Creating and Building Your Email List
Imagine releasing your next book and being able to tell thousands of readers who love your work about it. Imagine being able to contact these readers anytime you want with news or updates about your books. With your own mailing list, this isn’t just a dream. It’s entirely possible.
The first thing you need to do to build your email list is choose a mailing list service. There are a few really good options including Aweber.
Mailing list services charge you by the number of subscribers you have. For a list of 500 subscribers, you can expect to pay $15-25 per month. As your list grows and you get more subscribers, you’ll get charged more. However, if you’re regularly marketing to your list, then you should easily be able to cover this cost.
Now that you’ve done some research and picked a mailing list company, it’s time to get started building your list. Your service provider will give you a special code you can use on your website to add a subscription form.
If you’re not familiar with HTML or other coding languages, ask your web designer to put it on your blog for you. Ideally, you need to have your subscription form on the right side of your blog and you need to have it underneath your posts. This makes it easy for your visitors to sign up for your mailing list.
It’s smart to offer a free gift to encourage new visitors to sign up for your list. This free gift could be a collection of short stories, bonus content from you, or a free book of yours.
Be sure the free gift matches your other work. If you write sweet romance, then offering a horror book will seem a bit odd and won’t help build your platform. Instead, offer a short sweet romance to your visitors and you’ll see better results.
Now that you have a mailing list and special offer in place, it’s time to let the world know. Share about your special gift on social media and invite your followers to sign up for your mailing list. You should also put a link to your mailing list at the back of all of your published books.
Don’t forget to create a special landing page on your website. This page should mention your free gift and invite visitors to enter their contact information. Once visitors do this, they should immediately be directed to a ‘thank you’ page.
Now, if you’re featured on a webinar or podcast episode, you can tell listeners to head to a specific page on your website in order to sign up for your mailing list. This can convert more visitors to subscribers, because you’re only asking them to do one thing (sign up for your list).
Building an email list of readers who love your books is one of the best ways to grow your career as an author. Experiment with different free gifts to see which one appeals the most to your audience.