Public Service Announcement: Respect
In 1967 when Aretha Franklin sang about getting R-E-S-P-E-C-T, she didn’t know she was singing the anthem of email recipients in the twenty-first century.
Your job as a writer of email newsletters is to respect your readers’ digital boundaries. You must always ask permission before sending an email. In email marking lingo, that means asking your website visitor to “opt-in.”
If they have not given you permission to email them, your email is spam. Even if you’ve written an entertaining or high-value email, if your recipient didn’t ask for it or doesn’t remember asking for it, it is spam.
Spam is in the eye of the beholder.
Thomas Umstattd, Jr.
You may think you’re sending out great, entertaining emails, but if the recipient marks your email as spam, every future email you send that person will automatically go to their spam folder.
When someone marks your email as spam, it’s like a “vote” against your email address. If one or two Gmail users mark you as spam, Gmail will send all your emails to spam for every Gmail user on your list.
Instead of feeling served, your reader will feel stalked. The difference between being creepy and charming is permission.
Only send emails to people who have given you permission. As soon as they want to withdraw that permission, make it easy for them to unsubscribe.
If it’s difficult for people to unsubscribe, readers will find it much easier to click “spam,” which will damage your deliverability.
Tip 1: Provide Consistent Value
Your emails must always contain one of the following:
- Entertainment
- Encouragement
- “Evil” Controversy (Give them something to rail against.)
- Education
- Emotion
What kind of email content is valuable?
New Book Announcements
The top reason readers subscribe to your author newsletter is to find out when your next book comes out. Amazon and Audible don’t reliably notify your readers about your new book, so you must do it yourself.
You can send five emails prior to your book’s release.
- Email 1: The book comes out in two weeks.
- Email 2: The book comes out next week.
- Email 3: The book comes out tomorrow.
- Email 4: The book comes out today.
- Email 5: Results after release (i.e. The book was a category bestseller.)
News or Progress Updates
Alert readers when you have a new cover design to show them. Tell them when you’ve finished your manuscript and where it is in the publishing process.
The danger with emailing news is that it may tend to be all about you, the author. As we’ve said before, readers care about themselves. So even when you’re providing updates, make sure your email is interesting to them.
Ask for Feedback
People love to give feedback. If you have several cover designs or author photos, let your readers vote on which one they like best. Providing feedback gives readers a sense of ownership and provides great information for you. It doesn’t matter if you like your cover design or author photo. What matters most is that your readers like it.
Reader Stories
If someone wrote to you detailing how your book changed their life, share that story with your email newsletter subscribers. You’ll want to ask for permission from the reader or withhold their name, but sharing their story is a powerful way to provide emotionally resonant content.
Reader Art
Young readers are particularly fond of drawing characters from books they read. Readers who don’t know how to draw will love seeing illustrations from their fellow readers, so include those images in your email newsletter.
Emails with a visual element like reader art won’t take long for subscribers to read, but they will keep your name in front of readers so they don’t forget who you are.
Reviews for Other Books
Most authors only write one book per year or less. Readers, however, read multiple books each year. If you aren’t writing multiple books each year, your readers need recommendations to fill their reading calendar.
If an author I like recommends a book, I’ll probably read the book they recommend. Most successful authors review other books in their genre and recommend the good ones to their subscribers.
Reviewing books is a great way to keep your subscribers happy and to make friends with other authors.
It may sound counterintuitive to tell people about other books when you want them to buy yours, but if your recommendations are reliable and sound, they will likely buy your books as well as the others.
Plus, if people are in the habit of buying books you recommend, imagine the effect of recommending your own book when it comes out.
Advice
Answering reader questions or giving advice works especially well for nonfiction authors. If your answers, books, and emails offer good, useful advice, people will find your emails extremely valuable.
Run your Own BookBub Featured Deal
A BookBub Featured Deal is a chance to present your book to hundreds of thousands of readers who have expressed an interest in your specific genre. You offer your ebook at a deep discount, and BookBub will email their enormous list about your discounted book. BookBub Featured Deals are expensive, but they almost always pay for themselves.
Because of the high ROI, the slots are highly sought-after, and BookBub only accepts error-free books with multiple Amazon reviews.
If you’re unable to secure a BookBub Featured Deal, run your own discount. Send an email to your readers telling people that for a limited time, your book is only $0.99.
Blog Curation
If you have an author blog, you can send a quarterly list of your most popular blog posts. It’s a way of sharing blog highlights with fans who don’t read every blog you write. You’re essentially allowing your super fans to choose the best content for your regular fans.
Tip 2: Use an Email Marketing Service
{NOTE: In the podcast, which was recorded in 2015, you will hear Thomas and Jim recommend Mail Chimp. As MailChimp changed over the years and better options became available, Thomas and Jim changed their recommendations. Find out How to Choose the Right Email Service and which one they now recommend.}
Why can’t I use Outlook or Gmail to send my newsletters?
Sending your newsletter via Outlook or Gmail is bad for five reasons.
- People can’t subscribe or unsubscribe, so you must add them manually.
- Adding and removing addresses manually is time-consuming.
- You can’t track your open rate. Open rate is a key metric traditional publishers consider when evaluating an author’s platform.
- Sending mass BCC emails annoys your friends.
- It’s potentially illegal, and it’s not in compliance with the CAN-SPAM Act or GDPR.
Don’t use your regular email program for building your author email list. Use an email marketing service such as MailerLite or ConvertKit. Find out which email marketing service is right for you.
No matter which service you use, you’ll have to provide your physical address to remain compliant with the law. If you’re nervous about supplying your street address, get a PO Box.
Tip 3: Use a Mobile Friendly Email Design
Most people read emails on their phones. If you’re not sure how your email will look on mobile, send yourself a test email.
Generally, simple email templates convert better than highly designed, graphic emails. Your email should look like it’s from a friend, not an impersonal business.
Tip 4: Be Consistent (Don’t Boost Your Frequency Without a Good Reason)
Whether you send your email newsletter monthly, quarterly, or biweekly, make sure you have enough valuable content to accommodate your frequency.
Don’t send a boring email just because it’s on your schedule. Find something valuable to offer. As soon as your emails become boring or lack value, your open rate will drop, and readers will start skipping your emails.
It’s better to have awesome content four times per year than mediocre content 12 times per year.
Thomas Umstattd, JR.
It’s better to skip an email than to send one your readers don’t find valuable. Once you find the right frequency, stick with it so your readers know what to expect.
When you have a book coming out, a registration deadline, or another good reason to email, you can increase the frequency as mentioned above.
Tip 5: Experiment
Split Test Your Subjects
People judge a book by its cover, and they judge an email by its headline. You must write interesting subject lines if you want people to open your emails.
You may wonder which one of two subject lines will prompt more readers to open and read your email.
For example, when I released my book, we tested two different subject lines to see which one readers found most enticing.
- Courtship in Crisis Releases Tomorrow (shorter)
- Courtship in Crisis is Unleashed on the World Tomorrow (more sensational)
An email marketing service such as ConvertKit (Affiliate Link) will send your email with the first subject line to 15% of your subscribers. At the same time, they’ll send the same email with the second subject line to another 15% of your subscribers. The subject line with the higher open rate “wins,” and ConvertKit will use the winning subject line when it sends your email to the remaining 70% of your list.
Most email marketing services allow you to split test your subject lines in a similar way.
Headline Analyzer
If you need help writing good headlines, blog titles, or email subject lines, the Headline Analyzer can help. Each headline you enter will receive a score on a 100-point scale. You’ll learn how to write resonating headlines that evoke emotion and make people want to click, open, and read.
Tip 6: Measure Your Results
Most email marketing services provide open-rate and click-rate data. In your dashboard, you’ll see which emails and links caused people to take action.
You can also poll your readers to find out what they liked (or disliked) and what they want to read. People love giving their opinions.
If you don’t know what you write in your next email newsletter, create a poll on SurveyMonkey or Google Forms to find out what your readers want and how they want to hear from you.
Tip 7: Keep it Short
People are more likely to listen to a 15-minute TED talk than a 60-minute lecture. Have you ever finished reading an email and thought, “I wish that had been longer.”
Keep your writing concise. Seth Godin is a master at writing short, valuable emails. They are rarely longer than 150 words, but every email has a valuable nugget.
Writing a short email is harder than writing a long one, but it’s worth the work to show your readers you respect their time.
Aretha Franklin got it right. R-E-S-P-E-C-T is the best practice for relationships, life, and email.
