Prepare Your Author Website for the New Year: Day 5
Today we're going to focus on optimizing our email opt-in forms and creating automated emails to welcome people to your email list.
If you've been following this blog and all the great resources by Sue Campbell, you already know you need to build an email list and to create sign-up incentives.
But many authors miss opportunities when it comes to the opt-in forms you put on your website by burying them in a far corner.
You need a sign-up form (or a link to a sign-up form) in all of these locations:
menu bar,
above the fold on the homepage,
in the footer
AND on a time-delayed pop-up.
You also want to make sure the copy on your opt-in form is focused on the benefit to your potential subscriber. Don’t say “Sign up for author updates!” Because, honestly, no one cares about your updates. Instead, focus on how they can benefit from being a subscriber. It’s much better to say, “Sign-up and get free books!” or tout whatever your reader magnet happens to be.
Now that you have a way for folks to sign up in all the right places, you need an automated way to get the relationship off the ground. Most, if not all, email marketing programs offer some type of automation system that will make your life easier.
An automated email sequence requires a one-time set-up and then is automatically sent to a particular person when they meet certain trigger requirements.
The best use of an automation system is a welcome sequence. It’s time-consuming (and ridiculous) to manually create and send an email series to every person who signs up. Set up an automated welcome series that is sent when each new person joins your list.
Are you optimizing an automation system to sell your books?
I admit that I wasn't. I didn't even have a welcome email sequence. I hope you've been doing better than I have in this area, and if you haven't, that you create a series as soon as possible. It's an effective and efficient way to direct subscribers to buy your books and other products.
According to Sue, a three email series is ideal. Your first email will deliver on your promise of whatever sign-up incentive you offered. The second email can talk about your work and why your new subscriber will love it. And your third email can talk a bit about you and your background; again, through the lens of why the reader would care. Both the second and third emails should have links to buy your book or other products.
There are other, more advanced, uses of automation that offer more personalized experiences for your viewers.
You can send links to your content and resources, and you can add tags to your subscribers as they click each link. You can make these tags trigger the sending of an email that offers a book or product relevant to what the recipient was reading on your site. Or the tag can trigger adding them to a new and related email sequence. Check for online tutorials if needed.
These triggers and tags mean you can direct your viewers to more personalized content.
More personalization in emails has proven to increase the conversions of viewers to book buyers.
THAT’S IT FOR DAY 5!
Now that you understand the importance of email automation, we'll tackle how it is you learn more about your viewers to further increase their likelihood of buying your books. In my next post, we'll look at reader personas and I have some super simple cheats for you to create these with accuracy and efficiency.
If you’re an author—either traditionally or independently published—and you want to actually make a go of it, the Happily Ever Author Club might be just what you’re looking for. You’ll get access to workshops and resources on how to find and pitch influencers so you finally get your book into the hands of your ideal readers.