Note from Jeanette Joy Fisher
The following article by my friend Dr. Mani is loaded with great ideas for you. Dr. Mani, Surgeon, Author, and Social Entrepreneur impresses me because of his dedication.
Dr. Mani
I first met Dr. Mani on Twitter years ago, probably in 2008. His devotion to helping children with heart problems speaks to my heart. (One of my daughter’s died because her heart failed.) Dr. Mani could have moved to the US after graduating from medical school. Instead, he stayed in India to help desperate parents take care of their children. He donates his time and raises the monies for hospital surgical costs. Please buy all his books! (See link below.) But first, read this helpful article.
Is Your Email Marketing Working To Pull In More Book Sales — And What Can You Do To Make It Even Better?
I fire up my text editor. Draft out a 272-word email to my subscribers. Broadcast it to my tiny 300+ list.
And within 15 minutes, I’ve made 6 sales… of an ebook that I haven’t yet begun to write!
Yes. I clearly mentioned it was merely an idea at that point, but would soon become a fully fleshed-out book. And my folks still wanted to buy it right away!
That’s an example of the power of email marketing to sell books.
Since 1997, I’ve used email marketing to sell thousands of books and ebooks. Twenty years later, with confidence and conviction, I call email marketing the most effective way to nurture a relationship with your audience that translates into book sales.
However, you have to get it right. And that’s what this article is about.
Measure Everything That Matters
The good thing about email marketing is that you can measure and track everything. You can
- tell how many emails are delivered to your subscribers
- see how many open your messages, and who they are
- track when they view your emails, and
- know which hyperlinks they click on
But while it’s exciting to track everything, it isn’t quite helpful. You must learn to measure what really matters, to know if your emails
- reach subscribers
- get opened and read
- convince readers to take action
- result in book sales
So which are the metrics that savvy email marketers measure to sell more books?
Email Delivery Rate
If too few of your emails are delivered to subscribers, you must find out why – and fix it.
- Possibly they are trapped by automated spam filters.
- Your email service may be on a blacklist.
- Your hyperlink URL might trigger a lock-out.
Email marketing services will let you know about these problems, and also whenever a subscriber reports your message as ‘spam’ to their ISP. You must act urgently on this since too many spam complaints could get your account banned.
Email Open Rate
All emails that land in an inbox don’t get read. Some are deleted unseen. Others get filtered into folders, where they languish forever. Only a few are opened and read immediately.
What’s behind this difference?
In a word: Interest.
If subscribers no longer find your emails interesting or valuable, they’ll ignore you. Remember, nothing happens until someone opens your email! So focus urgently on fixing this.
- Their priorities might have changed. To make yourself relevant again, you must appeal to a problem that’s on their mind.
- Your content may not be as good as before. To win back their attention, you should deliver greater value.
- They may realize joining your list was a mistake! Gracefully let them go. These aren’t your ideal prospects anyway.
As your open rates improve, your book sales will grow.
Click-Through Rate (CTR)
CTR is a measure of how many subscribers click on hyperlinks in your email. They may visit a website for more details, download a free sample of your book, or even make a payment to order a copy.
While entire copywriting courses are devoted to teaching how to improve your CTR, a simple guiding principle is to build excitement and interest in your messages – so readers can’t wait to hear more.
When you offer the value that matches a reader’s interests, offers solutions to their troubles, that entertains, educates or informs them, your CTR will skyrocket.
Sales Conversion
From time to time, it helps to keep reminding yourself why you’re engaged in email marketing.
You’re doing it to sell more books.
So if your email delivery is fantastic, your open rates are great, your CTR is through the roof, but you’re selling only a few books… there’s still a big problem.
That’s why you should track these metrics with a view to achieving your ultimate goal. But that isn’t always easy – because there are many reasons why a person may not buy your book.
- Your Sales Page
At times, you may get everything else right – but your sales page does a poor job of closing the sale.
- Maybe you didn’t make the right proposition.
- Or offer enough testimonials.
- Or toss in more bonuses and incentives.
- Or make a rock-solid guarantee.
- Or price it perfectly for an impulse buy.
Whatever the reason, figure out how to set it right.
- Your Promotional Message
If you don’t push a reader’s hot buttons, use tempting bait to build anticipation and desire, or create urgency to own your book, the typical prospect will put it off for later.
Nothing is as convincing as a heartfelt appeal about your book. You wrote it with passion, energy and fire. Now sell it with the same emotion and dedication!
- Your Audience
When your book isn’t a good fit for those you’re pitching it to, your chances of closing a sale are low. If this is your problem, go right back – and change the way you build your list. Attract only those prospects who are likely to buy your book. Repel others.
And understand the secret formula…
As I explain in my book ‘Email Marketing for Authors‘, people buy only from those whom they know, like and trust.
Email marketing can speed up this process. Your emails will help subscribers know you; and then like you. Only then can you hope to win their trust, and that, in turn, translates into book sales.
Once you’ve got this combination right, you should see a steady flow of book sales from every promotional email you send… because by now, your readers know, like and trust you.
Is That All You’ll Measure?
No, there’s more. For instance, you’ll want to keep track of
List Growth: How many new subscribers join your email list? How many leave it? How quickly does this happen? If you work hard on promoting your readership, your list will grow faster. Set yourself monthly or quarterly growth targets, and monitor your progress towards them.
Subject Line Experiments: Try out different headlines for your emails and see which brings in more book sales. It can be fascinating to uncover ‘winning’ hooks that appeal to your readers – and double, or even triple your sales.
Repeat Emails: When a subscriber doesn’t open your email, you can resend the message a day or two later – and enjoy a tiny spurt of sales from the extra 10-15% who view this message. Try a different headline, and you might do even better!
Campaign Profitability: A sequence of email messages together makes up a ‘Campaign’. When you test different combinations (order of emails, subject line, content), you may stumble upon one that rakes in a higher profit – from the same list of subscribers!
That’s the thrill of email marketing. The joy of selling more books through an exciting process of discovery that begins when you
- keep track of important metrics
- try out different combinations
- run new tests and campaigns, and
- stumble upon a big winner
All along, you’ll be building an asset – your list of email subscribers – who grow to like and trust you enough to keep on buying from you, for years and years to come.
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Resource Section
Dr.Mani is an author, heart surgeon and social entrepreneur who writes and sells ebooks to raise funds that sponsor operations for children with heart defects. He blogs at https://DrMani.com and tweets @DrMani.
His book about Email Marketing For Authors is available from here: http://www.EzineMarketingCenter.com/email-marketing-for-authors.html
