Five Ways to Grow Your Mailing List
Whether you are a new writer or have been self-publishing your books for a while, you will have heard about the benefits of having your own email list. I’m going to share with you five ways to grow your mailing list.
Why Do I Need a Mailing List?
There is always talk of how sellers of digital products, a category into which we as authors at least partly fall, must be on social media. There is always the latest platform, which reputedly helps writers to sell a ton of books. This may be true, but all the followers (fans) you gain this way are really customers of that platform. All their details are held by that platform, not you.
A mailing list is totally and wholly owned by you. Even if a social platform suddenly falls over or is considered a security risk (in the times we live in, this could happen to the Chinese-owned TikTok), you are left with absolutely nothing. Suddenly all those thousands of followers are no more.
There is another reason.
Email is still the best way to reach people. It gets much higher open and click-through rates. People engage more with an email that they have opted to receive, especially if you are careful about who is on your list.
You will not get engagement if the subscribers aren’t your fans. Or readers of your genre. Or readers at all!
So it’s important to ensure that your mailing list is made up of people who read in your genre and are your fans.
If you have a list of 10,000 people who are keen to open your email, and you happen to mention that you have a new book out, you should get a click-through rate of around 4% which equates to 400 readers. Let’s say that just a quarter of those goes on to buy your new book. If your new book is priced at $4.99 with a 70% royalty rate, one email would have netted you (100 x $3.49 = $349).
That one email would have cost you a fraction of an advertising campaign.
With most email providers you can also now segment your audience so that you can send a follow-up email to those who didn’t react to the first one. This way you could get another 50 sales from the second, and yet another 50 with a third reminder. You can see how effective email marketing can be.
When you compare these results to social media, where the click-through rate is below 1%, you can see how less targeted (free) posting about your new book on sites such as Twitter or Facebook can be.
Don’t ignore social media altogether, though. These platforms do provide a great way to remind your audience about you and reinforce your marketing message (see below).
How to Grow Your Mailing List
There are several ways to grow your mailing list while making sure that the people on it are the ‘right’ people. These are readers who are receptive to your message and want to hear from you.
So how do you grow your mailing list? Scroll down to see five ways that I have found during the past ten years in the business work for me and my many self-published clients.
Book back (and front) matter
I find the most effective way to get readers to join your mailing list is to add a note about it at the back of your book. This is also a way that takes the least amount of effort.
When readers have finished your book, and if they have liked it or even loved it (we always hold out for this!), they are positively attuned to you. It’s a good time to let them know that if they wish to know when your next book is out, find out more about your characters, your other books, or just your writing life, they can sign up for your newsletter.
I usually do this at the end of the “About the Author” section, but you can also have a special page at the front and/or at the back of the book to entice your readers to sign up.
If you have a reader magnet, ie a free book or similar (see below), then you should definitely have a special page to tell your readers about it. I have two free books on offer for readers of both of my book series, but I also let the readers know on the “About the Author” page about my newsletter. The more places the merrier!
When you are preparing your book for publication, just add a page about your mailing list and it will be there forever.
2. Reader Magnets
Reader magnet is free content that you give away to your readers. In exchange, they sign up for your email list.
I’m going to write a separate blog post about reader magnets soon, but here are some ideas for what you can use to entice your readers to sign up for your list:
Free book – first novel or novella in a series if you are writing one
Free short story
Free chapter - this can be a prequel, an unpublished continuation of the story, or the first chapter of a new book to be published
Additional information about your characters, or scenes that you couldn’t fit into the book.
A cheatsheet if writing non-fiction
Putting a note about your free (exclusive if you can make it) offer at the beginning and end of your book, which requires a sign-up to your newsletter subscription, is one of the most efficient ways to get readers to subscribe to your list.
3. Author giveaways and competitions
Offering a limited-time book giveaway or competition is an excellent way to gain subscribers. What’s more, these types of promotions are often done by genre, so you can guarantee that the person who signs up is a fan of your kind of book.
You can organise your own giveaway, or a multi-author giveaway if you have a lot of author friends who write in the same genre as you. But it’s a lot easier to go with an established e-mail marketing company with a following.
I use sites such as Bookfunnel and Booksweeps, but there are many others. You can find these either via just Googling author giveaways, or going via sites such as the Alliance of Independent Authors, which vet services offered to self-published authors.
4. Social Media
Although relying on social media alone to build your fanbase is not advised, the various platforms are very useful when growing your mailing list. Add your newsletter in your profile on Twitter, Instagram, LinkedIn etc.
Don’t forget that someone needs to see an offer, such as your reader magnet on average seven times before they take action online, so the more places you can notify readers about your mailing list the better.
You can also run short social media campaigns reminding your followers about your mailing list and/or free content offer.
You can share a newsletter that you think is particularly good, or post about your reader magnet. As long as you don’t do this too often, I think people will generally have positive reactions to such reminders. Don’t forget that if you are growing your following on a particular platform, new followers might not even know about your free offer, or that you have a regular newsletter.
5. Author Website
The call to sign up for your mailing list – with your reader magnet if using – should be prominently placed on your author website. I think after your book’s front and back matter, this is by far the easiest and most effective place to gain more fans.
You can put the link on every page of your website, and if you write a regular blog, it’s important to also have the details of how to sign up for your mailing list at the bottom or in a side panel of each post. Don’t forget, if the reader enjoyed reading your blog, they might also like reading your newsletter – and most likely will become a reader of your titles.
A word about advertising
As a final note, I wanted to say a little about advertising to gain readers. Targeted, well-run advertising campaigns can bring great results in selling your books as well as growing your mailing list. I’ve had some great results running ads on Facebook and Instagram with one of my free novellas, The Young Heart. But, and this is a big but, the investment was considerable. I spent a few hundred pounds and gained a few hundred followers. This was, however, after I had finished writing The Nordic Heart series of six books. My aim was to increase the sales of that series by
a. giving away a new prequel novella to increase my mailing list
and
b. subsequently selling as many books in the series as possible to those readers who signed up for my newsletter
If you are just starting out, or do not write a series of books, I’d advise against spending money on advertising to increase your mailing list. You may gain good, solid fans for the future, but the cost can be considerable and you won’t see the returns for a long, long time.
Over to You
I hope I’ve inspired you to start growing your mailing list. Please comment below, I’d love to hear from you!