Derek Doepker discussed the importance of storytelling in email marketing, and the use of lead magnets and viral giveaways to grow email lists effectively. He emphasized the “aspire” method for book promotion and shared a success story of an author who built a substantial engaged list through viral giveaways.
Key Points
- Derek discusses his learning process in email marketing, emphasizing the importance of storytelling and absorbing engaging content from other email lists.
- Lisa shares her experience with different email styles, contrasting Ben Settle’s lengthy emails with Derek Doepker’s concise and valuable content.
- Lisa praises Derek’s storytelling in his emails, specifically mentioning a series about mistakes and the positive response to a video glitch. She appreciates the humanity in his emails and asks about handling criticism.
- Lisa shifts the discussion towards audience building, highlighting the importance of content for audience retention and inquires about advice for authors on finding and growing their audience.
- Derek introduces the ASPIRE method as a high-level strategy for book promotion, emphasizing the significance of building an email list through various tactics like ads and social media.
- Derek explains the concept of lead magnets, advising on providing examples of writing style or genre as lead magnets for fiction authors and offering insights into creating lead magnets for both fiction and nonfiction authors.
- Derek introduces the concept of viral giveaways as a strategy to grow email lists effectively, sharing a success story of an author who built a substantial engaged list through this method.
I am here today with book marketer extraordinaire, Derek Deepker. Welcome, Derek.
Derek: Yeah, Lisa. Glad to be here.
Lisa: I receive an email from you just about every day, and I read most every one of them. Have you always kicked butt at email marketing, or was this something that you had to learn?
Derek: I’d say just about everything that I do, I’ve had to learn at some point. I mean, I don’t think I popped out of the womb being great at email marketing. So it was definitely a learned skill. And this is something for authors in particular you have the advantage of. You know, you’re a writer, and email is the perfect outlet to continue your writing and using it for marketing. That said, writing a novel or writing a nonfiction book, whatever you do, it is different than writing an email. So this is something that learning and wrapping my mind around email marketing was something, if I give one, just quick tip off the bat, it’s signing up for other people’s email lists who you really like, their emails, and that’s probably not going to be the majority of emails out there. Most newsletters are kind of boring, or it’s just a purely promotional thing, which, of course is fine on occasion, or when you need to promote something. It’s through finding emails that are really engaging. You know, they tell good stories or they have, you know, there’s something fun about them, something really valuable, educational, whatever the case might be. So it was a lot of absorbing other people’s emails, getting inspiration, and then also just going, what do I enjoy talking about? And so my email newsletter, the one you’re referring to, is on book marketing. At the same time, I’m into psychology. I geek out about psychology stuff. So I might read an interesting psychology study and tie that into, here’s how it applies to selling books. Or I’ll watch a movie and I’ll be like, here’s the lesson from the movie or the tv show that applies to you as an author. And so this is something that really any of us can do. You can take things that you’re interested in, that you’re passionate about, and then use your skills of storytelling or education or whatever the case might be, and apply it to your emails.
Lisa: So you belong to a lot of other people’s email lists. Do you have any favorite email lists you belong to?
Derek: Yeah, well, I mean, first, I’ve been on a number of different lists over the years that these days I actually tend to, let’s say, read less emails. You know, I’m pretty, I don’t know what word I’m looking for off the top of my head, selective maybe, about the newsletters I get. So I’m not overloaded with email newsletters, which I know is a challenge for some people. Yeah, I mean, some people who I’ve liked Ben Settle is a big name in the email marketing world. He’s kind of like a love him or hate them sort of person. I like learning from people like that where I don’t have to agree with everyones philosophy or whatever to study what they’re doing.
Another person I like Laura Belgray of talking shrimp. She’s got really kind of like funny emails, a lot of personality in her emails.
Ian Stanley is another guy. I’ve studied from Ian a number of his email marketing trainings. He’s another guy, he’s a stand up comedian. The same disclaimer for all these people, there’s a lesson in that. It’s like they’re not for everyone. Some people don’t like certain words that Ian uses, certain crass course language or whatever. And so it’s not saying that you have to. My choices don’t have to be your choices. You can find people that you like. That might be different. That is a lesson, though, that I notice whenever I talk about the people whose email lists I really like and enjoy reading. There’s almost always that disclaimer, hey, they’re not for everyone. And that’s kind of the point. They’re not being like controversial for the sake of being controversial. It’s not always controversial stuff. It’s more they have a strong personality. They take a stand. They’re willing to express themselves, their beliefs, their philosophy. They’re willing to inject, maybe their sense of humor or their attitude about things into their email. So now all of a sudden, they stand out and they’re unique. And in doing so, just as a byproduct, you’re not going to be for everyone.
Who am I not for?
So that’s another sort of email marketing lesson we can talk about how to build your email list. A big part of building your email list and writing emails, though, is knowing who am I not for? And that’s a great question. It’s actually an email I sent recently about writing a book. You talk about finding your ideal reader, whether that’s for a book or an email list.
First you might consider who’s your I would call anti reader, who’s really not going to like it, not respond to it. I’ll give you a hint. Anyone who doesn’t like to read probably isn’t going to read a book, right? So that’s an easy starting point. You might think, what are the things you really want to talk about? And this now all of a sudden it gives you permission to go, oh, instead of walking on eggshells worried about what if this person likes it or doesn’t like it, what if I get some unsubscribes? My attitude is it’s not in an arrogant or posturing sort of way. I really mean it. If I say, hey, if someone unsubscribes, they’re not for me. I don’t want to waste their time with emails that they’re not interested in. I don’t want to pay money for subscribers on my email list who they’re not going to benefit from it.
So as one of my mentors, Joel Bauer, has a saying, gotta paraphrase like, you know, don’t want to be in a marriage with someone who doesn’t want to be in a marriage with you. If you think about that for your readers or your email list, if they don’t want to be in a marriage with you, they don’t want to be in a relationship with you. Set them free. There is someone else who better suits them. And I’m saying all of this, some of it might be common sense, some of it might be really important for some people to hear because, or be reminded of because there is, if we get into email marketing, kind of that sense of, how do I do this? What do I say? What if some people don’t like it? What if I get unsubscribes? And the sooner you can sort of recognize, hey, you know what? It’s totally cool if some people don’t like my emails. It’s going to, if anything, just strengthen the people who do resonate with the type of emails that you write.
Lisa: I completely agree. I actually did sign up. You suggested Ben Settle and I signed up for his email list. And thing is, I ended up unsubscribing just because his style was more of a long email with big, dense paragraphs and I felt overwhelmed. Whereas I know with your emails, I like the fact that you’ve got, they’re very quick to read. And it’s like, I start to read one, I’m like, boy, I got the message and finished the email within, you know, short amount of time. And I thought it was very well worth the minute, couple of minutes I spent on it, reading it. So that’s one thing that I have to commend you for, is keeping your emails very short and to the point.
Derek: Yeah. And that’s something. It’s not an absolute rule. So a lot of times when I’m giving feedback on people’s emails, I am saying, you can cut it down. It could be less words then I get continuously. Give the caveat, though. You could have a 2,000-word email where if it’s super engaging, people will follow along if they’re interested in it. Right.
The thing about email, though, is it is somewhat the medium does affect the types of content you put in there. So I tend to keep my emails maybe 500 words or less. That’s not an absolute rule. I just found that’s what the typical average is. It’s one of those things. It’s funny. Uh, you know, someone might be like. It’s the framing. So if you tell someone, hey, do you want to watch this? A ten-hour long movie? Most people are going to say, oh, no. Ten hour movie? Are you kidding me? That’s ridiculous. Hey, do you want to watch this tv series? And it just so happens to be ten one-hour long episodes, and someone might binge the whole thing in a day, right? You call it a ten-hour movie. They don’t want it, but you call it a tv series, and all of a sudden, you know, people consume it differently.
So there is an element of that in email where I find that there’s something about email where you can get people engaged. I tend to not go too much long form content in email. If I want to do that, I’ll send them elsewhere. That said, it’s not an absolute requirement. If the biggest rule of thumb, just like when writing a book and you’re wondering how long should a book be? It’s like, well, as long as it needs to be and no longer. How long should a piece of string be? It’s like you can’t really answer these questions.
What you’re saying here is something that I generally value having something because I send daily emails. I like it. You can get through it in a minute or two. And I know daily emails aren’t going to be for everyone, and I’m not saying they have to be. It’s funny, sometimes people are like, oh, could you send a once a week email or something like that? And we could get into why I personally choose not to do that. But it’s like, well, if I send a longer email that took you ten minutes to read once a week, or if I sent you five emails that take you one minute to read, it’s actually quicker. Just having little daily doses, like little bite sized things that you could read. You could literally be going to the bathroom and read it. I can be through it. So I kind of keep that in mind that I am smaller doses, but then the frequency of it is typically five to seven days a week. So every day it’s like a little bit of a motivational or educational boost for people.
Lisa: So one of the great things about email marketing is that you can schedule out these emails. So do you have like a flow that you do, like sit down one day and just batch these emails that you schedule out for a couple of weeks or what’s your process?
Derek: My process has evolved and I keep coming back to this idea as I talk throughout it of here’s what I do or here’s what I might be doing. I want to separate that to a degree from what might be best for you as someone watching or listening to this because you might have a different style or productivity method that works better for you. And there’s different times in my life where I’ve done different things. So when I first started out, and even to this day, I tend, unless it’s an autoresponder that I’m writing, where I might do a batch of maybe five to seven emails, which for those who don’t know, autoresponder that’s, well, could be anything that you schedule in advance. Usually, though, it’s like the welcome sequence. Someone signs up, they get a freebie, then they maybe get a series of emails after that.
When I was first setting things up, I probably batched out, wrote a handful of emails that I know. Okay, each one of these is going to go out. Then after that, most of the emails I write, either I’ve written it the same day it goes out, or usually I do like to have it maybe the day before. Right. So I have today, I have tomorrow’s email scheduled out, and tomorrow I’ll schedule the next day. I’m going in traveling or something. Then I might schedule it out for a week. And that’s usually the thing, if I’m traveling is when I get it more scheduled out.
For me, though, it’s a lot of times a couple things. One is having my finger on the pulse of what’s happening right now. Even when I’m doing a launch or something. I might schedule out a couple emails, but then people send me some questions and I go, oh, that’s a great idea for another email. Then I can write the email based off of that. So it’s a little bit more of that interactive, or there’s a news event or, hey, here’s this new article that just came out that I read. I like having it be a little more present time where it’s not like I have a whole month of email scheduled out in advance. I don’t usually do that as someone who writes fairly consistent emails.
Another thing though, is because I’ve written so many emails over the years, a lot of the emails I’ve been sending out now are sometimes repeats of past emails. Whether I sent it out could be months ago, but usually a year or a couple of years ago, I’ve sent out an email. I’m like, that was a good email. A lot of people haven’t seen it, or if they have seen it, they’ll appreciate seeing it again. These days it’s gotten easier because I’ve been doing it for so many years that I can reuse, repurpose some emails and then also because I do promotions. If I’m launching a certain, or let’s say doing a promotion for a certain course, I’ve probably already written five to ten emails promoting that course back when I maybe promoted it six months or a year ago. I’ll just reuse those emails.
The way you might think about this as an author is, if you have a book and you did a book launch and you wrote a number of emails promoting this book of yours, and then six months later it’s on sale and you want to promote it, you could probably just take a lot of the same emails you wrote when the book first launched. Maybe you tweak it a little bit, change dates on things of when the sale is and stuff like that. And essentially, if you have good emails, maybe you’re writing an email with some testimonials about the book, little sneak preview of the book, a description of the book, whatever it was. You don’t really have to rewrite, or totally do something from scratch for those emails. You can usually repurpose what you have.
In a nutshell, basically most of the things I do kind of on the spot, you know, a day or two in advance, if not the same day, unless I’m reusing something from a promotion, or I’m scheduling something out because I’m traveling.
Lisa: Well, one story I found in a couple of your emails that were spaced out, I think, maybe a few months, but that I enjoyed reading again because, and I think you probably framed it a little differently. But you did a little series about a month ago about mistakes.
I’ll tell you, the story I like was the one that you, because I coach a little bit about doing video to market your books. And in one of your stories. A gentleman who was doing a video and he slipped and dropped the camera and he picked it up, that he ended up editing out that, dropping the camera. But then he tried, he thought, well, why don’t I try posting the video with that glitch in it? And that glitch got a lot more response than the, than the edited video.
And part of the series that you were doing had to do with somebody criticizing you for making a grammatical mistake, which is, I agree, is kind of like a, they need to get a life if that’s what they’re doing. So I like that bit of humanity that you put into your emails.
For people who have not read that series, can you talk a little bit about how you handle people who give criticism or how you handle respond to it?
Derek: A couple things you brought up. One was Keith Yackey, who I heard that video example from, where he was recording a video. So that’s a lesson unto itself. I was at an event that he was speaking at. He was the main speaker. It was his event. I believe he was either at the event, maybe it was following on social media after, but I think it was at the live event. The whole point of the story is I was able to use that story. I gave credit. I mentioned Keith in the email saying, hey, I heard this from Keith Yackey. And the idea, though, is like, if you’re at an event, if you’re, I mentioned watching a movie, watching a tv show, you read an interesting article, you watch a TED talk, whatever it is, like all these things could be a source of inspiration for an email.
I have an email going out tomorrow called the Super Mario effect, which is this the name. I think that’s actually the name of the TED Talk. And, it’s watching the TED Talk, talking about gamification. And then I kind of relate it to being an author, your motivation and stuff like that. So one thing with writing emails, sometimes it’s just about curating content. You don’t always have to be the creator of something. You could simply sharing things. I’m often sharing things. And whenever I know the source, I’ll give credit, maybe even linked. Like tomorrow I’ll link to the TED talk and then, kind of giving my thoughts on it. So that’s one thing for email content.
When it comes to handling criticism.
For a little context, I have a few emails like this about the grammar police. So for anyone watching this and you don’t have the context. This is not me saying, oh, grammar, a bunch of grammar mistakes are fine, or don’t edit your book. That’s not what it is. It was like one of them was, I started an email, I got a question for you and they were really upset that I said, I got a question for you, instead of I’ve got a question for you. I got a question. So one of those things, it was so silly. Now, if they were, like, polite about it, it would have been one thing. But they were like, you know, I’m disappointed they even went so far later to say, like, you’re offending the author audience with all this sort of stuff. And so the way I handle criticism, most of it, I just ignore.
If it’s valid criticism, I could say, thank you for sharing. You know, just a real simple thing. It’s actually, most of the time, pretty nice behind the scenes. If someone gives me something that’s just so over the top ridiculous, then I might turn that into, like, I got this silly email and I got this and I might respond to it.
There’s a number of ways to respond to trolls or haters. One simple thing. There’s an ad for Snowbird Mountain, and they actually just took a one-star review, and that’s their ad. And the one-star review was too advanced, and then it had a little commentary. So if you google Snowbird Mountain ad or whatever, you can, you can find it. But the idea is this goes back to, if you’re not for everyone, you know, sometimes bringing up what critics say is in and of itself, you actually can get people rallying behind you. You know, people agree with the critic, then maybe they’re not a fit for you, but you can get people rallying behind you. There could be other times where I might say, hey, they have a really good point here. If I do strive to have a degree of humility, you know, with it, I’m not saying I’m perfect.
I still got an ego. And I do go, okay, well, do they have a point? Is there something, especially whether it’s your emails or whether it’s your books or whatever it is there something valid to this? Sometimes, though, it’s just silly. Like another one star review I share that some people really like is when someone left a one-star review of one of my books and had nothing to do with the book, they go, I thought this was Deepak Chopra instead of Derek Doepker. I’m like, okay, what are you going to do, right? So even just sharing little things like that, people get a kick out of it. Just like you kind of just, you got to laugh at it. And so this gives you an opportunity.
Now, whenever you see, whether it’s criticism or one star reviews that your book gets or things like that, it’s not all going to be good material. If all they said was this sucks or whatever, okay? There’s not much to work with there. But if it’s kind of funny or silly or you can kind of give a playful response to it, then you know there’s an opportunity there.
So again, to recap, most of the time I either ignore it or I thank the person if it’s kind of valid, if they’re approaching it from a well meaning place. Like if they were to say, hey, you missed this or hey, you made this little mistake there or something like that, that’s one thing. It’s when they come at you, start attacking you, calling you names and insulting you or telling you how you know you’re just destroying the world with what you’re writing about or whatever, that’s when you might use that as content. The theme here, almost everything can become content for your emails and even, maybe even go into your books as well.
Lisa: We’ve covered a lot about content, but not a lot about building up the audience. I mean, content is one thing to keep your audience. What advice do you give authors when they are trying to find their audience and build their audience?
How to Build Your Email List
Derek: One thing to point out, because building your audience, obviously that’s going to be key. And I actually got an email like this. I’m listening to these interviews. You’re talking about what to write in these emails and this and that. But how to actually build the email list. The thing I remind people of is actually focusing on the content first, at least getting a handful of emails ready to go. I actually start with that before you start building because otherwise you start getting people on your email list and then you either don’t message them that much or now it’s intimidating. What do I say to them? So I recommend having at least a few emails lined up ready to go as soon as someone signs up for your list. So focusing on that content first and then how do you build your email list? Well, there’s a number of strategies. At the end of the day, I say virtually all roads lead back to building your email list.
I’m going to give high level and then I can get into some very tactical things that you can implement, like today or this week to start building an email list.
So high level, something I call the ASPIRE method. And this is really for doing any sort of book promotion. And ASPIRE is an acronym. So A stands for ads, right? You can run ads to sell your book, like Amazon ads, Facebook ads, BookBub ads, things like that. The book promotion sites. You can also run ads to build your email list. I have an ad that is has been running for a couple years. That’s not too typical for a Facebook ad, but you usually want to refresh it and update it. I’ve had an ad that’s run for a couple of years and it brings me new email subscribers every day. So it’s going to a reader magnet or a lead magnet and I can cover that in a few moments. But basically just advertising. You’re paying to build your email list or you’re paying to sell books through ads.
Next is S and the ASPIRE method for social media. If I’m posting things on social media, if I am posting about an upcoming book launch, when I was doing this before, at the end of the post, I would say, you know, opt in here to get notified when it launched. I might even offer a free copy or review copy at some point. Either way, if I’m posting on social media, if you have link in a bio, a lot of times those things are taking people back to building your email list, right? So social media is great. The thing is, you don’t own your social media platform. You don’t own the contacts in the Facebook group, you don’t own all the followers. If a site decides to deplatform you or not show your posts as many places, whatever it is, and you know, you’re kind of at their mercy, whereas your email list is what you own. If I’m doing something on social media, usually in some way, shape or form, eventually I want to get them from social media. Opted into some sort of email list. So we have ads, social media.
Then we have P, which stands for platforms or platform leveraging. So another way of built email list is guest blogging a little bit. My main thing though is that what I’m doing right now, guest podcasting, doing interviews. So whether that’s podcast interviews, summit interviews, and sometimes even speaking on stages, live and in person, anytime someone else has a platform that they built with your audience. And this is equally relevant for novelist fiction authors. I see a lot of fiction authors who will leverage guest podcasting to, to grow their audience. The idea is, if you’re going on a platform, yes, you can maybe mention your book, if of course, and maybe you get some sales that way. My goal, though, is to build the email list. So go do interviews, use that to get people back to your site. Offer them a freebie to build your email list.
Quick recap. Ads, Social, Platforms…I influencers who are fellow authors or other people in your space. So there are people who, I’ve used this to help sell books where I’ve launched a book, and some other people have mentioned the book to their email list and also done things where I promoted someone else’s email list. They promoted my email list, whether directly or indirectly by doing a webinar or something like that together. And so influencers, these are relationships. And for authors, many times it’s going to be fellow authors. Very common way of doing this would be something like a cross promotion. And there’s places like Book Funnel that you can do this. You can also reach out directly to authors or either with a group of authors, let’s say it’s ten paranormal romance authors all get together and they create a page that has each of their freebies, each of their reader magnets on it, and all ten of them promote, hey, for, you know, two days or these next three days or for this week, you know, you can get all these books for free, and then they can click on which books they want and opt into the list. The whole idea is you’re getting together with at least one other author, if not a handful of authors, and you’re all cross promoting each other’s free book, usually, which helps all build your email list, right? So that’s influencers.
Ads, Social, Platforms, Influencers, Referrals or Readers, right? So could you get your own readers to share it? Could you offer an incentive if they say, hey, share my website, or hey, anyone else who would benefit from this newsletter or this free book or whatever it is, you know, make it easy for them to share it, give them a message they can tweet out if they want to, or whatever it is you could do. I’ve done things for book launches where it’s like, hey, if you post this on your social media, send me a screenshot and I’ll enter you in for a drawing for a prize. So you get a bunch of people sharing and talking about your book and stuff like that, and then they’re incentivized to do that.
And finally the E in the ASPIRE method is Email.
That means all these things are eventually leading back to building your email list. So a couple of things I mentioned there specifically for building your email list. Running ads is going to be one of the most direct ways of building your email list. You have doing things like. Going on other people’s platforms. Guest podcasting is a very effective way for building your email list, working with fellow authors. So that’s doing cross promotions and joint promotions, Book Funnel, Story Origin, both of those places have some built in things for that. And of course, you can directly reach out, and then I can dive more into doing a viral giveaway, which is another strategy in reader magnets. But I’ll pass it to you if you have any questions or comments on any of that so far.
Lisa: Well, the lead magnet is one of the big things that people are always asking about, particularly authors, is like, okay, well, you can’t give away your book if you only have a couple of books or something like that. What are some things that people can give away for free?
For freebies?
Derek: Yeah. So it doesn’t have to be a book. That said, if we’re talking fiction, it is nice to give them an example of your writing. So, there’s other types of lead magnets you can do for fiction. The thing is to give an example of something that I cautioned the author about is she was writing, I think it might have been some sort of historical romance or something historical. And then she had a lead magnet, which was like certain recipes, like recipes that were in the book. And I’m like, this is very creative. It’s cool. The challenge is if that’s the only lead magnet, not everyone’s interested in recipes because not everyone cooks. And this lead magnet doesn’t really introduce them to what your storytelling is like. It’s more kind of a practical resource. So I go, this is a cool thing to have. I would include it as part of a bonus package. And I would also consider, though, a lead magnet that kind of reflects your writing style, the genre, and give people more of a taste of your storytelling.
For a fiction author, you could do a prequel. I mean, it could be worth taking one day, one or two days, to just knock out a quick prequel of the story. If you have book one in a series, it could be the simplest thing, maybe not the most ideal, but it’s good in the sense that it doesn’t take much effort, be even just giving away the first few chapters. So if it’s not the whole book, you could take the first 510 percent of it, you know, even the first chapter or two. And that could be the lead magnet. And that works also even with nonfiction.
Now, in nonfiction, if you take a portion of the book, I like to take something that kind of stands alone and position it as its own thing. So let’s say, and this isn’t something I’ve done, but if I have a whole book on book marketing and maybe I have one section in there on a strategy for getting book reviews, I might just take that one thing and offer it as its own little freebie on getting book reviews. Or maybe I have something in there on building your email list. Maybe there’s a lot of other topics in there. But I have one thing. So it’s like, here’s my number one list building strategy, and I just pull that excerpt from the book and that could be its own. Own standalone lead magnet. So you can always take a sample of something from your book. And then for nonfiction, you have some more options because it could be, let’s say, educational in the sense that you could create a quick checklist or a little video course or there’s different things that you can do.
Something I did just to even kind of prove the concept was, I noticed that a lot of people were asking me about my setup. So whether or not, if you’re not watching this on video, it won’t make sense. But if you see the video of this, you’ll see I have a black backdrop of microphone. They’re like, oh, you know, how’d you do that? And all it is is just like a little backdrop that I pull up behind me and then the microphone, and then I don’t have it turned on, but I got, you know, ring light and stuff. And so I go, you know what? I’m going to create a little home studio. I forgot what I call it, you know, cheat sheet or whatever, buyer’s guide. And it took me 10-15 minutes. Right? Copy and paste the links on Amazon, do a quick little video. Then I ran some Facebook ads to test it, and I was getting really good. I mean, it might have been less than a dollar a lead using lead ads or something very, very good for, like, targeting entrepreneurs and stuff for it. I didn’t really have much to sell off the back end. I just wanted to prove the concept that you could create something in 15 minutes and then take ten minutes to set up an ad and start building your email list that way.
So again, that’s one example. It may or may not apply to you in terms of the specifics. The mindset, though, is I don’t, you don’t have to spend months creating something. There might be something really simple, whether that’s a short story, a prequel, a little buyer’s guide, cheat sheet, something like that, that you can get out there and you might evolve it or create something more comprehensive later if you want to. To me, it’s really just about getting something done, getting it out there. And sometimes it actually has higher consumption and value when it is quicker to consume. So if it’s a short story that you can read in 15 minutes, there’s actually a higher likelihood that they’re going to go through it. And if it’s really good and they go, I really like this author’s style, then that could lead them to wanting to buy your other things.
Lead Magnet Couple Things to Keep in Mind
One is just get something done. You know, done is better than perfect, and then you can always make something even better later. Consider what’s going to appeal to your audience. Hopefully, that’s an obvious thing. Also, though, then consider how does this tie into what you’re going to offer them? Is it directly related? So that home studio cheat sheet type of thing is really cool. I might not be attracting that many authors with that, though. So if I want to appeal to an author audience, which I do, I have a book, Why Authors Fail. And that’s kind of my main lead magnet because that’s directly targeting the audience I want. And finally, then another thing is you can have multiple lead magnets. So I have different things that are. All building my email list from my free book Why Authors Fail to webinars that I do that build my email list too, other little bonuses.
I sell an affordable course on getting book reviews. That helps build my email list when people buy it. So don’t compare, if you’re just starting out as, as I’ve heard, don’t compare your first draft to someone else’s final draft. If you’re just getting started, get one lead magnet done, one reader magnet done, and then realize you can always add more over time.
Lisa: That is so great. I just have one little question for you, which is, I hope it’s kind of little, but I have a couple of clients who have an email list, but they don’t use it very frequently because they’re afraid they don’t want to spam their list if they send an email every month. So they end up sending only a couple a year. I’m sure you’ve run into clients like that. What do you say to these clients?
Derek: Well, there’s a few things to keep in mind. If you’re only sending a few times a year, it’s actually going to be a lot of times a worse experience for the reader and for the person with the email list. And the reason is, if you’ve ever signed up for a list, even the next day, I don’t know if this happened to anyone watching or listening to this. I’ve signed up for stuff. And I mean, even the very next day or two, I’m like, wait, who was this person again? Now imagine months go by unless you’ve really built a very strong relationship early on. Or maybe you’re emailing them somewhat frequently and they really get to know you, then maybe it goes a month or two without hearing from them. That’s one thing. A lot of times, if you’re not emailing them that often, then it’s just people are going to forget about it and they’re actually more likely to market it as spam because they’re like, who is this person? Is this even relevant to me? And now it’s like, well, now they only seem to be emailing me when they want something, right? Which almost makes it even worse than if you’re having a continuous conversation back and back and forth. So that’s it tends to make it worse.
There’s other comparisons I can give, like a relationship, you know, how healthy is a marriage if the couple only sees each other and talks once every three months, right? Probably not going to be as good of a relationship as if they’re talking on a daily basis or at least a weekly basis or more frequently. And there’s this idea of kind of the, the mere exposure effect. I remember there’s a coffee shop I used to go to, and after, I don’t know, a few weeks or a month or something like that, they’d start to be like, hey, Derek, you know, whenever I came in, like, you recognize the, the people. And I’m like, oh, I kind of, I didn’t really know them that well, but. But there’s like, I feel more comfortable around these people just because you start to see them on a regular basis. You want your name in their inbox to have that same effect, for it to be recognizable right now.
The thing is, though, but I don’t want to spam people. I don’t want to be annoying. Well, this might sound like a Captain Obvious thing to say. It’s like, don’t write annoying emails, then don’t write boring emails. Focus. It’s focusing on what you don’t want rather than what you do want. It’s kind of playing to avoid loss rather than going, what is even the point of this email list? They signed up for it because they want to get emails. Now your job is to send them emails because that’s what they signed up for. So it’s not spam when they say, hey, I’m raising my hand and telling you I want emails where it becomes spammy, as if you’re sending them emails that don’t provide anything that they want of value. Right now, if they want to hear about your book releases, and that’s what you say, either sign up for it, then they want to hear about the book releases. If you’re good. If they want entertainment, almost everyone’s going to want entertainment.
I strive to make my emails somewhat entertaining, to have that entertainment value. And if you really get this down, well, you realize that you could send emails about almost anything. As long as people are drawn into it. Right? They’re entertained, then it’s valuable. Most people are spending their time on Instagram and TikTok and YouTube and stuff, not because it’s profoundly benefiting their life. It’s just entertainment. It’s just passing the time. Right? And as an author, you’re an entertainer. Whether you’re a novelist or whether you’re nonfiction, great nonfiction authors are going to incorporate entertainment value to what they’re doing.
So my mindset and what allows me to sort of, quote unquote, get away with writing daily emails is, first of all, I set the expectations. Here’s what you’re going to get. You’re going to get an email probably almost every day. If that’s an issue, you don’t have to sign up or you can unsubscribe. Right? So now it’s like they’re, they’re agreeing, this is what I want, and I totally am. Fine. Some people are going, oh, Derek, I don’t want daily emails. Fine. It’s okay. This isn’t for you, then. But again, they’ll be okay with an email that comes once a week that takes some ten minutes to read, whereas my emails come once a day and take one to two minutes to read. It’s the same at the end of the week. I mean, if you really were to do the math. But my mindset is I want to make this so that they’re looking forward to the emails, so they’re upset if they’re not getting them. And when you flip the switch from I don’t want to upset people by sending an email, it’s like, what would it look like? What would it be like if they were upset that you haven’t sent them an email? What kind of emails would you send? Where they’re going, it’s been a month and you haven’t sent me an email. Come on now. You know I want my fix, right? So that’s the shift to get into. And some people are going to get it, some people won’t.
The people who won’t, they’ll just lose out on a lot of sales and a lot of potential and disappoint, you know, potentially their audience. Who could have benefited from it? Those who get it will embrace it. And I’m not saying it’s an easy thing. It’s something that can take some skill to develop. There are some shortcuts, like I mentioned, though, sometimes it’s as simple as going. Found this really cool article. Thought you might like it, you know? Type of thing. I saw this really great video. Here’s something to check out. Oh, this funny thing happened to me today. It reminded me of something that happens here, or there’s correlation stories, which are great.
I was doing this as an example, working in the garden and comparing the garden to something. The character in the story. It’s like for a novel, it’s something that you learn from gardening and the life lesson you get from that. It’s the same thing that this character experiences in the story. So there’s all kinds of ways you can have fun with this. And another thing, if you’re an author, writing emails is another opportunity to work on your writing chops. And so now you’re getting to practice your writing chops. Simple emails could be short stories, and you might find that by regularly sending short stories to your audience. Eventually one of those ideas really takes off and turns into its own thing.
Or for me, nonfiction. I have a lot of emails that actually get that. I can take that and go, I really like that. I’m just going to put that into a chapter of one of my books for this concept that I’m teaching. So now all of a sudden, you go, you’re bettering yourself. If you’re making it entertaining, your audience is going to enjoy it. And one final reminder is that if you’re like, well, I get a lot of emails. I don’t like receiving emails. It’s like, I don’t take, I believe my audience are responsible adults and they can decide if they want to be on the email list or not. If it’s too much for them, they can opt out. If it’s not a fit for them, they can opt out. If they’re on 500 other email list, they can choose to stay signed, they can unsubscribe from those or not.
It’s not my job to try to manage someone else’s life. It’s my job to provide the best possible value I can provide. And I think of myself as a server. Like, you’re at a cocktail party, you’re going around, you got a tray, you want some appetizers, and they can say yes or no, but I’m not going to be like, well, I don’t want to go. What if they’re not hungry? What if they don’t want to talk to me? It’s like, would you like some? They’ll be like, sure or no, thanks. Okay, cool. Onto the next person. And people can self select if it’s something that they want.
Lisa: Wow. Well, this has just been such a wealth of information and wisdom, and I really appreciate you as a mentor. And do you want to give any last advice or tell people how they can sign up for your list or to even if they don’t read every email, at least they’ll get a lot of opportunities to learn more.
Viral Giveaways
Derek: Yeah, sure thing. So one final little quick tip. I mentioned something called viral giveaways. I have a whole training on it, so you can email me if you want more details. A viral giveaway would be something like, you can take 5-10 other books in your genre that are popular and do a giveaway for them. So let’s say it’s a fantasy list and you want to give away the Lord of the Rings trilogy box set, print book trilogy, you could do that. You have a bunch of people enter to win. One person wins it. You buy it on Amazon, you ship it to them. I ship it to them through Amazon. Or you buy the few books and you ship them to them on Amazon. And anyone who didn’t win, they can be on your email list. They opt in whenever they join the giveaway and you can offer a consolation prize.
I usually do something like the free copy of one of my books. The opportunity to be an early reader, free, get a free copy. And I’ve done this. I worked with an author, she’s a romance author. She started with the new pen name under romance and built up a list of over 10,000 people. And I think it was about three and a half months results. Not typical disclaimer on that. Yeah, it was just following the strategy that I taught. She put, I think a couple hundred, few hundred in some Facebook ads to promote the giveaways and built a really big list that way. And she said they were engaged. She got some, I think, some early readers and things through this list. A lot of people were sticking around. So that’s something.
There’s a whole strategy that I teach on that. It’s just to plant the seeds. Something you could do regardless of where you’re at. You remember, like you could just buy some books you’re not giving away not like giving away something you don’t have permission to, like an ebook of it or whatever, you’re actually purchasing the book whether you purchase the ebook or print book, but you’re purchasing it first. That’s the key. Meaning you’re not just giving away a PDF you have on your computer, you’re actually purchasing it and sending it to the winner. And so that’s something you’re totally allowed to do. A lot of times, even the authors in the giveaway, if they’re around, you can let them know about it. Sometimes they’ll even help promote it. So a whole strategy there and then just get the creative wheels turning that even if you don’t have a lead magnet at this point, there’s other ways you can leverage resources out there to build your email list.
And if you want to get on my email list, see the types of emails I send, get a free copy of Why Authors Fail as well. Then you can go to bestsellersecrets.com. Once again, bestsellersecrets.com.
Lisa: Wonderful. Thank you so much. I now have a good to do list of my own how to work through. So thank you so much.