Lindsay - September 24, 2020This week, Andrea, Jo, and Lindsay continue their discussion on newsletters. We open up talking about what types of bonuses we offer to readers who sign up and also share which ones have worked best to entice people onto our lists.
After that, it’s on to the rest of our questions for Andrea.
- When it comes to the body of the email (or content), I always try to open with something casual and maybe a little funny before getting to the sale, but I don’t let myself ramble either. What are some good practices for getting the sales without coming across as too much of a hard sell?
- On the subject of tone and vocabulary, what should our target be? Are we matching our emails to the level of our novels, or should we shoot for a more basic turn of phrase?
- How many things should you promote in one newsletter? I can be guilty of what I sometimes feel is too much (here’s the free bonus scene, and here’s the new book, and here are the audiobooks…), mostly because I don’t want to send multiple emails. Is this a bad idea?
- Does the recommended length of a newsletter change depending on frequency? Can recipients of rarer newsletters tolerate longer emails?
- A lot of people struggle with what to write or how to start. Do you have any tips for the content beyond “Here’s the new book…” or “Here’s the book on sale…”?
- Should you encourage responses to your emails? If you do, should you reply to those responses? How long should you keep a conversation going?
- Since we’re not supposed to use affiliate links, how can we tell if our emails are converting? Best practices?
- Should we be stressing about our open rates and click rates? What are some benchmarks to shoot for, or maybe to watch for if we’re afraid we’re headed for the danger zone?
- Your course has a bit on setting deadlines to encourage readers to buy now. I’ve definitely had some of my best results on limited time sales or (especially) setting a deal for the pre-order that goes to full-price on the release. Thoughts on this?
- We’ve talked about how polling readers can be useful. What are some tips for poll topics (and what should you be trying to achieve)?
- Any final tips for actually selling the book?
If you’ve enjoyed the information Andrea has shared in these past two episodes, and you want to learn more, check out her Advanced Newsletter Marketing course at Self Publish Strong Courses. Use coupon code SIMPLIFY for 25% off the newsletter course.
Thank you for listening, and thank you to Joshua Pearson for producing our show.
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