Seven Ways Writers Can Improve their Email Marketing Today

If we want to be full-time authors we need an email list — here are seven fixes

For some writers the prospect of running an email list sounds about as exciting as a mailbox full of bills and catalogs. Email feels like one more writing project. So we put our email platform at the bottom of our to-do lists and it slowly stays there as we work on other projects.

But email doesn’t have to be that way.

In fact, your email list can make or break your writing business. Writers need direct access to their readers, now more than ever. And email, although it doesn’t feel as sexy as social, is just the answer writers need to grab their readers full attention and sell more books, with less effort.

Using an automated email sequence will give you more time to write, not less.

First, we’ve got to do the hard work of setting everything up. You’ve got to plan your email sequence, test your different subject lines, and edit the ones that don’t work. We’ve got to develop valuable lead-generating gifts readers are willing to get in exchange for their email addresses. Setting up your email automation can take months to develop in the beginning.

…but once you’ve got your email up and running, there’s little day-to-day maintenance.

I’ve made a lot of mistakes over my past 15 years with email marketing. I’ve learned many valuable lessons too. I’ve uncovered some fundamental musts that will either make or break your writer’s email list. Your list can be a powerful sales tool, but if you skip these seven principles I’m about to share, you’ll have a much harder time selling books with your list.

Seven ways to improve your email list:

1. Subject lines are (almost) everything

If you don’t nail your subject lines your emails won’t get opened. Readers are more skeptical than ever. If you don’t provide just enough curiosity without sounding like a spammer or a slime-ball, your letters will go unopened.

You can spend one hundred hours crafting the best email you’ve ever written, but if you don’t nail the subject line, all those hours were spent in vain.

Try to use short, cliffhanger-type subject lines that spark an unanswered question in the reader’s mind, so she’s got to click to get the answer. Yes or no questions should be avoided if you can, because the reader may not know whether or not she cares yet. The default answer will then be ‘no’ and your email won’t get opened.

You’ve got to test your subject lines constantly. Run a few hundred people through the email before you judge your open rate.

2. We like links in threes

Most people skim their email. Think about the last time you read a commercial email all the way through. We skim first, make a decision to go back and read it, and most of the time we save it for later, with later never arriving.

We want our readers to interact with our email during this first skim.

A good way to do this is to include the link you’d like her to click throughout your email — beginning, middle, and end (I like to put it at the p.s.)

Readers know you’ve got something to sell or something you want them to click. Readers are smart. When we give them three options for the same link, it’s like three reminders saying “hey, I think you’ll appreciate what I’ve got to show you.” You’ll have a much-higher chance they’ll click than if you include the link once.

Use your judgement. Maybe your email is short and one link is fine. Don’t go crazy and include more than three.

3. We ask for one decision per email

Most of our emails should ask for a binary decision. ‘Hit reply and give me your opinion,” “click this link,” or “buy my new book.” Try not to ask the reader to make more than one decision at a time.

We read email when we’ve got a quick second. Readers don’t want to spend a bunch of time making decisions. They skim, then they swipe and delete. We don’t want to think about buying, replying, and clicking on two different link to two different places if we can avoid it.

Ask them to make one decision. Make it easy on the reader.

4. We get them used to clicking on links

Give your readers additional content they can click on. Even if you’re not selling a book in a particular email, the added content will help train the reader to respond to your emails in a two-way fashion.

The worst kind of email reader is a passive reader.

You don’t want your reader to get in the habit of scrolling your content and deleting. When you send them an offer to buy, they’ll be less-likely to respond, because of the last thirty emails you sent without a link.

5. We use infotainment

Your emails better be fun to read from the very first welcome message. If you send dry, corporate-sounding letters, good luck selling books. With infotainment we give valuable content in an entertaining way.

You want every email you send to contain something a reader can take and use today. They’ll be more-likely to come back tomorrow if you do.

6. We contact them frequently

Most readers won’t open everything you send. As a writer it’s your job to make sure the reader doesn’t forget about you or your books. The reader is busy. She’s got a stack of books on her TBR pile. You’re easy to forget if you don’t contact her frequently. Once per week minimum.

There’s nothing worse than a quarterly or monthly email.

Subscribers won’t remember joining your list. They’ll have no idea who you are. And you’ll feel so compelled to cram your one-time email with sales offers you won’t be able to provide the value your reader appreciates.

Some writers email daily — even twice daily! I’m not suggesting you do this, but if you’ve got something valuable to say don’t be afraid to say it. Don’t be afraid of unsubscribes. This is your list’s way of cleansing itself.

7. We add new subscribers daily

You’ll get a slow leak of unsubscribes for all different reasons. Once you tweak your email automation to a place where you’re happy with open rates and sales rates, never stop growing your list.

A complacent email list is a dying list.

Yes, the process has a lot of automation, but you’ve got to tend to the garden. We need to add more people than the rate subscribers are leaving. There are dozens of ways you can add new subscribers. You should explore as many as you can until you find one that works well for you. Then repeat that method until it stops.

We all start from zero

The best time to start an email list was a few years ago. The second-best time is now. We all start from zero subscribers, even the biggest authors had few people but their mom and their agent when they first started email marketing.

You find a way to get one subscriber and you repeat that method until you get ten. And one hundred. And a thousand. You don’t need tens of thousands of readers on your email list to make a good living as a writer.

All you need is a few thousand raving fans.

Email is hard. All marketing is hard. Those who make it have worked their asses off to get where they are. Not only do you have to write books, but you’ve got to write all the emails — and keep writing more emails to engage your readers over a lifetime with you.

This is real effort that most writers will shy-away from.

But not you. You’re different. You’re willing to get up a little earlier and stay up little later to get this done. It will feel insurmountable at first, but once you launch your list, the maintenance part is fun.

You’re a writer. Use these valuable tools to put your voice into your email content too. Engage with your readers. Respond to their questions. Write them back when they write you.

Once you’ve set up your list, your email will actually give you more time to write. You won’t have an endless stream of social content to plan for and subsequently lose into the ether. You write an email once and use it repeatedly, forever.

It’s time to start your email list.

If you’re an indie author and you’d like to start your own email list, I’ve got a free masterclass to get you started on the right shoe. Tap the link at the bottom of this story and you can join all the other happy authors who’ve gone through the course already.

The Tribe 1K is waiting for you below.

August Birch (AKA the Book Mechanic) is both a fiction and non-fiction author from Michigan, USA. A self-proclaimed guardian of writers and creators, August teaches indie authors how to write books that sell and how to sell more of those books once they’re written. When he’s not writing or thinking about writing August carries a pocket knife and shaves his head with a safety razor.

(Enroll in My Free Email Masterclass: Get Your First 1,000 Subscribers)