Friday, June 26, 2015

The Scoop on Advertising: Part 4 ~ The Mighty Sword of E-mail Distribution

By Misty M Beller @MistyMBeller

Free Workshop in Progress: This summer on our ACFW-SC chapter blog we are happy to welcome one of our members, Misty M. Beller, for a special 12-week workshop on Marketing. Misty has experienced great success marketing her first novel and later ones, consistently selling 10,000 books a month. Join this free workshop and be blessed. Be sure to leave a comment and tweet the blogs to your friends. 
Elva Cobb Martin, President, ACFW-SC Chapter  www.elvamartin.com


As we talk through paid advertising that works, we’ve finally come to one of the most successful:
Targeted email distribution.world-email
This is one of my all-time favorite marketing methods, because this is the way I see the biggest spike in sales. It also works well with my introverted personality. :)
The concept is simple. Readers sign up with a website to receive daily emails feature books in the categories they select. Authors pay a fee to have their book featured in that email. Many sites also include promotion on Facebook and Twitter, along with the email distribution.
bookbubBy far the most successful email marketing site is Bookbub.com. They accept a very small number of books submitted for their daily email blast, and the pricing isn’t cheap. But don’t let these factors discourage you! A Bookbub feature almost always earns at least three or four times the cost of the submission, and the featured book usually rockets to the top of the bestseller list in their Amazon genre category.  Which makes your books visible to even more buyers. From there, if you’ve done a good job with the prerequisites (cover, description, and reviews/craft), sales will usually taper to a higher consistent level than before the ad.
entEreadernewstoday.com is another site that does well, although not quite as well as BB. Most people see returns of at least double or triple their ad investment when using ENT.
There are hundreds (possibly thousands) of other sites that offer this same targeted email marketing. Make sure you vet a potential advertiser before spending money on them. Look at the number of subscribers (especially email, not just Facebook or Twitter followers) compared to the price they charge.
Below is a list of sites I’ve either used or considered using (there are only so many hours in a day and so many dollars in my checkbook!). Please know I’m not endorsing these specific sites, but I don’t feel like any of them are scams. They are just a starting place if you’d like to test the email distribution list waters.
Also keep in mind, some sites do better with specific genres than others.

So now it’s your turn! 
Are there other email distribution sites you’ve used for book promotion? This is all about idea sharing, so let’s hear ’em!

Misty M. Beller writes Christian historical romance, and is author of the bestselling novels The Lady and the Mountain Man and The Lady and the Mountain Doctor.

Misty was raised on a farm in South Carolina, so her Southern roots run deep. About ten years ago, she made a career change from farm life into the business world, where she now works as a Senior Manager and Director of Process & Training. Her husband and two daughters are gifts from God, keeping her both grounded and crazy.
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1 comment:

  1. Elva Cobb Martin, South CarolinaJune 26, 2015 at 10:59 AM

    Wonderful article, Misty! I am sharing it on twitter and FB.
    Hugs,
    Elva Cobb Martin

    ReplyDelete

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