Newsletter Signup Tactics

by Elizabeth S. Craig, @elizabethscraig

Writers read a lot about the importance of our author newsletter.  Industry expert Jane Friedman explains it well in her post “Email Newsletters for Authors: Get Started Guide“:

“Emails can’t be missed like a social media post that disappears in readers’ feeds as more posts follow it. You truly own your email list, unlike Facebook or Twitter accounts. And if you use people’s email addresses with respect (more on that in a minute), those addresses can become resources that grow more valuable over time.”

I was a slow adopter to email newsletters, unfortunately.  I couldn’t believe that readers really wanted to hear from me in their email inboxes.  Once I finally realized the value of newsletters and that readers were volunteering to hear from me, I had a good deal of catching up to do.

There are a variety of different ways of getting readers to sign up for our newsletters. Some of them, I think, are more obnoxious than others.   Here are some various methods and my opinion on their pros and cons:

The website popup:

Pros: popups boast a high success rate in converting readers to subscribers.  They can also be modified–you can set the time when they pop up on your site. Recently, the most popular trend has been to use ‘exit popups’ that appear when readers are about to click away from your site.  Cons: Many readers will find popups of any kind annoying.  As a curator, I’m not actually leaving when the popups appear:   I’m pointing my cursor up at the Hootsuite extension to share the post.  The popup covers the material I’m curating, and I have to either rely on my memory for a good headline or else close the popup. I’ve also heard from sight-impaired writers (there are at least two who follow me on Twitter) that the popups make blog reading very difficult for them as it’s not easy for them to figure out how to close the popup to read the blog article.

Facebook ads: 

Another method, popularized by author Mark Dawson, is using Facebook ads to generate newsletter signups.  Mark gave away a starter library in return for newsletter subscriptions and grew his list significantly. Pros:  If done well (Mark teaches a course on doing it well), authors can find quick success in growing their email subscription lists.  Authors have the ability on Facebook to target a very particular audience on the site and reach users that they couldn’t otherwise reach. I had success with this method and quickly added subscribers.  Cons:  Obviously, when running ads, there is cost involved, although we can set parameters for that cost through Facebook.  Another con, for me, was the time-sucking aspect…it’s important to monitor results so we can quickly pull ads that aren’t effective.  The process of creating an effective ad and monitoring results did impact my writing time.

Group giveaways/newsletter signups: 

I’ve been asked several times to participate in group giveaways with other cozy mystery authors.  I’m participating in one even now. This tends to work well–all the participating authors share the giveaway opportunity with their lists and social media contacts.  The readers sign up for the authors’ email lists in exchange for a chance to win a book or other prizes. My results have been good with this approach.  Pros: You’re much more likely to end up with readers who will actually buy and read your books since authors in your genre are targeting their readers with the giveaway. Cons: You must share the giveaway info with your readers to make this successful and fair to the other authors participating…but must tread the thin line to avoid spamming. Important: Need to make sure that readers understand they’re giving permission to be on authors’ email lists for newsletters.

Email tagline:

Here you merely add a signup link to your newsletter signup page as a tagline or signature for your emails.  Pros: Incredibly passive.  Cons: Might annoy friends and relatives with whom we frequently correspond?  If it does, they haven’t told me. :)

How do you find newsletter subscribers?