RichWriters Book Promotion Article: Email Marketing

The magic of E-mailing.  E-mailing marketing goes beyond just spamming people because nobody likes spam.  It doesn't work.  Don't waste your time.  It is a numbers game.  If done correctly, it can attract a lot of fans, and it's one of the ways I use to create such a huge fan base for my book "Forever My Lady."  What's great about E-mail marketing, of course, is that it doesn't cost you one penny.  It does cost you time but it doesn't cost you penny.  And it can be done naturally without having to mention your book.   In most E-mail programs, such as Yahoo, even Outlook, or Hotmail, they allow you to do what's called signatures.  Now, signature is an incredible way of promoting your book, an effortless way because once you set up the signatures, you can E-mail like you normally E-mail and not ever mention your book and will do all the advertising for you.   What you want in your signature in particular is that you are the author of whatever the title is, you want to have some type of tag line that could be even that the book is available on bookstores, everywhere or that it's coming soon.  If it is coming soon with the next 30 days, and a live link to your website.   Now, remember if you're going to mention that the book is coming soon, the reason why you want it to be within 30 days is because books are often impulse buys.  People want to buy the book right away.  So, if they can't buy the book within a reasonable period of time, you're really wasting your time.  Yes, it is building awareness, but people want to buy things now, which is another reason why you really want to get them into the bookstores because people would rather go to the bookstore and pick up a book if you would rather drive half a day to buy a book and get it now and then wait two days for their book.  It's just human nature.  I don't know what it is.   Now, if you have a significant publisher, a reputable publisher, you also want to mention that in your signature as well.  Do not put the signature in bold.  You want to keep it as natural as possible.  Now, what's great about Yahoo is it allows you to add the cover of your book next to your signature.  Not all E-mail programs is allowing to do that.  The more they see your cover, the more it's advertising your book.  Remember that some people's e-mail program doesn't allow to see images so that it's of a little bit of a draw back, but most people let say, good 80% of them allow some HTML image.  So, they will be able to see a cover of your book.  So, what you'll be doing is everytime you E-mail, whether it's about your ability to pay or to say hi to your friend, they're going to see that E-mail signature, and when they see that E-mail signature, they're going to be reminded of your book.  It has a live link on it, so it's going to allow people to be able to go to your website.   It should have really also a called action for example, the signature could also have [Inaudible 02:36] to read an excerpt click here or check out this book trailer or to win an autograph copy of the book, click here.  Some kind of called to action that they have to do something and have a reason to click on it, and that's going to lead to your website and of course, lead to a book sale later on.  Be careful of using certain words like free because what they have what's called the spam police really to kind of scan your E-mail and they'll put it in that black hole called Bulk Mail, and they may never ever see your E-mail, which is really pointless.  You really want to make your E-mail as natural as possible.  Once you set up the signature, whether in your E-mail or [Inaudible 03:12] or a friend, they're going to see it.  You really should be creating a list of friends, so that every time somebody E-mails you should say their address because later on, what you're going to do is you're going E-mail them just a hi or hello or merry Christmas or happy [Inaudible 03:28] or whatever the case is, and by doing that, people are going to see your E-mail and then go, "Wait a minute.  You're an author.  I didn't know that."  And they will E-mail back and ask you about your book.  Again, don't push your book when they ask you about it.  Just be natural, be nonchalant about it, tell them basically about it, if they ask more questions, answer them, they're going to be very excited for you.  Some of them will have no idea that you're an author.  And they're going to ask where they can get the book.  You better have that book ready and available, and it's available in terms of Amazon.com, that's a good start.  A lot of times, people would prefer to go to an actual bookstore and break [Inaudible 04:00] and pick up the book because they want things now.  There are many other alternatives.  Again, start collecting those e-mails.  Everytime someone e-mails, you say their address because you're going to utilize those.  You should really E-mail every man, woman, child, you have in your database.  Every person you know should know about your book.  E-mail them to say hello, keep in touch with once a month just to say how they're doing.  By doing that naturally, they're going to mention your book.  They're going to notice your book and what's more important than them buying the book is they're going to mention to somebody at least one or two people that, Oh my God I know somebody who wrote a book.  That person is going to ask, Oh really! What's the book about, and they're going to do all the advertising for you, so you don't have to do anything.  Do not beg them, do not nag them, do not annoy them and push your book on them because it's going to turn them off.  Remember some people are going to E-mail you back and say, Oh well that sounds like a great book.  Can you send me a copy?  Make sure they understand that they're not getting a free copy.  Do not give a free printed copy of your book to anyone not even your mom.  Your mom should be supporting you too.  You really want to give your hard-earned free printed copies to the right kind of people, and unless they promise to promote your book to the thousands and thousands of people in their database, it's really not worth it.  If they want a free copy of the book, then give them a copy of the free E‑book so that they can read it.  What happens is when people read the e-book is they can't only read so much on the screen because their eyes get tired and they prefer to go out and buy the book.  So if it's easy for them to buy it, they'll go out and buy it.  If you don't have a great E-mail database, which you can do as you can do a Google search under atomic E-mail hunter, there so many different E-mail programs that will go to different websites whatever your target market goes, and it will extract e-mails from that website and help you create a list.  You can actually E-mail people or perfect strangers in a personable E-mail.  You can tell them about your book, you could tell him, hey I'm a new author.  I just love to see what you think about my book, keep it short, two or three sentences at the most and give them a link to your website.  I'm going to tell you out of the people who actually read your E-mail, at least half of them are going to go to your website.  You do not want to carbon copy your E-mail to everyone.  People should not see other people's address because some people really go crazy if they see they're E-mail amongst the CCs, and it makes them feel like your not being personable like you see them as an object.  You don't want to objectify them.  You can also E-mail organizations that represent your particular target market.  If you know that you're writing a book that really appeals to housewives, and you know there's a Housewives Association of America, why not E-mail the association president and offer them a copy of your book, tell them about your book, complement them about their website, let them know that your interested in their particular topic, or that you like to speak to their group.  By giving them a copy of the book, then you can perhaps have them promote the book to their thousands of members.  And lastly, when somebody ask you to remove them from your list, whatever the reason, whether it's justified or not, respect that.  Do it.  Don't E-mail them anymore.  By E-mailing them anyway you're just going to really tick them off and that's going to spread bad word about your book, and you really don't want that.  By following these simple techniques you will build your fan base.