those results repeat themselves… with a few bumps in the road here and there. Here are my tips:
- Do them, they’re great, BUT…
- Make sure the genre is a good fit
- Onboard those sign-ups as soon as you receive the list
- Create a custom version of your welcome sequence to account for the fact they are coming from BookSweeps and consider handling them a little more gently
- TAG THEM so you can track performance over time
- Don’t be shy about cutting them lose if they are DOA – some just will be, that’s the nature of the beast.
I’m a big fan of these promos. Some of the subs will have to be trimmed but those that stick around perform surprisingly well. I’d do these promos regularly if you didn’t end up hitting the same eyeballs all the time (so space out your participations by a few months at least). Similar services do exist, but BookSweeps is the OG. I don’t have the results, or in many cases the long-term data, to endorse other services to the same extent. Out of those alternatives, I think Written Word Media’s Subscriber Surge Giveaways are worth a look. They are new enough that I don’t have a lot of data on them (so do share your experiences by reply!). But I do like their twist of giving you some of the emails sooner – which shows they understand the importance of onboarding peeps ASAP. Listbuilding promos are the easiest way to get into inorganic sign-ups – requiring the least knowledge or prep on your side; everything is done for you. Next time we’ll cover homebrew viral giveaways, where you do something similar but organize it yourself (or join one your genre friends are organizing) – which is a little more involved, obviously. And then we’ll cover Facebook Ads – which can scale forever… in theory… but are the most complex and hardest to master. Until then! Dave P.S. Writing music this week is Ruth Lyon with Books. |
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