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Email List Building Series (Part 5): Strategies to Grow Your List, Your Reach and Your Sales

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Email List Building Series (Part 5)_ Strategies to Grow Your List, Your Reach + Your Sales _ YourWriterPlatform (1)

We’ve come to the final post in the Email List Building Series, where we’ll up our game and delve into some of the more advanced list building techniques.

But before we do, let’s take a look at what we’ve accomplished so far:

In Part 1, The Power of an Email List (And Why It’s a Must), we discussed why building a targeted and invested email list of subscribers is hands down one of THE most important things you can do to ensure the long term growth of your writing career.

We pitted email vs. social media (email with the win!), and outlined the huge advantage of building your email list early.

And we discovered how creating meaningful relationships and sharing valued content with your subscribers builds trust and increases your influence – allowing you to create an army of book buyers and promoters.

In Part 2, Create a Sign Up Incentive That Knocks Their Socks Off, we looked at the psychology behind the right freebie, and if “bribing” people to sign up affected the quality of subscribers.

We recognized the need to know and understand as much as possible about the people we are trying to reach in order to design an opt-in that delivers.

And to get the creative juices flowing, I shared a monster list of incentive ideas for writers, as well as the tools needed to create and promote your shiny new opt-in incentive.

In Part 3, The Set Up, Start to Finish, I walked you step-by-step through the entire email list creation process using Aweber (an email marketing service).

I included a free PDF download of the flow from sign up to follow up message, as well as cautioned you about the importance of being legally compliant when obtaining email addresses from your subscribers. [Read more…]

Email List Building Series (Part 4): Finally! Ideas and Tips on What to Send to Your Subscribers

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Email List Building Series (Part 4)_ Finally! Ideas + Tips on What to Send to Your Subscribers _ YourWriterPlatform

If you’ve been following the Email List Building Series, you have learned why building your email list is so important, how to create a stellar opt-in “bribe” and how to set the whole thing up using an email marketing service like Aweber.

But here’s the question EVERYBODY is asking:

“What do I actually email my subscribers?”

Technology hurdles aside, this has got to be one of the biggest stumbling blocks preventing writers from creating an email list and developing their email marketing campaign.

And if you’re just starting out, write fiction or haven’t yet published, ‘what to email’ is an even bigger obstacle.

Overcoming the “I Have Nothing to Share” Barrier

What many writers struggling with this assume is that they have nothing relevant or meaningful to offer their readers.

There is no book to promote, no events or speaking engagements to flog, and–in the case of fiction writers–no central, non-fiction topic to teach.

But the root of the problem isn’t really having nothing important to share.

The real problem is not knowing who you are trying to share it with.

I’ve discussed how important it is to know whose attention you are trying to get earlier in this series, as well as wrote about it here and here.

But because it’s a critical concept to understand in order to answer the question, “What do I send to my subscribers?”, I am reinforcing the point yet again:

It is extremely difficult to determine what to communicate when you haven’t first taken the time to fully identify who you are trying to communicate with. (Click to Tweet this idea) [Read more…]

Email List Building Series (Part 3): The Set Up, Start to Finish

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To quote best-selling American author, web TV host, and personal development trainer, Marie Forleo:

“Insight without action is useless.”

Understanding the need and the benefits of developing a targeted and responsive email list is important, but taking the steps to actually implement what you’ve learned, is essential.

And this is where most people get tripped up.

Because between theory and application, there is often a chasm of indecision, fear and even plain old procrastination.

So to eliminate this gap, this post will hammer out the exact steps you need to take to set up your email list and start collecting email addresses on your website.

You’ll not only know how to create–and where to place–your web forms, but have a collection of tools that will help make the task much easier.

Oh, and I’ll also be giving one of these tools away for free… 🙂

So please don’t just read this post. Take action! This is your “no-fluff” cheat sheet for getting your email list set up TODAY.

Ready? Let’s go.

(If you’ve missed them, make sure you check out Part 1 and Part 2 of the Email List Building Series.)

Getting Started

There can be a lot of moving parts to creating your first email list, so it’s important to get a clear understanding of both the behind-the-scenes process, as well as the experience from your new subscriber’s perspective. [Read more…]

Email List Building Series (Part 2): Create a Sign Up Incentive That Knocks Their Socks Off

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Email List Building Series (Part 2)_ Create a Sign Up Incentive That Knocks Their Socks Off _ YourWriterPlatform

There are two camps when it comes to what Seth Godin calls the “ethical bribe”.

Some people believe that by providing an incentive for people to sign up for your list, you attract the wrong crowd: those in it just to receive the freebie, and nothing more.

Others (the majority) believe that, if done right, your sign up incentive significantly increases the odds that a new visitor will take the tentative–but all important–first step in investing in you and your content.

Reading your posts, sharing them with their following, or leaving a comment on your blog are all small ways that your reader is confirming their interest and your relevance.

But handing over an email address is a bigger commitment to you and the work you are sharing. By allowing you direct access to their inbox, your reader is affirming that a certain level of trust has been established and that they are willing to hear more.

The “right” opt-in

  • removes a barrier to action (“Should I trust this person with my email address?”)
  • reduces the potential risk for your reader (“Wow, she’s giving this away for free?”)
  • and persuades people to take the next step: joining your community.

Here on YWP, I waited about a year before I created my email sign up incentive. In hindsight, that was probably about 9 months too long. 😉

Within the first three months of starting this site, I already knew what would be an ideal incentive, because every second or third email I received was from writers asking this basic question: “I know I need to build my writer platform, but where do I start?”

I had been steadily growing my list over that period, but once I finally took the time to create and make available the free ebook, The Quick Start Guide to Building Your Writer Platform, my email list sign ups have almost doubled! That’s thousands of email subscribers lost because I was dragging my feet.

Ooops!

Do you see how important it is to start now rather than waiting? [Read more…]

Email List Building Series (Part 1): The Power of an Email List (And Why It’s a Must)

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Email List Building Series (Part 1)_ The Power of an Email List and Why it's a Must _ YourWriterPlatform

If there was one thing you could do that would multiply your reach and help you build deeper relationships with people who are already interested in your message and your work–would you do it?

What if that one thing required no tricks, no SEO, no fancy design skills and no algorithms to decipher?

And if  building that same one thing over time lead to significantly increased sales of your books or services–

would it be worth doing?

Building a targeted and invested email list of subscribers is hands down one of THE most important things you can do to ensure the long term growth of your writing career.

If I could only take one thing with me on a deserted (platform building) island, it would be my email list.

Why?

Because no matter how important blogging, social media, publicity and other forms of outreach are for getting your work in front of the right eyeballs, your email list is the only thing–if nurtured–that will allow you to directly and personally communicate with your readers on an ongoing basis.

For those of you who are not convinced that it’s worth the trouble (or you’re just unsure where to start) I have created a series of posts that will address the why, the how and the what of list building for writers. [Read more…]

Authors with Platforms Sell Books.

It’s that simple.

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