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Post by Pru Freda on Apr 23, 2015 12:03:20 GMT -5
There's a lot of talk on Mark Dawson's (he of the FB ads) Facebook group about getting people to sign up for your mailing list. The question that always occurs to me is: why should anyone sign up if they've not read your work and therefore don't know if they'd like it?
Mailing lists may drive sales, but you need sales before the mailing list, surely?
Signed
Yours,
Confused of England.
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Post by Miss Terri Novelle on Apr 23, 2015 12:54:11 GMT -5
What you say makes sense but I'm thinking it's a numbers game.
Organic takes longer to build but is more responsive for exactly the reason you state. People will have read and liked your book enough to sign up for more.
Lists built off FB ads build much quicker but I think you are spot on with the idea that that type of list would be more volatile.
To my way of thinking, his method works better for him than it would for me because he is starting from a different place. Higher rankings, more sales, more fans, larger social presence. Different genre.
Or I'm totally wrong and ignoring a good opportunity for increasing sales. These are the headaches of self publishing.
Is a larger more volatile list worth more than a smaller and more responsive one? And if so, how much should one spend to find out? He spent a lot of money and I'm not convinced though I may be intrigued enough to do a much smaller scale ad and shunt those people to a separate list. Maybe even give them a copy of the already free book with a note in the back that says if you didn't like my book, here's the unsubscribe link, feel free to use it.
Dunno. Headaches of indie publishing.
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Post by scdaffron on Apr 23, 2015 13:28:52 GMT -5
Is a larger more volatile list worth more than a smaller and more responsive one? In my experience, no. Here's something I wrote after I chucked my mailing lists of about 10,000 people that I'd developed for years. www.susandaffron.com/stop-doing-what-isnt-working/Here's a key line: "Prospects are people who might buy. Customers are people who have bought. There’s a big difference." My "new releases" list is now made up of people who HAVE BOUGHT. And when I put out a new release, this list sells books. It's growing slowly, but it's growing  (The standard disclaimers apply and your mileage may vary, but that's been my experience.) |
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Post by Daniel on Apr 23, 2015 16:44:01 GMT -5
The motivation for people signing up for your list will reflect their motivations for staying on your list.
Build a list using freebies, and you'll get subscribers who are waiting for the next freebie.
Build a list of readers who love your books, and you'll get subscribers who are waiting for your next book to come out.
The only people who get excited about list size for its own sake are Internet Marketers. For those guys, a 1% conversion rate is considered good because they are used to working with a poorly-targeted list.
I would rather have a small list of fans than a big list of people who ignore my emails. A big list of fans would be even better. (Still working on that.)
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Post by Becca Mills on Apr 23, 2015 22:23:39 GMT -5
I would rather have a small list of fans than a big list of people who ignore my emails. A big list of fans would be even better. (Still working on that.) This has been 100% my reasoning as well, but hasn't Mark been reporting some pretty impressive clicking-on percentages? |
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Post by Rinelle Grey on Apr 24, 2015 4:43:02 GMT -5
I've heard of people who've grown their lists using targeting facebook marketing campaigns, and I've heard some good results. I'll probably give it a go some time.
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Post by Deleted on Apr 26, 2015 4:19:55 GMT -5
I agree with Daniel and Becca. My list is almost completely organic...99% from the CTA in the back of my two novels. I say that because I did add 40 names from a promo I was in with a group of authors, but we gave away something (don't remember what).
It's close to 700. I've never offered a free book, so I know most of those people signed up based on what I did offer...new release info. I've thought about spending money to grow it, but never having used it (I put it in there just before publishing my 2nd novel), I want to see my open rate based on my next release before I waste more money. Cuz God knows, I've wasted a lot of money in this gig so far, lol.
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Post by ameliasmith on Apr 26, 2015 5:38:22 GMT -5
Total prawn here. I've been hearing about the Mark Dawson facebook ads, and I've signed up for his videos, but I haven't watched them. I have 19 subscribers each on my ARC list and my regular list. I recently sent out a new release/ARC announcement and got a much higher open rate (60%) on my ARC list (vs. 40% on the other list) according to MailChimp.
I have a teeny little goal for this year which is to cover my costs on this self-publishing thing, which makes me hesitate to even look at videos which are all about spending hundreds or thousands on advertising, but with a list as small as mine it seems like any growth would be good, maybe?
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Post by Daniel on Apr 28, 2015 12:08:43 GMT -5
One other thing to think about when growing a list is what you will do with those subscribers once you get them. The more engagement you have with the list, the more worthwhile it will be to invest time and money into growing the list. I've managed to release books only once or twice a year so far. Any investment I make in growing my list has too few opportunities for giving me a return, considering how quickly email addresses go stale. MailChimp claims that email addresses are stale after about six months, and the subscriber permission is stale after about three months. Based on my own experience, I'd say those figures are overly conservative, but even quadrupling them gives you just two years for an individual email address to contribute to your ROI. Spending a million dollars to grow your list is worth it if you will earn more than a million back from the effort. The problem is that you rarely know what the ROI will be in advance. The best you can do is pick the most promising options and treat them like you've stepped up to a craps table at Las Vegas: only bet what you can afford to lose. |
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Post by Daniel on Apr 28, 2015 12:52:03 GMT -5
I would rather have a small list of fans than a big list of people who ignore my emails. A big list of fans would be even better. (Still working on that.) This has been 100% my reasoning as well, but hasn't Mark been reporting some pretty impressive clicking-on percentages? I don't doubt that what Mark is doing works for Mark. That's why he's sharing his success story and not crying in his beer over spending a bunch of money on Facebook ads that didn't work.  I'm not Mark, and I probably don't work my email list the way Mark does. His methods are unlikely to work for me because of how infrequently I contact my list. It's like I said in my prior post--I don't give my subscribers enough opportunities to earn back the cost of acquisition. But that doesn't mean his methods won't work for other authors who do a better job of engagement than I do. When considering a marketing strategy, I try to considering all of the tactics that go into making that strategy work. I can't expect to get the same results unless I'm willing to do the same work. And even then, I know how mercurial publishing through Amazon can be. I could do the exact same thing and get different results simply because I write a different kind of book. No matter what, it's good to see what other people are doing. I never know what will inspire an idea that might work for me. |
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Post by Tony Donadio on May 10, 2015 16:24:28 GMT -5
Apologies in advance if this is slightly tangential from the original post, but do folks have recommendations or opinions with regard to email service providers? As a starting author this is next on my list to set up, and I'm trying to pick one. I'm leaning toward MailChimp for the cost (especially starting out), and I've heard mixed reviews about Aweber.
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Post by Rinelle Grey on May 10, 2015 19:12:22 GMT -5
I'm using mailchimp, and have been really happy with them.
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Post by Alan Petersen on May 10, 2015 19:17:43 GMT -5
Apologies in advance if this is slightly tangential from the original post, but do folks have recommendations or opinions with regard to email service providers? As a starting author this is next on my list to set up, and I'm trying to pick one. I'm leaning toward MailChimp for the cost (especially starting out), and I've heard mixed reviews about Aweber. I use and I'm happy with Aweber. But I've used them for years before I started to self-publish fiction. One of the reasons Mail Chimp is so popular is because it's free up to (I believe) 2,000 subscribers. You can't beat free. But once you grow past the free stage then the pricing between Aweber and Mail Chimp is about the same, last time I looked Aweber was a bit cheaper. It shouldn't be that big of a deal since the consensus is that once you outgrow the free Mail Chimp level you should be to justify the expense since your list is now making you money to justify it. But if you start with Aweber aside from a free month trial, you're going to have to cough up $19 month while you grow your list. And that's a slow process or expensive if you're using Facebook Ads to build it. So using Mail Chimp makes sense. Gives you wiggle room to grow without the added expense. If I was starting out I would probably use Mail Chimp to save the monthly Aweber fee. I believe the Mail Chimp deliverability rates are right up with Aweber. Aweber has some more bells and whistles, but a lot of it is stuff most authors won't use (analytics, split testing, etc). |
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Post by Tony Donadio on May 11, 2015 6:36:47 GMT -5
Thanks for the feedback, all. I decided to go with MailChimp, pretty much for the reasons Alan explained.
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Post by ameliasmith on May 11, 2015 14:54:43 GMT -5
I also use MailChimp. Another free alternative I've heard of is a WordPress plugin. It should be easy enough to Google -- I don't have the link handy, though.
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Post by Alan Petersen on May 11, 2015 16:11:38 GMT -5
I also use MailChimp. Another free alternative I've heard of is a WordPress plugin. It should be easy enough to Google -- I don't have the link handy, though. There are few of those plugins but they use your own SMTP/Email system and that can lead to a lot of headaches (one single spam complaint can get your web host to boot you off their server, deliverability rates will probably a lot lower, strict rules on how many emails you can send, etc) versus using an email marketing service provider. It's a viable option, but with MailChimp being free and all, I wouldn't want to use my email system for my mailing list. |
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