SPT #367 – EMAIL LISTS, INSTAGRAM, AND THE 7 P’S OF PUBLISHING SUCCESS

 

This week, our pop-filters get a workout as we explore the 7 Ps of publishing success. Claire kicks. Bryan hugs. Instagram initiates its time suck.

We make a splash with our deep dive into failure, inner purpose, and post-pandemic blues. It’s enough to make seasoned improvers dry dock their cruise-ship comedy career…

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Self-Publishing Times #367

Upcoming Events for Claire and Bryan

Intros and links to current or upcoming events or projects for the hosts.

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Includes everything from the Introduction, Tips, News, and even the Hot Potato of Wisdom

 

Tip #3 – Hashbrown No Filter

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Tip #2 – Hybrid Decision

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Tip #1 – Mailer Right

Claire:

When it comes to mailing lists, many authors focus on size rather than quality. It may seem like bigger is better, but not when your email performance takes a hit because many of your subscribers are inactive or reporting your emails, says MailerLite’s Gabija Trimbel.

A healthy list with more active subscribers will result in more engagement and even higher deliverability with fewer chances of landing in the spam folder.

Trimbel offers a dozen best practices to help you do email right, such as using double opt-in, which leads to higher quality subscribers, using a welcome sequence to warm up your new subscribers, and always keeping content relevant to your audience.

“Maintaining a quality email list is often an overlooked part of email marketing,” says Trimbel. “Yet, it’s exactly what will bring email success in the long run.”

Brian:

Oh, as I’m ringing. I’m so popular right now, just at this very moment.

Claire:

So unprofessional, Brian. This is a professional podcast.

Brian:

This is a very professional podcast with only professional things happening during it. Claire, didn’t we talk about mailing lists three times in the last six weeks? Why would we continue to bring something up that we’ve talked about?

Claire:

I don’t know. We should probably never mention it again. I mean, yeah, these are great tips. I was just scrolling through them to refresh myself because I know you and I have talked about once your email list gets big, it’s just trickier. You’re just going to have more people who sign up, especially when you’re doing big sign up pushes, don’t recognize it or their inbox isn’t set up for it or they just say they don’t want it. So when they hit unsubscribe, instead of doing that, they report it as spam. Just weird things like that, that kind of add up as your list gets bigger. So this had some really good tips. I was looking for me. I wasn’t looking for anyone else. I was looking for tips for me. And it’s just really good reminders. But especially if you are just starting out with an email list, this is just a really great primer for it.

Brian:

Yeah. Yeah. And I would say the number one thing for me is have a welcome sequence to warm up your new subscribers. Some folks get subscribers and then do this. I would do it the reverse. Write the welcome sequence first so that from day one, new subscribers will get that and then you know that those people are actually from you right from the get-go.
Claire:

Brian, what’s one thing you think you could do better with email?

Brian:

Well, I think that I don’t do a lot of mailing list hygiene because I don’t always trust the stats. And I know that just because it says someone hasn’t opened my emails, I have actually heard from people who say, “No, I’m reading it. I read it every time.” And so I get worried. Well, if 10% of the people who AWeber, in my case, say they aren’t opening it, 10% of them, and I remove them, I would lose those people. So I get nervous about that. But I also know that if I had a legitimate reawakening kind of sequence, I could probably weed some of those people out and the losses would be less. I don’t know. I think that’s kind of my number one. What about you, Claire?

Claire:

Oh, I think that, probably, I could be better about segmenting. I don’t do a whole lot of segmenting just because it can get so chaotic so quick. Really, the most segmenting I do is I’ll segment my fiction list into three or four groups so that when I do a book release, I email one group per day so I can spread out the sales, because I know that people on my list are going to buy the book. And rather than having that spike on the first day of all of my people, I can kind of spread it out and it builds slowly over time. It kind of has a natural ramping up as people maybe don’t check their email the first day and it kind of snowballs. But that’s about all the segmenting I do, unfortunately, other than getting people onto the right list.

Brian:

Yeah. Yeah. I don’t do too much with the segmenting either. But hey, we have bigger email lists than a lot of people and we still have things we can improve upon.

Claire:

Yeah. Yeah. Exactly. I mean, if you have an email list of 100 people and 90 are opening it every time you send it out, that’s great. I mean, that’s an active list. So yeah, definitely don’t just compare size. That’s why I roll my eyes a little bit when people want to talk about how big their email lists. I’m like, “Show me your open rates.”

Brian:

Yep. Yep. Exactly.

 

News #5 – Introverts unite. Separately. At home.

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News #4 – Give Ps a Chance

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News #3 – More Than a Logo

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News #2 – Trust the Process?

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News #1 – From Failure to Thriving

Tidied up transcript goes here


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