#281: 11 Ways Authors Can Grow an Email List

Welcome to Kingdom Writers, where we help equip and empower Christian writers of all genres to share your unique gifts with the world. We're your hosts, C.J. and Shelley Hitz.

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Welcome to this marketing minute. My name is Shelli Hitz, your author, coach and mentor, Inside Christian Book Academy and the podcast host of Kingdom Writers. And today I want to share with you 11 ways that you, as an author, can grow your email list. I have talked about this for years and years and years. I've been coaching authors for over a decade and one of the things I emphasize the most is to build, nurture and grow an email list of readers. And to be honest, most writers resist it. And I get it. I resisted it for years as well. But today I want to share with you 11 different ways you can grow this container, you know, this list of readers that then you can build a relationship with and can continue to sell your books so that you can impact lives. So these are going to be broken up into two main categories. The first is strategic relationships. And I really believe this is key and something that I have used over and over and over to grow my business since I launched my first website in 2004. Been full time in our online business ministry and business since 2011. Strategic partnerships has been a big part of our growth. And then the second one is to gather other authors in your genre or other experts on your topic. And this has been another really key thing that I have used over the years. So let's dive right in. If you're a note taker, this would be a time to take out a pen and paper and and start writing notes. So the first one is podcast interviews. So this is where you go on a podcast, where your ideal reader is listening, right? And you have an interview. I know for some of you this terrifies you. And it's okay. We have a lot of different options, but I encourage you to step outside of your comfort zone. You might even do something with someone you feel very comfortable with in the beginning, a friend or a colleague. Or do something where you know you have a set set of questions that you're going to answer. And then the strategic part of it is at the end, you're going to share a link to sign up to your email list. So I am already assuming you have a compelling lead magnet, which is just simply a free gift for those who sign up to your email subscriber list and so it needs to be something that when someone hears about it, they want it. And so that is for an entire other lesson. But today we're focusing on how to increase and grow your email list. So when you're on the podcast, offer a lot of value. Share stories, be authentic, be yourself, and then make sure at some point that you're sharing the link or the place that they can get access to, to this free gift. The second one is guest blog posts. This is something I know all writers will feel comfortable with. Here you're going to be writing something and you're going to be sharing it on a blog that is related again to your theme of your book. It's, you know, your target reader is reading that blog. And typically there's an author byline at the bottom and you can include information about your free gift and a link where they can download it. Number three is a social media takeover. So this is where you reach out to another author in your genre or you reach out to another expert in your field or someone that's related. They have a similar audience and you offer to take over their social media account for a day. Or, or maybe you offer first to let them take over your social media for a day and then you do the same for them. So that would kind of be a swap, but it can go one way or it can go both ways. But sometimes the best way to get your foot in the door is to invite someone else into your space first, do something for them first, and then offer some really great value, entertain them, do something that is really going to attract their attention. Agree with person that you're taking over. You know that at some point you can share a link to your free gift to their audience. And you know, you can either do that in the comments of a post or maybe, you know, you're sharing a lot of value and at the end you have that call to action is what it's called in the marketing world. Or, you know, get my free da da da da da at and then you have a link. Now I do recommend having an easy to remember link for, for your free offers. So, for instance, we have a website that's called trainingauthors.com and all of our current free offers are available@trainingauthors.com free. That's so easy to remember, right? But it redirects to a longer link. And so that's something I recommend that you do with whatever you're doing with your books. The first was podcast interviews. The second is guest blog posts. The third is A social media takeover. The fourth is a solo email swap. So similar to social media, except you're going to find someone that has a similar email list to yours where it's preferably similar in size. Because in order for this to be a win win, these are strategic partnerships. These are people that are allowing you to come into their space and they're sharing you their audience. And so it needs to be a win win situation. Like for the podcast interview, the blog post, the social media takeover, you're creating content for them and taking that burden of creating that piece of content for them. And so that's a win for them, typically, right. But for an email, a solo email, in order for that to be a win win, you can actually do a swap. So it's like you're able to get in front of each other's audiences. And in order to order for this to really be a win win, typically you'll want to have a similar email size or similar amount of people who are actually opening your emails on a regular basis. So there's a difference. You know, when you're doing this, you may want to ask like, what is your email list size? But not just list size, but what is your typical open rate? Because somebody could have 20,000 people on their email list and only 1% are opening their emails, whereas someone else could have a 2,000 person email list, but 50% are opening their email. So you know, it can be very, you know, it can vary a lot. And so that's something to definitely take into consideration. And then the final one that I already actually kind of mentioned was social media swap. So you have the social media takeover and then you have the social media swap. So those were actually two. So the strategic partnerships I mentioned are podcast interviews, guest blog post, social media takeover, solo email swap, and then a social media swap. So out of those five things, what is one option that you could choose to do over this next month? I want you to write that down and I want you to start brainstorming some ideas of who you could ask, who you could reach out to. And you know what? I find that most of my audience is very hesitant to ask someone else to do something for them. So if that's you, you know what, first reach out and ask, offer to do something for them, and then reach back out and say, hey, that went over so well with my audience. I was just wondering, would you be interested in interviewing me for your podcast or having me on your blog, or hosting me on your social media platform? So you can always start off offering to do something for someone else first. But the other thing is you never know until you ask. And so, you know, it's really, really important to be that courageous writer. We have courageous writer challenges inside Christian Book Academy, and we provide actually many marketing messages kits which are like templates and prompts and courageous writer ideas. And that way you can just edit them pretty easily and move forward. But I want to see you be a courageous writer and do some things to move your book forward so that you can impact more lives. That's really the goal here. And then the second group of options I want to give you is where you're gathering authors or experts.

In one place, and you're kind of the one organizing and hosting it. So the first idea for this section is to do like a collaborative blog post. This is much easier for nonfiction because you can ask a question of several different experts or several different people who write in this, in your niche or genre, and then you can gain back those answers and it can be like an expert post. And then you ask them, this is the key. You ask them to share it with their audience. And at the bottom, you have a call to action to join your email list. Again, you have to have a really compelling, irresistible lead magnet for any of these things to work. But you know what, get started. Get started with what you can. And you may want to update that lead magnet in the future. So for fiction writers, this could be a really fun way to do a collaborative story. So you gather other authors in your genre and you have like a storyline, and the first person writes the first part of the story, and you kind of have each person write the next section and then the next section. And so it's kind of this fun collaborative story. Now, obviously it's not going to be a book. It needs to be short enough to fit into blog post. You want to give strict, you know, word count deadlines for them and, you know, make sure that, that it's. It flows well and it's fun. But that's just a fun way to have several different fiction authors highlighted and featured on your blog. And then you can have them share that content with their audience. And again, at the bottom, have a link to your lead magnet. All right. Another option is a top 10 books in your genre post. So I have done this in the past for multiple different things, but I did top 10 self publishing blogs. And so you can make it about books, blogs, you know, experts, you know, podcasts, whatever you want to do. But I recommend doing it about books because you're wanting to attract readers, right? And so you could do your top 10 books in the historical fiction genre or whatever you're writing in, and then you pick some of your favorites. And you might think this is kind of weird because I'm doing free advertising for my competitors, but you know what, if somebody reads your book, they'll probably be interested in reading more than one book in your genre. They're not going to just pick one book and that's it. They're probably wanting to buy multiple books in that genre. And especially fiction. Most fiction readers are wanting more, more, more, more, more. So it's not necessarily taking away from you. It's actually you're able to gather more of these readers that are interested in your type of book in one place. And so how you would do this is so similar to the collaborative post. You would. But actually you're going to be creating all that content. You're gonna pick 10 of the books that you really like in your genre, make sure that you've actually read them, that you really do like them, and click to Amazon to that person's website, make it, just have a graphic of their book. Make it just a really great resource for, for readers. But also then you're going to create a graphic at the top that says, you know, something that says top 10 books in XX genre or, you know, whatever, top 10 Christian suspense novels, whatever. And then you can create that in Canva very easily. They have lots of templates. And you're going to send that graphic to each of the authors and say, guess what? You made our list. And I just wanted to share this great news with you. If you want to share this with your audience that you made this list, here's a graphic and here's the link to share again. I just, I love your book and so excited to connect with you in this way. First of all, this can build a relationship that can turn into a strategic partnership down the road. So the other things we talked about, so these authors that you're highlighting on your blog, they can then later be people that you reach out to and say, hey, would you like to do a solo email swap? What would you think? Or hey, I would love to have you on my social media. Would you be interested in maybe doing a social media takeover swap or, you know, so forth or say, hey, I have a really great idea for your blog. What do you think? You know, as a guest blog post? So, you know, make sure that you're, you're thinking ahead. You're creating these relationships and establishing these connections and not just thinking about it for you, but thinking about how it's going to help your readers and also how it's going to help that other author. Right. All right, so I think that's one that all of you can do. If you don't have a blog, you can also do the same thing on an Instagram post. There's, you know, there's only. You can only add 10 images in a carousel. So you might need to do like the top 10 image and then. Or top. Make it top nine. Top nine and then do nine books in there. I just like 10 because it's like double digits and everything. Or you can have something at the top that says, you know, top 10 and then, you know, an image of each book or something like that. So you can do it on Instagram, you don't Facebook. You know, you can do it on whatever social media platform you're on as well. But it works especially well, I think, if you have the blog. And then you want to make sure that you're also adding that call to action. Right. To join your email list and make sure your book's on the list. Right. Don't forget your book. Choose one of your bestselling books and include it on that list, too. All right, Let me know if you put this to action, because I think every single one of you could do that. And I really believe it could generate some really great responses and some results for you as you're putting yourself out there and you're being a courageous writer in the kingdom of God. Amen. All right, so the next one is to do an online summit or to host authors for Q&As or a coffee chat or whatever you want to call it. So for a nonfiction book, it's going to be a little bit easier probably to do a online summit or online conference and each person does a little different topic. For fiction, I think you could do this whole thought of like a coffee chat or a Q and A and, you know, maybe even have them share some deleted scenes or some different plot twists that they had considered. Some behind the scenes stuff, right? Like juicy stuff that readers are interested in or, you know, a favorite character, like talk a little bit more about that character about, you know, stuff that hasn't been in the books. You know, be creative. You know, you are a creative person as a writer, you are a creative person person. And so come up with some really creative ideas. And then when you host these, you don't even have to host a whole bunch. Like if you might do three and let's say you do Monday, Wednesday and Friday, and you have a week of this, you know, historical romance, you know, week or something. Or you have this online summit for.

Your audience. Like, you know, for me, it'd be for Christian writers. And so, you know, you could even just keep it really simple. You could prerecord all the videos and then just share them like in a Facebook group or, you know, share them on YouTube or something like that. You can just keep it really simple and then you want that other author, that other speaker to be sharing that with their audience as well. You can also just do this from your Facebook page and, you know, upload a recorded video and then have them share that link. You could embed them into your blog post and then they're sharing your website and your blog post. What I want you to think about, though, is when you're in the midst of this interview is to think of a way near the end, you know, you're wanting to, you know, really highlight your feature guests, but also just share. And remember, you know, we have this free da da da for you, and you can get it at Da da da xyz. Thank you again so and so for coming on here with me. I appreciate you. Something like that, you know, you can keep it really simple, really easy. You can script out the things that you want to say. I mean, but it's just kind of fun to give some behind the scenes. Now if going on video is something that you're like, shelly, never in a million years am I going to do this. Guess what? You can do it in a written blog post. So your Q and A, your interview, instead of being on video, video could actually be a written Q and A or a written video. It's kind of fun, I think. And it creates like this experience, right? Like you're going to an event if you do a video. But you know what? Doing something is better than doing nothing. So if you're never going to do a video, try to maybe do the written one. And then again, you're going to have them share the that blog post, you're going to have them share. I mean, you can even just put the written one on your Facebook page and then have that get the permalink. If you don't know how to find the permalink on Facebook, Google it. Get that permalink to that exact post and have that person share it. You know, tag them. You know, do all the things to try to get the sharing going. I think, you know, all of you could at least do One of those, right? And some of you might do. Might take me up on doing three or to five in one week, and then just creating this really fun event, maybe doing even some giveaways in the midst. Have that author see if they'd be willing to give away a book or something. Just make it fun and be the place where people gather in your genre. So this is something that I have done over and over again. All right, so anthologies, this is where you gather several people, you know, in your niche, and they write different chapters in your book. Again, with a fiction anthology, you can either have everyone write a small novella and then, you know, that way it doesn't end up being too long or like a short story, make it short, you know, give them specifications on, you know, length and all of that. Or again, you can make it one of those where you write the story together. And so different authors write different parts of the story. But with an anthology, again, you're going to be featuring those authors in the book, and then you're going to ask them to be sharing that and sharing that book with their audience. In the book. You're also going to be writing a chapter, sharing part of the story, and you're going to be able to share your link to grow your email list through that. One thing you could do if you wanted is you could first offer it as a PDF if you a digital version, and have people sign up to your email list to download that book. So, you know, all of the authors come together, you create this book, and the first promotion and push that everyone does is to go to your email list. So they download the book for free there. But then you're building this email list, guess what, of readers. And then once you have that first initial push, like maybe it's explained exclusively for the first 90 days on your site instead of on KDP site, right? And you're using it to grow your email list. And then you take it. Maybe you go on to KDP select and maybe for a while you go exclusive with them for 90 days and you do some free promotions there. So everyone gets, you know, benefits from it. I mean, these ideas are just coming to me as I'm talking to you because I've been marketing books since 2008. We've sold over half a million books and given away over 700,000 books and free promotions and such because God is just using our simple steps of obedience to impact lives. My husband C.J. and I, we are not well known. We're not famous. Most of you may not even have known of me outside of training authors and all of that. But over the last 13 years, we've been able to impact over a million lives with our books. I mean, it just blows my mind, but I get so excited about sharing marketing ideas with you because I just feel like so many times we shrink back. Right. So anyways, this anthology idea, so many ideas that you could take and spin off of this. The next one is a group giveaway. And again, this is an amazing option to do with other people in your genre. Everyone donates a signed copy of their book, and I recommend doing 10. 10 is kind of like, you know, a fun number. It's double digits and then everyone promotes it. And you have people sign up to your email list in order to qualify. You can use something like Kingsumo or the Rafflecopter. I mean, there's so many different tools. And we have an entire training on giveaways inside Christian Book Academy, where. But doing this group giveaway, especially with signed copies of books, you're going to attract readers. You're going to attract readers in your genre. And guess what? You're going to be giving away one of your books as well. You're going to be one of the 10. And if you do it in a way where they have to sign up to your email list to enter, you're building your email list. So it's a great way to do it. And then finally you can do group promotions. And so something I did for years, way back when I was first getting started, is I would organize group promotions and we would all either lower our price of a Kindle book to 99 cents, or we would do a free Kindle giveaway or something like that. Or you could even do something where each author is giving away something really fun like a novella or something. When people sign up to their email list. And so instead of promoting giveaway or a lowered price on Amazon, you know, they're able. Then they'd have to sign up for each person's email list, but they're able to be able to get a whole bunch of new books or new novellas to read and get introduced to each author. And maybe each author would be willing to give a digital version of their book for a short period of time for free. Maybe it's the first book in the series if you're a fiction author or if you have a nonfiction series, or maybe it's a book that leads them into the next step with you. And so that would be an incredible way to set it up too. There's so many options and so many ideas. So, all right, I want you to choose one of these from the gathering authors in your genre. So there's collaborative blog posts, the top 10 books in your genre.

That'S a post, the online summit, or hosting Q&As or coffee chats. And you know, you could do anthologies, you could do group giveaways and group promotions. So in this training, I've given you 11 ideas and ways to grow your email list. That's something that Amazon is not doing for you. They're not giving you, your customers or your readers email addresses. You're not able to follow up with them. But this is a way you're able to gather your people, your readers and continue to create relationships with them, continue to get them to know, like, and trust you and then to build that 1,000 fans. You know that concept of if you have at least 1,000 fans that buy everything you have, you can make a full time income as an artist, as a writer, that sort of thing. So it's just the starting point. And so I want you to choose one option from the strategic partnerships and one option from gathering authors in your genre. And, and I want you to make a plan for implementing those over the next two months. So one a month. If you want to go a little bit faster, then implement them both in the next month. And I'm so excited to see what you do. Contact me, let me know how it goes. Find me@trainingauthors.com free. You can get some free training from me there. And I look forward to hearing, hearing what God is doing in and through you as you are stepping out and being a courageous writer. Let me pray for you. So God, I just thank you so much for each writer that's listening right now. I thank you for the books that you have birthed through them. I thank you for what you're doing in and through them. And I pray that you would give them the strategy and the insight of what the next step to take to grow their email list, to market their book. And then also, Lord, that you would give them the courage to do it, that they would implement it within the next one to two months. And God, that you would begin to do something that they can't even imagine right now. I never in a million years imagined that we would impact over a million lives in, you know, through our books. I mean, I never even planned to be a writer. So may you do this for them, Lord. May you do things that they could never even think or imagine just because they're taking those small steps of obedience doing the things you have called them to and we will give you all the honor, the glory and praise and I pray this in Jesus powerful name. Amen. And all the Christian writers said Amen. Should say all the Kingdom writers. So love you guys. So I'm excited to hear how you implement these things and make sure to choose what your next steps are. Implement it and then I would love to hear what happens as a result. Again, my name is Shelley Hitz, your author, coach and mentor inside Christian Book Academy and the podcast host of Kingdom Writers.

Thank you for listening to this episode of Kingdom Writers. We believe that you as a Christian writer have a specific role to play in the Kingdom of Heaven to impact lives for eternity.

And because of this, we choose to pour out our lives into encouraging writers like you to not only tell your stories, but to take the courageous step of self publishing your stories in books that will outlive you and leave behind a powerful legacy. This podcast is sponsored by Christian Book Academy where we help you give birth to to your books. We invite you to join our community of Kingdom Writers.