Book Marketing lessons learned in the trenches

What’s best for engaging your Mailing List Subscribers — PAID Books, FREE content, or Facebook Advertizing?

From 2014 to 2016, as a new author, I merrily rode the indie-publishing wave, looking to expand my author platform by reaching more and more readers.

The common advice then (and now), was to build a mailing list. With this list an author could build relationships with readers and, of course, sell books to them.

So I signed up to an Email Marketing Service called MailChimp and started collecting emails of those readers who showed interest in my writing. (I use MailerLite nowadays).

There were three signup sources from which readers could join my mailing list:

• Through a Call To Action within my PAID BOOK (Ignite)
• By reading FREE content - on my blog, or my permafree book on Amazon
• Via Facebooks Ads that advertized a Freebie in exchange for signing up

Even though I had a steady stream of subscribers joining my mailing list, one question always bothered me:

Was I building a vanity list or were my subscribers actually interested in hearing from me??

To answer this question, I decided to find out if my subscribers were opening my emails (Open rates) and clicking on the links within them (Click rates).

Secondly, I was curious to know if there was a difference in the level of ENGAGEMENT between subscribers from the 3 different signup sources: PAID book vs FREE content vs Facebook Ads.

Since I had these 3 audiences neatly parsed out into different lists in MailChimp, it was a simple matter to compare their Open and Click rates to measure their engagement with my author platform.

Open and Click rates - according to signup source

This figure shows that I got the highest Open (73.4%) and Click (34.7%) rates from subscribers who signed up to my mailing list after reading a PAID BOOK (i.e. they bought a book, liked it and then subscribed to my list from there) -- HIGHEST ENGAGEMENT.?

Those who signed up after reading FREE CONTENT showed intermediate engagement, while those who joined my list from Facebook Ads showed the LEAST ENGAGEMENT (i.e. least Open & Click rates).

Even though these results surprised me, since Facebook Ads were all in rage a few years ago, the truth slowly dawned upon me.

People don’t value what they get for FREE. Only when they pay to read a book (and enjoy it), do they feel invested in the outcome and in engaging with the author.?

I took this experiment further and sent an email to all my subscribers, and asked them if they wanted to continue staying on my list or Unsubscribe from it.?

UNSUBSCRIBES - according to signup source

As expected, those who had joined my mailing list from PAID BOOKS showed the least no. of unsubscribes (1.6%) -- HIGHLY ENGAGED.?

Those who joined my list from reading FREE CONTENT (like blog & permafree book) had 12.6% unsubscribes while those from Facebook Ads had 85.8% unsubscribes -- LEAST ENGAGED

Even though my mailing list was significantly culled, I had the satisfaction of knowing that I would communicate only with those readers who truly wanted to stay in touch and enjoyed hearing from me.

Going ahead, I used these results to inform my book marketing strategy.?

Since Facebook ads yielded the least engagement for me, I do not collect mailing list subscribers from Facebook ads anymore. I rely mainly on PAID books to gain subscribers.

Have you had a similar (or different) experience with your readers’ level of engagement? Do you have a more engaged group of subscribers than others in your mailing list??Please tell us in the Comments below.