Reader Magnets and Growing Your Email List for Indie Author Success: The Reaching More Readers Podcast with Dale L. Roberts and Holly Greenland

This month in the Reaching More Readers podcast, Dale L. Roberts and Holly Greenland wrap up their journey around the tips and tricks for email marketing for indie authors. This time, they'll take a closer look at offering “reader magnets,” the importance of testing your mailer systems, and further tips on growing your list. Look back at previous Reaching More Readers episodes for information about why an email list is so important for indie authors and to find out how you can establish your newsletter process.

Thoughts or further questions on this post or any self-publishing issue?

If you’re an ALLi member, head over to the SelfPubConnect forum for support from our experienced community of indie authors, advisors, and team. Simply create an account (if you haven’t already) to request to join the forum and get going.

Non-members looking for more information can search our extensive archive of blog posts and podcast episodes packed with tips and advice at ALLi's Self-Publishing Advice Center.

Listen to Self-Publishing News: Reader Magnets

Don't Miss an #AskALLi Broadcast

Subscribe to our Ask ALLi podcast on iTunes, Stitcher, Player.FM, Overcast, Pocket Casts, Spotify or via our RSS feed:

Show Notes

To discuss the points raised in this episode, members can access the ALLi member forum: SelfPubConnect. Non-members can follow ALLi on Facebook for links to all the ALLi advice blogs and podcasts.

About the Hosts

Dale L. Roberts is a self-publishing advocate, award-winning author, and video content creator. Dale’s inherent passion for life fuels his self-publishing advocacy both in print and online. After publishing over 50 titles and becoming an international bestselling author on Amazon, Dale started his YouTube channel, Self-Publishing with Dale. Selected by Feedspot and LA Weekly as one of the best sources in self-publishing of 2022, Dale cemented his position as the indie-author community's go-to authority. You can find Dale on his website or YouTube

Holly Greenland is a self-published author, content writer and strategic communications consultant. She has worked in marketing and communications for nearly twenty years, including at the BBC, UK Parliament, and award-winning agency Social & Local. Holly is currently completing a Publishing PhD with Kingston University in London, investigating the factors that increase the likelihood of indie author success. Find out more about Holly's writing on her website or connect on LinkedIn.

Read the Transcripts to Self-Publishing News: Reader Magnets

Dale L. Roberts: Welcome to the monthly segment of Reaching More Readers, brought to you by the Alliance of Independent Authors. I'm Dale L. Roberts.

Holly Greenland: And I'm Holly Greenland, hello.

Dale L. Roberts: We'll be discussing some of the best practices for marketing and promoting your book, and this week, we are going to wrap up the series about email marketing.

Not that we won't return to it in some capacity, just so you know. Should you ever have any concerns or questions about email marketing or anything to do with marketing whatsoever, Holly, what's the best way to reach us?

Holly Greenland: I would say if you're a member, and if you're not, I recommend you go and have a look at our different membership options, but if you are, then please come over to SelfPubConnect. It's our member forum. It's a great place to ask questions, to search any answers, and hear from real indie authors about what's working for them. So yeah, a great place to go. If you're not a member, you can follow the Alliance of Independent Authors on Facebook. So, you'll be getting all the information as it comes out from us, and obviously you can comment there on those posts as well. Yeah, follow us on social media. So, there's lots of places you can go to hear up to date information and ask us some questions.

In fact, they can actually ask us questions, can't they, in the forum. Should they want to, Dale? You're in there.

Dale L. Roberts: Yep, I'm in there. I try to check in weekly Dale L. Roberts. You'll just be able to tag me, please feel free to tag me all you want. If you're an ALLi member, I'm an ALLi member too, and I try to be as active as possible there.

Last time we left off, we talked about automation and building that email list and getting more subscribers. Now, let's go into the real nitty gritty. One of the best ways to bring in more email subscribers is to entice them.

What are the terms that are typically thrown out for something like this, Holly, and what do they mean?

Holly Greenland: As soon as you get into the indie author community, you're going to hear the phrase reader magnet. What that means is that you are producing something that is really going to entice people to come and sign up to be in touch with you through your mailings. The reader magnet is something, it can be all sorts of things. I have to be honest here, I have not yet got a reader magnet. It is on my wish list.

I've been finishing off my PhD, you're all bored of hearing me talk about it, but this is on the list because we hear from so many members about how well it works. And people do all sorts of things.

So, for some people, if they've got a lot of series, they'll give away an entire book as their reader magnet. So, you can come to them and get the first book in a series, which is fantastic. But if you haven't got that, there are lots of other options.

So, we have people who produce, say, a map from their fantasy novel. So, they've brought some of the ideas from it into a really beautiful illustration, maybe working with an illustrator or themselves, if they've got the skills, and that's something that you can get for free.

Think about the genre or what sort of area you're working in. So, for non-fiction it might be additional tips, an extra bonus chapter that takes you on the next step of something that you've been teaching through your books. There are so many different options.

Even going in and seeing other covers that were designed for your books.

So, if they know that they've enjoyed your first book and actually there are some other things that you've produced or made, different chapters, different endings, character interviews. So, you can do something quite small and have it as a reader magnet and it will draw people in.

But yeah, I'm not quite there yet.

Dale L. Roberts: That's okay, and I hope that anybody that listens to this understands that you don't have to have a reader magnet. You'll sometimes hear a reader magnet referred to as a lead magnet or a bribe of some sort, because you're trying to entice someone to join your email newsletter.

So, for instance when I was a fitness author, one of the Reports I used to send out, it was literally a one-page report I put on Canva. I made it in like minutes, and it was like the top 10 fitness tools, and all I would do is in the front matter and the back matter of my book, I would just do a call to action saying, find out the top 10 fitness tools for losing weight when you join my email newsletter.

By the way, don't call it a list. Join my email list, no one wants to be on a list. VIP newsletter, whatever you want to do, just anything but calling it a list.

But all that aside, having no reader magnet is not that detrimental, okay. It will certainly help for sure. I have found, historically speaking, that email subscribers who join without any incentive, just a simple, hey, do you like my content, would you like to get up to date information, notifications, and deals and discounts, then join my email newsletter. Something as simple as that, I found that those are the subscribers that are the most engaged.

Holly Greenland: I guess when you're giving away something for free, there's going to be a lot of people clicking just for that freebie.

Dale L. Roberts: Yep, and those are going to be the people too that forgot, or they just assume, oh, I got this book, why are you emailing me? Spam. You just did double opt-in, you clown. What are you doing?

So, it's just going to come down to figuring out, okay, where am I at?

So, Holly right now doesn't have a lead magnet, but so long as she has an email list put in place, that is the best practice. Just give it, let them know that it is an option available to them. Even if you don't want to offer deals and discounts, you can always be like, stay up to date on the world of Holly Greenland, something as simple as that.

Also split test some reader magnets. Find out which ones draw in the most. So, let's say the front matter of your book, you could offer, let's say, I had two different types of lead magnets. One was the four minute workout, and the other one was the ten fitness tools. So, I'd put it in the front matter, and I'd put it in the back matter, and I would see which one would perform better, and I would switch it out in another publication to see how it would perform.

Overall, I always found out the top ten fitness tools did the best, by the way. It just did really, really good. So, then I would focus a lot more of my marketing and promotional efforts into that reader magnet because it's proven.

But the one thing I would say is this, you get that reader magnet, you're going to want to make sure your email service hosts it, or you can also put it into a cloud drive with a direct download link that you would include in your welcome email. So that way, when someone subscribes, they get their reader magnet automatically.

But Holly, don't just throw it out there and just be done with it. Like, oh, I'm just going to assume it's going to be great. Run a test. Oh my gosh, I can't tell you how many times I thought I got it right.

So, what you're going to want to do is put all your automation together, get your landing page put together, get everything looking ship shape ready to go, and then subscribe to it, and don't make it public until you've gone through some of the automation and have experienced that. Click the links, and even if you're like, oh, I know that link's just fine, click it anyway. Click the direct download, figure out and make sure everything is working fine, and have a few friends do it.

Holly, when you end up getting your reader magnet, ping me, let me know. I'll subscribe to your email newsletter so I see that everything's working correct, and three to four of your author peers would work out just fine. If you want to get somebody else that's fine as well, but you're going to want to make sure they subscribe to it.

Then the next thing is to send out an email broadcast. So, don't just rely on automation send out a separate broadcast, which you're going to do outside of automation. So, just your weekly or your monthly Newsletter, shoot it out. It could probably be something super simple, but it's so important that you run a test first.

I'm not sure if you've done that before, but I do know that I've made the mistake of putting an automation together to only find out that links were broken and the downloads weren't working, and it just became a huge headache.

Holly Greenland: Yeah, I am such a tester of everything, I have to say. I've worked in comms for a long time, I've done a lot of publishing of various different things. I test and test because you're so right, it's really easy to get something wrong and slip up. And if you haven't tested, it is so painful if you realize weeks down the road that what you put in place hasn't been working.

So, yeah, get it tested.

Dale L. Roberts: Last episode, we talked about how to get more subscribers, but let's double down on this one.

Let's talk a little bit more about marketing and promoting your email list. What has been your experience about some places to put your email subscribe link? Where have you done it before?

Holly Greenland: The book itself, because then you're grabbing those people that have already engaged with you, they've really enjoyed what you're working on. Your website, obviously, usually on the first page that people are coming to, the homepage, and then across other pages too. Where are they going to be going that may be the sort of page that's going to inspire them to click?

Obviously, on your social media, and then thinking about where you can place it in the same way, I guess, when you're thinking about your marketing for your book itself; where else would you go that you think you're going to meet the people who are going to be interested in you? So, things like authors in your genre or in your niche, in terms of your non-fiction niche. Where can you link up with people to be able to share that link to sign up that makes sense.

I quite often do other little bits and pieces of marketing where I will then promote it at the end of that. So,, whether it's in my bio or whether I've just got lined up that there's going to be something at the bottom of an interview, or maybe I'm doing a blog about murder mysteries or something, making sure that I'm always thinking through the newsletter as well as your website, as well as social media, because actually in a way it's more important than either of those because that's where you're going to capture people you can keep in touch with.

So yeah, just making sure you're putting it across all the different places where you're going. How about you, any others there?

Dale L. Roberts: One of the things I like to do about social media, and this is something I recommend to some folks, is if you can find some type of a, I don't even know the word for it, but essentially, do you ever see someone say, ‘link in bio'? Check the link in bio. There is a service called Linktree. They offer it 100% free, there is an upgrade. I've used the free version for years now, and what it will do is it will collect a list of links for people to go into. So, I have a link that goes to all my books, let's say on Amazon, Barnes Noble, all that type of things, or even a universal book link that I put in there, a link to my YouTube channel, and it could probably be a link to subscribe to my email newsletter.

If you want to grow your list, I recommend, if you are doing that aggregate link collection like Linktree. Linktree is not the only one out there, you can probably find a bunch of other ones. But put the email list at the very top. That needs to be first and foremost, because people are going to click that link and that's going to be the very first thing they see. Always prioritize the link that you want people to look at first. So, get that one.

Business cards, make sure you're putting it on the business cards. Or here's one, I know you and I have emailed each other numerous times, you always see my email signature, and at the bottom, I actually have a numerous email signature, so you can always put something at the very bottom, join my email newsletter at xyz.com. Have a clickable link that people can go over and visit.

Now, here's the next level. If you really want to identify with the current generation and what they're using, QR codes are the way to go. Kindlepreneur has a free QR code generator that you can actually insert an image into it, and that right there is really neat. People can just take their phones, they scan that, it goes right over there. You've removed all the friction of them having to remember your link and things like that, which by the way, I'm going to give a quick link here, dalelinks.com/qrcode is going to drop you over in Kindlepreneur's free QR code generator.

There are a bunch of other free QR code generators. Just don't go too crazy on it, you don't want to have 50,000 of those inside your book. Again, prioritize what makes the most sense, and if email newsletter growth is important to you, then I would say, get that QR code, make it front and centre. You can also slap that on your email signature, your business cards, inside your book.

Holly Greenland: It's amazing how they've come back. They were around, they disappeared for about a decade it seemed, and they're back! But they are so useful, and everyone is used to using them, I think, particularly now that we're ordering things in restaurants using them, where it's so much quicker.

So, yeah, great tip.

Dale L. Roberts: That was one thing I think that was beneficial through the pandemic is that QR codes became the thing. And now that QR codes are available, like you said, I go into a restaurant, I don't want to touch a greasy menu that somebody else's had, I'm just going to go ahead and scan this so I can touch my greasy phone.

So, there are so many ways that you can grow this, but what I would say is make sure that you are continuing to get that out there. But there are other ways to grow your email list beyond, just come on over and subscribe, am I right?

Holly Greenland: Yep, and I think we were just starting to talk about there. Author collaborations, newsletter swaps. That is a phrase that comes up a lot when we're talking with members about how you are building your engagement, all of those things.

And newsletter swaps don’t mean sending your newsletter list someone else's newsletter, right?

That's not swapping newsletters.

Dale L. Roberts: No. It's more like a value exchange. The newsletter swap isn't so much that you're giving all your emails to somebody. All you're doing in a newsletter swap is promoting something for somebody within your newsletter without them getting access, and they do that for you as well in exchange through their newsletter. So, it's a quid pro quo system. It's completely above the board. You never have to give the keys to your kingdom, and you can also be super selective about what you're going to promote. Because let's just say, for instance, you end up running into an author that you don't agree with, or isn't a good match.

So, for instance, Holly and I probably won't be able to do a newsletter swap. Unfortunately, her mystery audience probably won't enjoy my horror sci-fi stuff and vice versa. So, that's going to be the way to kind of do it, but newsletter swaps are a good way to go.

Indirectly, one could make the argument that good group promos can work as well. So, with group promos, it's like newsletter swaps on steroids. Instead of just having two authors working together, you have numerous authors. But if that's going to work, you've got to make sure during that group promo that in the email newsletter of each author, that they're promoting that other person's newsletter, if that makes sense.

Holly Greenland: Yeah, and would you do it over a period of time then, potentially? If you've got a group of you, you might do one each over a period of time, or do you put them all out in your next newsletter?

Dale L. Roberts: That is going to depend largely on what your audience expectations are. If you try to load them up with 12 different email newsletters to subscribe to, you've got too many links. Create one link that'll send something. So, it could probably just be a simple call to action of, Hey, we've got this 99 cent promo with all these people inside the mystery genre, go on over, visit this link, and while I'm talking about it, check out this author, they've got a great email newsletter when you get the chance, but you'll find out more details when you pick up their book for 99 cents at this link.

So, I guess a bit more indirect.

You don't have to promote anybody that you don't feel comfortable in promoting. You don't have to work and collaborate with somebody. If for some reason they put out some really bad writing, then you probably don't want to be promoting it. Be like, check out this, they're awesome, and then all of a sudden, a subscriber says to you, what are you doing, this person's horrible, they haven't even hired an editor. So, that's just another way.

One of the other ways is interviews and guest posts. I think that this is probably one of the most underutilized ways of doing things. Now, is this going to move the needle a lot? No, but it's going to move it some.

So, I love to reach out and get podcast interviews, and one of those ways that you can promote yourself, typically at the very end, usually a good host is going to say, how can listeners find you, and you'll be able to say, hey, join my email newsletter, you're going to be able to get this reader magnet, blah, blah, blah at xyz.com.

Guest posts, there's the argument out there, I know David Gaughran punches down on guest blog posts, but they're still somewhat effective. It just depends on how much time that you have available to you and what's the reach for that specific website.

Have you ever done giveaways before?

Holly Greenland: No.

Dale L. Roberts: So, giveaways, this is going to probably make a lot of people go, oh no, I got to give more stuff away? Let's say you do have a reader magnet of some sort; you can always get with other authors. So, this would be essentially like a group promo of some sort. There are services out there like Gleam, and one that I have, it's a premium service called KingSumo, and they actually might even have a free service version of that one. That cost me like $49 for lifetime access through AppSumo a number of years ago. Love it. I've gotten thousands upon thousands through using KingSumo giveaways. But find a good giveaway service, and work with other authors in your niche to do a group promo of some sort, where you're sharing this giveaway.

It could be everybody contributes their reader magnet; everybody could contribute their first in series. It's completely up to you how you do this. Then people all get to enter for this, and when they enter, you get those emails, and you can drop those in there.

Now fair warning, I know what you're thinking, Holly. You're probably going, there's a lot of freebie seekers out there, aren't there? They're just going to enter to get a chance to win, and then they're unsubscribed. Yeah, you're going to see a substantial amount of unsubscribes from giveaways. It's going to happen. It's a fact of life. Some people just want the free stuff, and they don't want to hear it from you.

But the nice thing is, as long as you've put everything in place, you're compliant with GDPR guidelines. Again, I said previously that I always follow the GDPR guidelines even though I'm in the U.S. because you just never know if that's going to be a law that's enacted in other regions or the U.S. in some instances, and it's also a good best practice. Because you're fully disclosing the nature of someone entering this giveaway and subscribing themselves to your email newsletter.

Holly Greenland: And presumably there's going to be a percentage who are going to then see the sort of content that you're sharing and think, oh, actually, yeah, this is something I do want to hear more about.

So, I'm assuming you'll lose maybe a high percentage, but even if it's a large minority that then stick around, that's still a bonus, isn't it? So yeah, I can see how that's part of a wider plan, each little incremental bit of activity where you're ticking along and ticking up those numbers is going to make a difference.

Dale L. Roberts: Yeah, for sure. There's also a lot of people I think are going to probably be wondering, okay, what if the person doesn't unsubscribe, they drop down my open rate? Let's say they did the subscribe, they came in through the giveaway, and now they're not opening the emails. That's where you do need to be purging your stuff.

As I said previously, cull the herd. Obviously, your reader aren't cattle, but you're just removing the people that are inactive after 30 days, 60 days, 90 days, whatever that length of time that you determine is best for your business. Me, I usually do anywhere from three to six months at a time. It just depends. If I see my open rate dropping significantly, that's when I start cutting. That's when I go, okay, you haven't opened anything in the last 90 days, bye, you're out of here. It's no offense, it's business.

Now, there are other services out there that will cost you. So, for instance, I know Written Word Media and Crave Books have premium services where they will actually do a list building giveaway, and a lot of times I hear complaints from some authors through some of my comments on YouTube where they're like, oh, all I got was a bunch of people in here and they're unsubscribing and such. Yeah, that's how giveaways work. It will happen.

So, just be prepared if you do invest money into those list building giveaways, through premium services like Written Word Media or Crave Books, or any other ones like that, you're going to see a significant amount of drop off. Don't invest anything into this that you can't stand to lose.

So, for me, I'm not compelled to do a Written Word Media or Crave Books list building giveaway. No offense to them. I find that my system currently works for me. It gets it to where it's manageable and I don't have to grow my list all of a sudden, have to purge everybody, because then I discovered, oh gosh, half this list isn't even opening up any of my email newsletters and the other half is unsubscribing.

Have you had any experience at all with doing any of those premium list building services?

Holly Greenland: I have had them shared with me before and I've thought, is that something I want to get into. But I can imagine there might be points where actually you think, I need a bit of an extra boost. So, it's interesting to know that they exist, but like you say, it feels to me like trying to do things through that kind of organic building and messaging across all your different platforms, and the people that you're going to partner up with, feels like a nice positive way to go. Because you want to get people who really want to engage with you and be in touch with you, and are going to build your little fan base, that's going to go out and spread the word.

And that's where we started with this in terms of, how important is an email list? Do people need to bother with it?

Hopefully we've shown that, yes, it's worth doing, even if you start with just a few and you slowly build up. There's so many benefits and different ways that you can grow that list and make the most of it.

Dale L. Roberts: Yeah, agreed. We've covered a lot of aspects here of email marketing, and to be honest with you, it's not exhaustive at this point. We could probably go for the next year doing this, but we totally understand that would just be unrealistic because there's so many aspects to this business of book marketing, and we want to make sure that we're covering every aspect.

If you're ever curious, you've got questions, suggestions, or things like that about future episodes, please, if you're a member of ALLi, drop us a line in the ALLi community forum. You can tag me, Dale L. Roberts, or Holly Greenland over there.

What are other ways that people can reach out to us if they are not ALLi members?

Holly Greenland: If you go to the website, go and have a look around the blog, there's so much information there. On the blog, there's promotions for every single one of the podcasts as well. So, even if you're not signed up to the podcast on a regular basis, you can go in, everything is covered in that blog area. So, news, all of our advice, all of our podcasts, and there's ways to get in touch with us there as well.

So yeah, we'd love to hear more questions, different things that you want to know, different things we can cover, and actually any tips that you want us to share as well is always great to hear.

I love hearing from the ALLi authors in our membership and in our wider community with all the tips and what's changing, what's coming up, and what we can share with everyone else.

Dale L. Roberts: Yeah, for sure. On behalf of Holly Greenland, I'm Dale L. Roberts, and thank you so much for tuning in for another month of Reaching More Readers.

We look forward to chatting with you again next month.