I can’t speak highly enough about an email marketing book I just finished, Newsletter Ninja.

I first learned about it in one of David Gaughran’s newsletters. (Seriously, you need to subscribe to it.)

David said that it was the best book he read in 2018. Well, he wrote the forward to it and had taken her course so it makes sense he’d be plugging it.

But, honestly, I think he would have promoted it anyway.

Here’s the review I wrote on Amazon after reading this book:

When new authors write their first book, they rush to social media. What they should be doing is rushing to establish an email marketing program. But before doing so, they need to read this book. It is the bible for email marketing for writers. BTW Authors also need social !media but they should never neglect the importance of email marketing. This book is lively, engaging, full of great tips, and includes resources. It covers everything.

The best way to persuade you to grab a copy of this book NOW is to share some excerpts. But I don’t want to do that to the author.

Book Filled with Email Marketing Gems

And if I were to include excerpts, I would do a disservice to the book. It’s filled with gems from start to finish. But I will include this quote:

“First, you are not selling what you think you are. Second, if all you’re using your list for is selling, you’re doing everything wrong.”

There’s so much more to this book.

Note: The author does not recommend one email marketing service over another. I do: MailerLite.

Tammi Labrecque is a genius at email marketing.

Now get the book!

Some Email Marketing Advice from Yours Truly

I included these tips in a post two years ago (actually I edited them a bit). a

This is how you collect list for your email marketing program:

1. Sign up for an email marketing application such as MailerLite (love it!), Constant Contact (I don’t like it, but plenty of people do), or AWeber (many people love this application).
2. Establish a newsletter schedule and stick to it. If you don’t want to send newsletters – and I don’t blame you for deciding this – then collect email addresses for your blog subscription. Don’t use an RSS feed subscription program that doesn’t allow you to identify who’s subscribing to your blog because that would be pointless, and a huge waste of an opportunity. So avoid apps such as Feedly.
3. Use your email list to send quality content to your readers on a regular basis. The content you select will depend on your genre and niche.
4. Offer the best giveaway you can create. You’ll notice that on this website, anyone who signs up for my email-based social media course (1st freebie) receives a 65-page ebook on Twitter (second freebie). Yes, I offer two giveaways. You’re worth it! 😎 
5. Don’t ask people for more than their first name and email address. The more information you request, the less likely they will leave an email address for you. This fact has been true forever!
6. Never use the word subscribe. You’ll notice that for my free email course my opt-in language is I Want In! (You  might notice that I use the dreaded word “subscribe” for my blog updates. That’s only because a reader contacted me and asked me to be more specific. So I did that for her because every reader is special, right?)

Yes, use both.

Number of People Using Social Media Keeps Growing

Yes, despite the negative comments you’ll receive from the email marketing naysayers, email marketing is hot.

The above graph is from Statista and demonstrates how social media is expected to grow. The numbers are in the billions.

The company states:

“Social network penetration worldwide is ever-increasing. In 2017, 71 percent of internet users were social network users and these figures are expected to grow. Social networking is one of the most popular online activities with high user engagement rates and expanding mobile possibilities. North America ranks first among regions where social media is highly popular, with a social media penetration rate of 66 percent. In 2016, more than 81 percent of the United States population had a social media profile. As of the second quarter of 2016, U.S. users spend more than 215 weekly minutes on social media via smartphone, 61 weekly minutes via PC, and 47 minutes per week on social networks via tablet devices.”

Back in 2014, Pew Research Center noted that Facebook was somewhat of a “home base” for online adults using social media. At the time, it was the most popular site and often overlapped with the use of other social media platforms.

Nothing has changed since 2016.

 

Brand new Instagram ebook for authors. Learn how to set up your account, and create hashtags and Instagram stories. 

 

 

Frances Caballo is an author and social media consultant. Her focus is on helping authors surmount the barriers that keep them from flourishing online and building their platform. Her clients have included authors of every genre and writers’ conferences.  

Online Book Marketing Strategies for Writers

 

Yep, I gave the boot to MailChimp and am a happy MailerLite customer.

In the past I raved about MailChimp. I wrote blog posts about it. I even recommended it to clients.

 But over the years, I liked it less and less. Their customer services degraded as their prices climbed. 

 A terrible combination.

 Then, after reading David Gaughran’s newsletter (be sure to subscribe to it) about how he didn’t like MailChimp either, I decided to leap too. (He did it first.)

 MailerLite’s customer service is superb. Whereas before, I would wait four days for an email response from MailChimp’s tech support, with MailerLite, it’s just a few hours.

 Learning MailerLite’s system took a bit of time, but their tech support made it a smooth transition.

 And it’s cheaper than MailChimp while offering the same services.

 I’m paying $30/month for MailerLite (MailChimp was $75/month) because I want extra features. You can use it for free if you’d like to.

 Why Email Marketing?

Let’s get this topic over with, shall we?

 I like to give new clients this spiel:

Book marketing involves so many aspects:

• great books
• proper editing
• great covers
• perfect Amazon categories and keywords
• doing a pre-order for a month
• website and blog
• social media presence
• having ebooks and even audiobooks
• blog tours
• email marketing
• encouraging bookreviews

 Let’s face it; email marketing is more effective than social media marketing. 

 And consider this fact: if Instagram or Facebook disappeared or changed into a format you couldn’t make sense of, what would you do?

 All those people you were connecting with would be gone. 

 Consider email marketing as an insurance policy and an excellent way to connect with your readers.

 Consider these facts from Convince & Convert:

Every year you hear this absurd statement, “Email marketing is dead.” But the reality is email is very much alive and intends to stands the test of time for the foreseeable future. The data doesn’t lie:

 

• In 2018, global email users amounted to 3.8 billion users.

• 93% of B2B marketers use email to distribute content.

• 73% of millennials prefer communications from businesses to come via email.

• For every $1 you spend on email marketing, you can expect an average return of $32.

 Convinced? Okay, let’s get into how to use MailerLite.

Email Marketing Isn’t for Sales

Social media and email marketing — and every aspect of marketing you can think of — is for building relationships with your readers and prospective readers.

Don’t send a newsletter with a heavy sales spiel every week or however often you send your newsletter.

Share tidbits about your life, your cat, your dog, your writing life, and anything that you feel comfortable revealing.

Also, ask questions. Be informative. Deliver the content your readers want or need to hear.

Be friendly, conversational, and don’t use email marketing just to elicit book sales. 

Let your readers know that you care about them.

In short, be authentic. 

 Open a MailerLite Account

 This one’s easy. Just go to https://app.mailerlite.com and do the usual.

 First, you need to verify your domain email address. Your email should use the domain of your website and not be a Gmail account email. For example, [email protected]

 Next, upload your subscribers. If you were using MailChimp, export them into a CSV, and then upload them to MailerLite.

 Create a MailerLite Embedded Form for Sign-Ups 

With MailerLite, you can set up four forms:

 You’re going to need a form to encourage sign-ups. So, start with this one. (It should go without saying that you need to offer a giveaway to encourage signups.)

 First, go to Embedded Forms. Then click the orange button that says Create Embedded Form.

Name your form. I’ll call this one Blog Post Example.

 Next, you will have to determine which of your email groups you want to link to this form.

You will automatically arrive at this page:

 You can personalize the embedded form. For example, mine looks like this:

 These are your design options:

To change the form color or subscribe button, click the options as noted in the above image.

 You can also change the look of the form.

 For a client, I used the Card option and added an image. 

 To customize the colors in the form, click each round button in the design section.

All you need to do is go to Canva to select the color you want or do a web search, such as “what is the code for teal?” I use those two methods to find all my colors.

 Create Your MailerLite Success Page

 If you don’t use a double opt-in, which I encourage you to do, you can provide your giveaway on your Success Page.

 This is the default success message. Ugly, isn’t it?

 My client’s success page looks like this:

Once you’ve created both pages, MailerLite will provide you with a link you can use on social media and the code to add to your website. I suggest that you give your website developer the login to MailerLite so that she can grab the code she needs.

 You will also want to customize the double opt-in thank-page. On the same page where the code is, you’ll find the Double Opt-in Email form and the Double Opt-in Thank You page. They aren’t easy to customize. (I didn’t think they were.)

 This is what the default double opt-in email looks like:

 I customized to look like this:

I even changed the tiny heading in the upper top-left corner.

 Now you need to customize the Double Opt-In Thank You page. This is what the default looks like:

And this is what my personalized email looks like:

To customize it, I simply clicked on the Content and Design settings to change the wording and colors.

 I need to stop here. However, you can also use MailerLite to build landing pages, popups, promotions, and automated emails. I use automation for my email-based social media course.

Once you get going, it’s so much fun to create landing pages and popups. Really.

 If you have questions, write them in the comments below. Remember, MailerLite has excellent customer service, so don’t hesitate to send them your questions too.

Brand new Instagram ebook for authors. Learn how to set up your account, and create hashtags and Instagram stories. 

Frances Caballo is an author and social media consultant. Her focus is on helping authors surmount the barriers that keep them from flourishing online and building their platform. Her clients have included authors of every genre and writers’ conferences.  

Online Book Marketing Strategies for Writers