New Podcast Episode: Email Marketing with Matt Treacey

In this episode of All Things Book Marketing, we learn all about what email marketing is and how authors can master it from expert Matt Treacey. If you’ve ever wondered why there’s so much buzz around the term “email marketing” and if it’s something you should be utilizing (and how you can utilize it the right way), you’ve come to the right place. Let’s dive in… 

What is email marketing and how is it different from a newsletter?

A newsletter is absolutely underneath the umbrella of email marketing, but what often happens is that authors think that having a newsletter is the only email marketing strategy they need. Having a newsletter is a fantastic place to start—many businesses have been built on the back of sending a weekly newsletter—however, there is so much more that makes this channel powerful that authors should explore.

Email marketing is really an entire system and strategy designed to nurture your subscribers. A newsletter is a great piece of it, but when authors start exploring automation and what their subscriber journey looks like, that’s when the real magic happens.

How does an author grow their email list?

The biggest and most important piece of growing your email list that many authors miss is capturing the audience you already have. For instance, a lot of authors focus all of their efforts on social media and/or driving traffic to their website, which is great. But what are they doing with all of that traffic? How are they capturing their social media followers so that if social media went away overnight, they wouldn’t lose their entire audience? It’s crucial for authors to drive those folks to their email list. 

The most important metric on your website is something I call traffic to subscriber conversion, or TSC. Just as that sounds, that’s the percentage of traffic that’s getting converted to subscribers.

What are the best methods or strategies for attracting subscribers? 

It’s a definite balance between optimizing toward the TSC metric, but then above all respecting your traffic, your readers, your potential subscribers, and keeping that attitude all the way through the subscriber journey, from the minute they land on your website. The best way to do this is by offering something of real value to those who visit your website, where they trade their email address for a valuable resource (often called a “freebie” in the email marketing world). It’s so important to stay far away from the spammy stuff, where someone may make an offer seem very enticing when really it’s quite empty. The folks who subscribe to your email list but don’t receive value will very quickly unsubscribe. Look at this part of the subscriber journey as a passageway into what you’re all about—they’re ready to learn more.

I prefer to stick with time-tested marketing strategies over ever-changing “tactics,” but undeniably there are methods that work well right now, like offering those who visit your page something enticing like a tool to help them solve a problem (i.e. an intricate template) or putting together a quiz they can take. 

What are common email marketing mistakes you see people making?

The biggest mistake I see people making is making things too complex right from the beginning. Email marketing is something that can get very complicated and can get away from people quickly, with various sequences built out for various audiences. What I recommend instead is to focus on starting from simple foundations. A complex system that works started from a simple system that worked. So don’t over-complicate things and lose your way or burn yourself out; instead, start simple and build from there.

The other thing I notice is what I call the “top down cascade.” Basically, it’s the ecosystem of your email marketing collapsing on itself. People join your email list and if you don’t heed the advice to respect that subscriber relationship, you’re going to start losing subscribers quickly. Nobody wants to subscribe to someone’s email list and immediately be hit with a “buy, buy, buy!” message. They want to be served, they want to be nurtured. If you don’t keep this in mind from the very start, growing your email list is going to be like trying to fill a leaky bucket. 

How do you know what is working, and what isn’t resonating? 

There are certain metrics to keep an eye on. You really need to have your goals set, know what you’re trying to measure in each campaign and automation, and what your ideal outcomes are. If you’re sending people to a certain page on your website, for instance, you want to actually look at how much traffic from that email campaign has ended up on that site, and you can get a little bit of a better read on the outcome that way.  

Is there a good way for an author to promote their book via email marketing?

Every time you send an email, look to educate, inspire, or entertain. If you’re not doing one of those things, it’s likely your emails are coming off as spammy. Focus on principles of good communication, provide solutions to problems your subscribers may have, and offer up way more service than you do selling. People will appreciate that, and on the flipside, they will see through somebody who is just looking to make a sale. Always lead with value.

 

The All Things Book Marketing podcast is a popular biweekly show featuring book marketing and publicity tips from the top voices in the publishing industry. Be sure to subscribe so you never miss a new episode!

 

Matt Treacey is the go-to email marketing consultant for some of the world’s top business authors. With praise from industry leaders such as Nir Eyal, Perry Marshall and Michael Bungay Stanier, Matt combines a track record in email marketing with an academic background in ecological science. Taken together, Matt knows what it takes to build systems designed for growth. In his best-selling book, Natural Orders, he describes how to develop a healthy, engaged and profitable email marketing database, mimicking the timeless growth strategies used by the most successful systems of the natural world.

Engaging, thought-provoking and philosophical, Matt’s writing and speaking inspire his audiences to think differently, and to consider the multi-disciplinary approaches that will help them take their businesses to the next level. You can learn more at naturalordersbook.com.