Email for Authors Q&A

Do you need an email list? Do you need a special email app? If so, which one? In this episode of the Writing Momentum podcast, Chris and Gena talk about email marketing and how you can build relationships with people in your audience…even before you have a book ready!

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Links: 

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ConvertKit: https://writing.fyi/convertkit

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Episode 56 Transcription:

[00:00:15].410] - Gena
Hi, and welcome to the Writing Momentum podcast. My name is Gena Maselli and I'm here with my husband, Christopher Maselli.

[00:00:21].820] - Chris
Hello, how are you? I'm doing well. I'm excited. Today we're doing a Q and A, which is not something we've done in a little while, but I think this is going to be good.

[00:00:30].010] - Gena
And not only are we doing a Q and A, we're doing a Q and A about a subject that is near and dear to our heart and especially to Chris's heart. So we're going to talk about email for authors.

[00:00:41].540] - Chris
Yes, email for authors. Do we need emails? What's the best email service? And how can I get into a rhythm of sending emails? That's what we're going to talk about today, are those three things. And it's near to my heart because we have gotten in a rhythm ourselves of sending emails over the past couple of years and it's really revolutionized a lot of the things we do in our business. Because as an author, you are a business, right? And it's revolutionized a little bit about the things we do because when you have an email service and you have emails that you send out on a regular basis, like a newsletter or something like that, you start to build a relationship. So we'll get all into that in just a minute.

[00:01:21].630] - Gena
Let me ask the first question of why do you need a special email service? What is the benefit? Because I think if I'm a solopreneur, I'm an author, and I don't have a lot of people in my list, why is it that I might need why can't I just use Gmail? Why can't I just use icloud? Why can't I just use the services that I use for my personal account? Why do I need something else?

[00:01:50].000] - Chris
Yeah, okay, so the reason you want to use a service instead of just your own email is because, first of all, you're giving away your personal email if you use your own email. Right? But also as you start to build your list and you get more people interested in what you're doing and you start adding their names and emails, you could end up having 1000 people, 2000 people, 5000 people on that list, and you can't send to that many people through something like icloud or Gmail. Plus, you need to have ways that people can subscribe and unsubscribe in order to stay legal. Having an email service is a thing that helps make it to where you're able to reach people in the way businesses do. You know how when you sign up for Kohl's email list, they're sending you coupons all the time and you have the ability to unsubscribe. You need to be able to do that with your email list so you can't just send it through Gmail or through something like that because eventually it's going to become unmanageable and you don't want to have that all mixed up in with your personal email.

[00:02:49].780] - Chris
But the good news is that when you subscribe to one of these services, they handle all of that for you. And it's so much more manageable than using your personal email. You're going to fall in love with using it because it's really very easy.

[00:03:04].620] - Gena
And I think it's the difference between buying, say you go to a flea market and you buy fruits and vegetables from an individual vendor. There you're buying something, grown these things in their own backyard. But then there are times when you don't want to just deal with on that small level. You need something bigger. And so you go to a grocery store, you go to someplace like Costco or Sam's Club or something like that. And then if you even get bigger than that, you might go to a retail wholesaler. So there are different needs along the path that you have. And the thing is that these email providers that specialize in email services for companies and for businesses, they offer more perks and whistles and functionality that you wouldn't get from just a small email service.

[00:03:54].110] - Chris
Yeah, so the functionality is a big deal because once you get into this you start to realize there's things that you want to do. For instance, you might say you want to write an email today but have it go out in two days from now. Now you can't do that very easily with just your local regular email, right? You can do it with some of them, but not very easily, certainly not to large groups of people. But with an email service you can absolutely do that. Or let's say you want to have it where when someone first connects with you, you send them a series of three emails. We like to call that a welcome sequence. So maybe one email says, hey, thanks for connecting, I'll be writing to you regularly. I'm so glad we're connected. The next one might be hey, here's who I am, I just want to introduce you to myself. And the third one might be, hey, I wanted to show you some of the things I've written and here's links to get your best deal on them. So those are three emails you'd want to send out. You don't want to have to do that manually, you want that to be automated.

[00:04:51].690] - Chris
And they call those automations when you do that. And so that's why you need to get an email service. Let's not lose the perspective of the whole reason you want to do this is because you're trying to build relationships with people who are out there, right, who are in the world that you're wanting to reach. Because marketing, you've heard us say this many times on this podcast, marketing is about relationships. It's about building relationships. And you need to be able to deliver things to your audience. And you can do that through emails, through email marketing. And you need to build your list, build up the amount of people that you have on that list. Because if someone has raised their hand and said, hey, I really what you're doing, I'm going to give you my email, then that means that is your perfect customer, if you will, right? That's the perfect person to connect to, because they're automatically interested in what you're doing. You don't have to put ads out on the Internet. You don't have to buy billboards or go to a local store and try to get your book on the shelves. All you have to do is email that person and let them know you have a new product and they're ready to buy, right?

[00:05:55].810] - Chris
Because they raise their head and said, and I'm interested. So it's very important to do that.

[00:06:00].360] - Gena
And we have heard from authors who will say their email list is their primary source for marketing their book. People talk about marketing their book, and there's all these different people that will teach you how to market your book and get it on different things. And you're trying to get on different podcasts, and you're buying ads on Amazon, and you're buying ads on Facebook, and you're doing all of this stuff. But there are authors who will say, I know that when I come out with a book that my list is going to make that book profitable for me right out of the gate and tell me that is not a superpower. That is a superpower for an author to already have identified  your audience, identify your readers. We've talked about that before, too, how important it is to identify your readers and you're able to get what they want directly to them without relying on all these other services.

[00:07:00].120] - Chris
And this is something that you can do now before you even have your next book finished or even have a book yet, you can do this now. Before you have that book published, you can start building your email list. You can start establishing relationships with other people so that when it comes out, you've got people who are already said they're interested in what you're doing to let them know about your book. So we always encourage, hey, if you're working on a book, start your email list today. Right. Start working on this today. Start building those relationships today, because that is your best low hanging fruit that you can go ahead and let know about your book so that when you launch, you've got buyers.

[00:07:44].250] - Gena
Yes. Okay. And so let's be real. The first people who are going to be on your list are going to be friends and family.

[00:07:51].750] - Chris
Friends and family.

[00:07:52].440] - Gena
Your mom is going to be one of the first people on your list. And that is okay. That is okay. Just be thankful for those people, even if you're thinking, okay, I write supernatural, paranormal, whatever, fiction, fantasy fiction. My mom is not going to be the one reading it. But those people who already love you and already know you may be the ones who are passing your email and your newsletter along to others. Who then would be your audience. Don't despise small beginnings. We all have friends, family, and loved ones who are on our newsletters, who are on our email list. And that is okay with some strategy that we're going to get into in the next few weeks, but with some strategy and with some tools that we're going to be giving you over the next few weeks, you're going to be able to grow that list. Now, it's not going to go from zero to 1000 to 20,000 overnight, but you can start small and you start adding those people one at a time. You start finding those people who are going to love what you're going to write. You're going to see some people who are going to fall off, who are going to unsubscribe.

[00:09:00].400] - Gena
That's okay too, because all that means is they are not your audience and you are going to begin building your target market list, the list that wants to hear from you. So we're just going to put that out there. Just embrace the fact that the first people on your list are going to be friends, family, loved ones, hopefully your mom, if she's still with you, that's okay, and that you're going to have people who are going to come on your list and then they're going to float off your list. They're going to unsubscribe that's okay, let them go. You're going to find your people and we're going to help you do it over the next few weeks.

[00:09:33].270] - Chris
Yeah. So let's talk about what are some of the best email services to you now? We will get more in depth into these. We want to have a month here where we're just talking about email marketing because we think this is so important. And we're going to help you build your email list from scratch through some of the resources we're going to have and the things we're going to be talking about. Okay? But you need to know what service can you sign up for? And as we already said, you don't want to use your Gmail account, you don't want to use your icloud account, you don't want to use something like that. You want to use an actual email service. And the good news is, some of these are free to start off with, so you can try them out, test them out, even use them for a while and they may meet your needs for a while before you ever have to pay a dime. Now, we're not going to get real in depth today. We just want to give an overview, right?

[00:10:21].830] - Gena
Yes. And we're going to talk about the three what are the three favorites that you have or the three most popular that we know that people use? Chris, help us out here.

[00:10:31].260] - Chris
Okay, one of the most popular ones that people use is MailChimp. Now, I do not recommend MailChimp anymore. MailChimp used to be a juggernaut in the industry where everyone wanted to do MailChimp because it worked with everything, and it still does work with everything. But this last year, they changed their plans and they made it to where it's really just not all that viable to go with MailChimp anymore. For instance, they are now free up to 500 subscribers. So you can try it, you can see if you like it, but with those 500 subscribers, they only let you send five emails a month. You cannot schedule. You cannot do automation. There's not a whole lot you can do. So you can pretty much get in just enough to see what it's like. And then after that month, after that time, after you get above 500 or you want to get more serious about it, the lowest plan is going to be $25 a month. So they only just let you peek into the service, and then they charge charging you a lot. Now, if you're someone who has been with MailChimp for years, maybe because you signed up years ago, that's okay, you can go ahead and use it, but you can actually move from one email service to another really easy.

[00:11:49].060] - Chris
Maybe we'll talk about that in one of the future episodes. Because moving a lot of people get really nervous about moving their email service, and it's way easier than you think it is. It's not that difficult, and you won't lose any of the traction you've got. And so I don't recommend MailChimp anymore, though. You'll see it out there a lot on the Internet because it was really big for a while. But it's in the vein of things like Constant Contact and some of those other services that maybe you've heard about because they've had a lot of news stories about them or that sort of thing, or they've done a lot of advertising, but there's not as much value and they're not as easy to use as some of these other services that we highly recommend today.

[00:12:28].590] - Gena
I can speak to the MailChimp. I do use it with one of my clients. And one thing that I noticed about it that I thought was my client had the free account, and then we could not schedule. But then in order to I had to actually go up two levels with that client because I could schedule on at the first level that you start paying, you could schedule the day. You could not schedule the time to schedule the time. I had to go up to the second tier of payment on that, and I just thought and then even then, it's only I can choose the hour. I could choose straight up hour I could choose at the 15 minutes mark, the 30 minutes mark, or the 45 minutes mark. And sometimes you want something to feel a little more organic so that even if you schedule it, you're not sending it straight up at 09:00 in the morning, you're sending it at 905. But I didn't have that option with it. And that was really, I thought, okay, I don't think that takes that much programming for me to have the option of being able to schedule it the minute.

[00:13:36].630] - Chris
They're nickel and diming you. In fact, some of these services have become so smart that they can actually send out your emails at what they know is the optimal time for your audience based on when they've opened emails in the past. They can get really smart and they don't cost much more than what MailChimp in fact, they may cost less than what MailChimp is charging. So that's why we don't recommend MailChimp anymore. Now the one we recommend the most, let's talk about that one next and it is called Mailerlite. Mailerlite is a really fantastic service. I've been using it with a lot of my clients because it is very easy to use. I have not found another service that I find easier to use. And they give you up to 1000 subscribers you can have for free. And you can send up to twelve emails a month to 1000 people without any charge. So if you're wanting to jump into this, Mailerlite is the place to start. And they also let you have scheduling in that and automations in that. That's why it's so powerful and it's really good for that. Plus, get this, when they start charging you, when you get over 1000 subscribers, it's going to be as low as $9 a month.

[00:14:51].290] - Chris
So not very expensive at all. If you get up to 5000 subscribers, you'll be paying as much as you would be with MailChimp for only 501 subscribers, about $30 a month. We really like Mailerlite, but Mailerlite is great because like I said, they've got the automations in there. So where you can send those multiple emails in multiple days in a row. And then you can also do scheduling where you can say, okay, I want to send this out a specific time, specific day. And you can tag people, create what they call segments so that you can say, these are the people who like my romance books, but these are the ones who like my children's books. So you can email different groups of people at different times.

[00:15:30].780] - Gena
Yeah, that's fantastic. And also when people are talking about scheduling, they're talking about twelve emails a month. And you might be listening to that thinking, can't imagine when I would ever send twelve emails in a month. But you know what, when you do a new release, when your book is coming out, or when you're doing a sale on your book, you might be sending one or two emails every day for several days leading up to that, you may be doing emails leading up that are presale before you actually launch your book. So there's a lot of other strategies that you can include or that you can start thinking about using when you have this kind of freedom to send multiple emails in a month.

[00:16:13].450] - Chris
Or if you've got multiple groups of people that you send things to talk about the romance, the people who read your romances, and the people who read your children's books. If you send one email to each of them a week, that's two emails a week. So then you're at eight a month already just from those two groups and so it can add up quickly. So it's nice not to have as many restrictions. Gena and I usually send one email a week. We try not to bombard anyone with emails. So you usually get four emails from us a month, sometimes a little less, sometimes a little more, but four is a pretty good general rule.

[00:16:44].890] - Gena
We have started segmenting, we have started segmenting. We've got our general emails and then we're starting to do some emails and plans and emails strictly for our writing moments people which if you're not familiar with writing moments, definitely check it out. It's when we get together and we write with other authors and other writers on Wednesdays at noon central. So we're coming together, we have a short teaching and then we have a writing that we do, but we're starting to reach out to that group more often and we're starting to be able to give them some benefits, some extra benefits just for being some of our subscribers. That is nice to know that we've got that kind of option and that kind of functionality with any email service that we use.

[00:17:27].740] - Chris
Exactly. So that's Mailerlite. So Mailerlite we really like, and we're going to put links to all these in the show notes. In fact, we have some affiliate links that give you special deals if you click through, they're usually slightly better deals than what's offered on the websites that do use those links. And plus it helps support this podcast. So the third one is ConvertKit. So ConvertKit is what I would call the highest tier up. So you've got MailChimp, which is very kind of basic, you got Mailerlite, which is really good middle of the road for most of us. And then ConvertKit if you want to get super duper fancy, okay, so they do, they can do really fancy automations, really fancy segmentations. Honestly, I think Mailerlite can do almost everything ConvertKit can do. But Convertkit's been around for a little while and a lot of authors really like it. So I do think it's worth mentioning they do have a free tier, up to 300 subscribers. So not nearly as generous as Mailerlite and that free tier does not include automation. So again, once you want to get into sending people, like a welcome series, a group of emails, once they sign up, you're going to have to start paying for it.

[00:18:35].670] - Chris
And they start at $30 a month. So they're the most expensive out of the three mail to come in second and then Mailerlite the most affordable. So what I recommend you do is if you're wanting to get into this email thing, go ahead, click on the links and sign up for each one. Each one has a free tier. And then play around with it, see which one you like best. However, you don't want to mess around with all this. Just sign up for Mailerlite. We find them to be the best, the most generous. You can have that free account as long as you want. So if you want to get it today and then say, I'm going to learn more about this over the next month from Chris and Gena and other places, and then eventually I'm going to start putting stuff into it, that's totally okay. There's nothing that says you have to do something with it right away, but it's really great. Even if you just have a simple website where you want to, for instance, deliver a we've talked about lead magnets, right? It's something that people will receive from you in exchange for you getting their email.

[00:19:30].810] - Chris
If you want to deliver like a PDF or something, Mailerlite can help you do that. They even have landing pages and that sort of thing built in that you can use to where people can download your PDF and then go ahead and subscribe to your list, which is pretty cool.

[00:19:44].280] - Gena
Yes. And we're going to get more into this, like we've mentioned it several times through this podcast, but really hang with us for about the next six weeks. We are going to really be doing a deep dive into email marketing and into email services and what you can do as an author. We really want to help you. We'd love to see you put this into practice and really see that success. And even if you say, I don't have my book written, that's okay. If you have a blog, if you have, I don't know, social media that you're using and that's where you're reaching your people, you can still start collecting names. And we're going to probably talk about lead magnets and what that can look like. We've talked about it before, but we're going to talk about it again because we want everybody within the sound of our voice to put this into practice and to start building that audience and building that marketing machine that we know that as an author, as a writer that you need and that you can absolutely have.

[00:20:40].360] - Chris
Yeah. And you'll be able to get into a rhythm with this, where you're doing this every week. And we have some special resources. In fact, one of them, I think is our best kept secret, how we get emails written every week and have our strategy completed and get those things out. We're going to be sharing that with you on a future episode. And I think you're really going to get that one because it's pretty cool.

[00:21:02].240] - Gena
It's very cool. I'm not going to give any more away. I could talk going, but definitely come back next week and hang with us for this series when we get into email marketing for writers and authors.

[00:21:15].470] - Chris
Yeah. And then I think the other thing we're going to start doing this month is we're going to start putting together some emails for you guys. So if you decide to sign up for one of these services, you will have how to videos on how you as an author can set up your email program to your app, get that welcome series set up, get everything sent out, and that's going to be really cool.

[00:21:36].800] - Gena
Chris has been working hard on this because we realized he said every Zoom meeting that I'm in, when there's a group of writers or authors there, email marketing is one of the main questions, one of the main subjects that everybody is trying to figure out how to make it work. And so because we have somebody who has an amazing superpower here of not only is Chris a fantastic writer, not only does he have a background in marketing and in digital marketing, but he also is a fantastic teacher. And so he's going to bring and he loves tech, so he's bringing all that together for the writing community to help them grow and build their business, their writing business.

[00:22:21].180] - Chris
We will demystify all of this email stuff for you, and I think you can look forward to having a very strong start with your whole email strategy very soon here. Thank you so much for listening to Writing Momentum podcast today. We hope that you enjoyed that. We hope that you're looking forward to learning about email. If there's a specific question you have about emails and email marketing, go ahead and write to us. Go ahead. Go to writingmomentum.com. And you'll see there's a little chat button there at the bottom and you can send us a message and that'll come right to our inbox. Let us know what you think about the podcast. You can also rate review, subscribe so you don't miss one of these upcoming episodes and share it with others. And I think that you'll find that a good thing.

[00:23:01].960] - Gena
I also wanted to say if there's something on your email, if you use one of these services that we've talked about today, MailChimp or Mailerlite, Convert kit, if you have used one of those and there's something that you're like, I just cannot figure out how to do this, send us that question. Chris is really good at finding the answer to those things. Usually by the time the rest of us have even wrapped our heads around it. He's already figured out that I can.

[00:23:26].390] - Chris
Create a video for you. I'll prioritize your questions and create a video just for you. How about that? Thank you. We hope that you enjoyed this. And we always like doing this because we know that alone it's a lot more difficult. But together what? Gena?

[00:23:39].690] - Gena
We have writing momentum. We'll see you guys next time.

[00:23:42].870] - Chris
Bye bye.