Top 7 Email Marketing Strategies for Self-Published Authors

Emails and newsletters are the most effective digital marketing tools to promote books by self-published authors. Sending an email is much cheaper than many other marketing tools, and yet it is more effective.

Campaign Monitor reported that for the past decade, email marketing has generated the highest ROI for businesses worldwide. In fact, for every 1$ marketers spend on email marketing, they receive $38 back.

 Given its affordability and its effectiveness, Email marketing is the best promotional tool at the disposal of self-published authors. Let’s take a look at 7 tried and tested strategies to help you get more bang for your buck through email marketing:

1. Segment your Email List

First things first, you must divide your email list into small segments based on geographic, behavioral, psychographic, and demographic factors. Your subscribers and potential readers will hardly be a homogenous bunch.

They will differ from each other in terms of preferences, interests, personalities, behaviors, and other features. Therefore, it makes sense to divide them into smaller groups and design email content specifically for each segment.

Geographic Area

Sort your email list based on their geographic location. Why? Research suggests that people are more likely to open emails at certain times of the day. Marketers consider midweek, between 1 – 3 PM, the ideal time for sending emails.

However, 1 PM in one part of the world means midnight at another place. If you send one email to all subscribers, only those in your time zone will end up opening it. Hence, it’s better to divide the subscriber list according to geographic area and send emails at the appropriate time.

Open rate, purchase history, and user status (new/old) are some other segments to consider when dividing your email list.

2. Develop an Email Sequence

Next comes the sequence of Emails. Are you bombarding the reader with information in the first go? If yes, then try a different tactic for more success. Make use of Drip marketing, a strategy in which you send multiple emails to your subscribers at certain times and dates in order.

What does this do? Instead of an in-your-face sales pitchy approach, the email sequence prepares the reader for purchase by providing them the information they will find useful and interesting.

Here is a sequence that you can try:

1. A welcome email to new subscribers.
2. Email containing an excerpt from your book based on the reader’s previous reading history with a CTA button.
3. Email containing an incentive such as sale price, reward, bundle pricing, etc., with a CTA.
4. Email containing a limited time only offer with a CTA.

You will need an email automation tool to set up this sequential email marketing strategy, which brings us to our next step.

3. Get a Reliable Email Service Provider

You may be thinking that johndoe_01@gmail.com is a good enough address for your email marketing campaign, but rest assured it’s not! ESP accounts are more likely to end up unread in the spam folder.

Hence, you should get an official email account such as Gmail business suite, MailChimp, MailLite, and more. If you have an official website, you can even install a plugin, which will allow you to create emails from your own server.

Secondly, you will need email automation tools. Mailchimp and MailLite have their own automation tools. You can also use third-party software for email automation, such as software from Hubstaff or Moosend.

Email automation will help you keep track of your emails, what has been sent, what is scheduled, and so forth.

4. Focus on your Strength

Many self-published authors bog themselves down by worrying about email design. They end up wasting a lot of time on the perfect font, image, and style, that they forget the essence of the email.

Yes, it is true that emails with multimedia are more likely to succeed. However, it is not a given. You can simply write to your readers in a natural way to get a conversion. If you want to add design, you can use premade templates from your email marketing software instead of wasting hours designing the perfect layout.

5. Be As Natural As Possible

You are a writer, so do what you do best; write. Write the content of the email from your heart rather than adopting a corporate-esque stoicism. You readers, the ones who subscribed to your website because they love your writing, are more likely to respond to your words than some formal, template-style email.

Here are a few tips that you can keep in mind:

• Use a friendly tone and talk to the subscribers as though you are familiar with them. It will invite them to continue reading your email to learn more.
• Use simple language; resist the urge to add hard to read, fancy words. People connect with what they understand and what feels real to them.
• Speak to them like you are speaking to a friend. If you are sending emails to old readers, share an inside joke, catchphrase, quote, or poem from your previous book to make them feel like they are a part of an exclusive club.

6. Freebies do Work

Take a hint from Software as a Service model and offer free previews to hook your readers. If you are selling e-books, then you can include a free preview for the first few chapters to entice the reader into buying.

Similarly, you can offer discounts, additional perks like buy 1 book and get the audiobook free, and so on. Perks and rewards never fail to convert if done in a classy way.

7. Include a CTA

Always include a clear and visible Call To Action (CTA) button in your email. What do you want to achieve with the email? Do you want the reader to subscribe? Purchase? View? Download?

Whatever your intended result, include a CTA to drive action. You can include the CTA at the end of your email and highlight it, so it pops up.

A few examples of popular CTA are:

1. Subscribe Today
2. Download Now
3. Purchase Here

You can experiment with the CTAs and see what works for you.

Arslan Hassan is an electrical engineer with a passion for writing, designing, and anything tech-related. His educational background in the technical field has given him the edge to write on many topics. He occasionally writes blog articles for Dynamologic Solutions.