Hello sailor!

First, an apology. Not for this email going out a day late. It’s 2020! Any day I don’t accidentally set my hair on fire gets chalked down in the Win column.

What I actually want to apologize for is being really, really slow at answering emails. I get a lot of emails. I do generally try to prioritize emails from list subscribers and book purchasers, but the sheer volume these days makes it difficult to respond to everyone in a timely manner – or at all, lately. I do read every single email though, and those emails are my #1 source for new blog post ideas, email ideas, video ideas, book ideas, even my course! So don’t stop sending ‘em. I will get around to replying… eventually.

Anyway, here I’m doing another giant Reply All because my email a couple of weeks ago about How To Avoid The Promotions Tab in Gmail generated a lot of responses and requests.

Some were from people arguing that all this techno-gubbins is right and proper, but what truly matters when it comes to open rates is the content.

Well, yes.

Respecting your subscribers and trying to put value in every single email is crucial – but I feel like I’ve banged that drum enough. If you want more on that, definitely check out the eight-part series All About Email which you can find in Ye Olde Email Archive in the “Email Sorcery” section. (Particularly relevant are Episodes 3 & 4.) But, really, the very best guide on that topic is Tammi Labrecque’s Newsletter Ninja – which I’ve raved about approximately a billion times and yet still feel like I’ve under-egged it.

Today we are dabbling in unashamed populism because this email is all about your top question: how do you bloody well get email subscribers in the first place? (Some of you may have used saltier language!)

OKAY SAILOR PEOPLE.

I’m going to show you how to get more email subscribers. But before we dive in, I just dropped a new video on YouTube yesterday on my #1 marketing tactic right now. (This will become very relevant in a moment…)

Right. On with it.

How To Bloody Well Get Those Bloody Emails

There are two types of subscribers to your list: organic and inorganic.

Organic subscribers are those who come to your list naturally, from signing up on your website or clicking a link in the back of your books – so named because they are generated from organic reader activity, of course.

Inorganic subscribers are those who come to your list through advertising or some kind of promotion or giveaway or competition – so named because you basically engineer this reader activity.

Although it’s a mistake to think you can’t boost organic subscribers, as you will see in a moment.

Organics Rule

Organic subscribers are much more valuable because they tend to be what you might call “pre-qualified” – in that they already have an interest in you or your books. Most of them will probably be readers who have just completed a book by you, some of them will be readers who are interested in the kinds of books you write. As such, organic subscribers tend to be more likely to open your emails, click the contents, and buy your next book. They are generally more engaged as well – more likely to reply or respond to any “ask” of yours, like when you need reviews or volunteers for your army of Uruk-hai.

You definitely want as many organic subscribers as possible. They are so valuable that the only reason we even consider generating inorganic subscribers is because the process can be, well, slow.

When you are starting out, it can feel very much like a chicken-and-egg situation. You need emails to sell books, but you get emails by selling books so… uh…

Authors can feel like a crucial piece of information is being withheld from them.

Collecting organic subscribers is a slow burn, and people can get frustrated with the pace and start looking for ways to speed things up. But they reach for the wrong things.

The Internet Marketing Fairy comes along with all his razzle dazzle, and with SIX EASY PAYMENTS you can cut through this Gordian Knot and hop on the Inorganic-powered fast train to Successville.

Yeah. That doesn’t work quite so well. It’s much easier and quicker to generate inorganic subscribers, and it really can feel like you have Cracked The Code when those addresses come flying in. The problem – aside from these subscribers costing you money to acquire – is that inorganics are, well, a bit rubbish sometimes.

Watch Your Diet: Inorganics Can Cause Problems

You can generate inorganic subscribers with Facebook Ads or competitions or viral giveaways or list-building promotions, but the problem with all of them is broadly similar: they are just not that into you.

Spot the difference:

1. Reader 1 has just completed the final book in your trilogy about warring tribes of were-beetles, and has just signed up to your list so they can get a free novella – which shares the backstory of that hilarious sidekick they loved so much.
2. Reader 2 has never heard of you – they just entered a competition to win an Amazon gift card.

This doesn’t mean that Reader 2 is a wasted sign-up. If you apply all the lessons from resources like Newsletter Ninja and my All About Email series above, you can warm up inorganic subscribers and weed out the least interested, and, with a lot of work and knowhow, eventually get them up to the level of Reader 1. Maybe. Some of them, at least.

But does that sound like something that an author who is just getting into email can easily pull off? Of course not. It takes practice and experience.

So, what usually happens is that newer author ends up with a mailing list heavy with inorganic subscribers, plummeting open rates on their emails, and low levels of engagement visible through few replies, low clicks, and muted levels of purchases.

Instead of cutting through that Gordian Knot, we have just kicked the can down the road, and probably cost ourselves some time and money as well. Probably emotional energy also, which feels like a more limited resource in this stupid never-ending year.

At this point you are probably thinking, “AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAGGHHH!”

The Real Solution

What you need to do is this: focus on maximizing organic subscribers instead.

1. Optimize your sign-up process so you lose as few readers as possible.
2. Welcome them with an automation sequence so they remain engaged.
3. Dangle a freebie to encourage sign-ups (look: here’s the first email in your sequence!).
4. Write some enticing copy at the back of your books and on your site to flog that freebie.
5. Turn up the traffic by increasing your sales.

This is it, people. This is the secret. You can seed things a little with the occasional batch of inorganic subscribers, but your primary focus should be on boosting organics. If your list is heavy with inorganics, you are going to have your work cut out for you in terms of warming them up and weeding them out and generating necessary engagement and interest.

I know a lot of people are fond of Facebook Ads to generate email sign-ups, but I much prefer using something like Facebook Ads to generate sales which have the happy side-effect of generating email sign-ups and paying their way.

This approach also has the happy side-effect of solving the review problem, another thing that newer authors can wrestle with. “How do you get sales when you need reviews, and you need reviews to get sales?” is something I hear often.

Let me simplify your life.

When readers reach The End, you need to hit them with an ask right away. I usually (a) push them towards Book 2, (b) dangle a freebie to get an email sign-up, and (c) politely ask for a review. And if there is no Book 2, I’ll cut right to (b).

Instead of having three problems to solve (sales, emails, reviews), I now only have one: I need to generate sales, and the other two problems will solve themselves.

“But I tried putting together a marketing plan and I sold 100 books and got 1 sign-up and no reviews,” is a common objection when I lay out this solution. Which is why I spend so much time on the preparation and details, on making sure my sign-up page is distraction free, on making sure the end matter in my book is perfectly optimized and really driving sign-ups/reviews, on creating a welcome sequence that doesn’t lose 60% of people with the first email.

People often want to skip ahead to The Answer, but don’t realize they are skipping over the real solution. Yes, you can (and should) put together a bigger marketing plan that sells a lot more than 100 books, but if you don’t have all that other stuff in place, you are just trying to ferry water in a leaky bucket.

Plug the holes first. Then turn on the tap.

Some resources for you – all free, so there’s no excuse:

• Chapter 6 of my free self-publishing guide Let’s Get Digital will teach you how to lay out your end matter for maximum effect (this is way more important than people think).
• In case you missed your free download of my short book Following you can grab it here. There’s an entire section (Chapter 3) on how to set up your newsletter in the best possible way.
• And then my free course Starting From Zero will actually show you on-screen my entire pathway for new readers, right down to the sign-up request at the back of my books, the sign-up pages on my site, the welcome emails I send, and the regular emails I send. You will see the actual emails, on screen, and for both fiction and non-fiction too.

The best part about the course is you can just jump in to one section or one video if that’s all you need – and in this case, Chapter 3 is the section on email, and the video for Lesson 3.4 is the one showing you my entire back-end… I should really rephrase that.

Starting From Zero will also show you how to put together the kind of marketing plan that can generate hundreds of sales or thousands of free downloads as well – without getting into anything complicated or expensive or hit-and-miss like Facebook Ads, which will generate lots of new, organic subscribers for you as a free bonus.

Finally, you may have seen this blog post already, but if you are looking to add some oomph to your marketing plans, then How To Sell Books in 2020 is a monster resource, covering every possible way that I know how to sell books, and all my recommended resources for everything as well. Oh and don’t forget that the YouTube video up top shares my hottest marketing tactic right now. (See! I did get back there in the end…)

This is a lot to take in, perhaps, but I’m being deliberately comprehensive here.

The philosophy is actually quite simple: (a) ensure you have an optimized sign-up process, (c) give away a cool freebie, then (c) turn up the juice by increasing sales.

Now go get those emails!

Dave

P.S. Writing music this week is the Ames Brothers with The Naughty Lady of Shady Lane.