Book Marketing & PR, Wordpress/ Author Websites

8 actionable ways to grow your mailing list

In this post I talk about the importance of growing your mailing list and why it’s every author’s biggest asset. (Hint: it’s evergreen, more personal, and should even take priority over growing your FB page or Twitter following!)

Today I’d like to offer some suggestions for how to grow your mailing list (or email followers ;)) either by optimizing your author website or collecting email addresses in various ways offline. Let’s dig in!

1. Notification Bars

As you can see on 30 Day Books, there is a ‘notification’ bar that sits at the top of the page (look up!).

We change the copy from time to time, but it lets you know what our latest news is and hopefully draws attention to it. You can use this to advertise your newsletter as Brandon does on his personal blog:

(From http://www.plinan.com) There are several options available that offer this banner bar –> Check out Hellobar, Viper Bar, Attention Bar.

2. Back of Your Book

What better time to capture your reader’s attention than at the back of your book or eBook? Make it more compelling for them to actually visit your site and sign up by offering an exclusive bonus or contest. The great thing about eBooks is that you can experiment with this often and try different things to see what entices more readers to your site.

3. At the end of your blogposts

You’ll see this at the end of every post I publish on 30 Day Books. If a reader has found the post entertaining or educational, then it’s likely they’ll want to read more of my stuff – it’s a great time to offer for them to come on board!

The plugin I use for this to appear is called ‘Bottom of every post’ and is available for WordPress sites.

4. By adding the ‘Tweet Old Post’ plugin

The ‘Tweet Old Post’ plugin sends out your blogposts to Twitter while you’re sleeping. Or writing. Or doing whatever you should be doing instead of Twittering!

It drives more traffic to your blog and to the posts that you are no longer actively promoting, and these posts will likely attract new readers to your blog. If you’re doing everything else right on your site, you’ll hopefully convert some of these new readers to newsletter subscribers.

5. Guest post on other writers’ sites

Offer to write informative, useful or entertaining articles for those who share a similar audience to yours, and people will want to hear more from you! In your bio signature at the end of the post, invite people to sign up for your newsletter.

6. Collect email addresses physically

When doing a signing, reading, or other in-person event, be sure to leave a guest book on the table you’re signing at, or even your iPad or laptop so that interested readers can add their info digitally to your newsletter sign up.

Just be sure to let people know what they are signing up for, and give specifics such as once a week updates, or “very occasional book news” (1-4 times a year)

7. Offer an “Ethical bribe”

People don’t part with their email address without good reason!

To give people an extra incentive to sign up, offer a deleted scene, the first chapter of your next book, tips and advice, a “look beyond the scenes” or something you have to offer, and you’ll see conversion rates (that’s fancy talk for “more email addresses left”) improve enormously.

Sign up form on author Robert B Lowe’s homepage

Sign up form on Lauren Clark’s site

8. Add an opt-in form on your About page 

On most sites, the About page is the second most visited page on your site (after whatever you consider to be your landing page; either a static page or your blog). People want to know more about you, and if you make your About page juicy, fun, or alluring, then you’ll convert people on this page like nowhere else!

What other ideas do you have that I missed? Leave a comment!

By the way, if you’re wondering which email management system to use, we love Mailchimp (free up to 2,000 subscribers) and AWeber.

pssst… Looking for a new author website you can update and manage hassle free? Authorlicious is here!