Grow Your Marketing Part 8: Engagement Emails

Engagement emails are designed to convert prospects into customers.

They make offers.

Your addressee is someone who, in order for you to have their email address in the first place, acquired something from you. So they are already a little bit more open to buying from you than a complete stranger. An engagement email makes the most of that by making it as easy as possible for them to buy more from you.

Remember, as is covered in the book Crack Your Marketing, there are several levels of public. We can summarise them here:

7. The Complete Stranger — has never bought anything from you and probably never will. Don’t waste time trying to market your work to them.

6. The Non-Engager — may browse but never clicks. Not worth the effort.

5. The Occasional Visitor

4. The Potential Fan

3. The Emerging Fan

2. The Fan

1. The Super-fan.

Someone who has bought your Portal Product qualifies as at least a Potential Fan. If they have read or are reading your book, then (providing your book is a properly designed and well-written Portal Product) they will be an Emerging Fan.

Potential and Emerging Fans are the prime people for your email marketing campaigns.

Businesses use email marketing to keep in touch with these people every day — you’ve probably received emails from companies asking if you’d like to complete your checkout or sign up for a free offer or something else that may or may not have tempted you to act. You have bought something from them in the past, and they are taking that as evidence that you are more likely to buy something else in the future.

They’re right.

It's definitely more likely that you will buy something else from them in the future.

You can use this too.

Your writing business can see big monetary gains by simply plugging in an engagement email. Many of the people on your list will be expecting to hear from you, waiting to see what else you have, and even eager to buy more.

Your question right now, though, is probably ‘What do I have that I can offer?’

You might have to use your imagination.

It’s assumed that, if you are serious about making money as an author, you have more than one book available, so an easy offer might be a special deal on one or more of your other books.

But part of crafting an effective offer for this kind of prospect is making sure that you understand your own work, especially your Portal Product.

Using our example from earlier, here’s an engagement email from our author friend, Alan Wusgrove:

Hello,

Just here to remind you why you bought by book Slam Bam Wham, the story of an alien invasion gone badly wrong (from the point of view of the aliens) — which I assume you enjoyed — unless of course I’ve caught you in the process of dancing around the burning flames of the book at the Disappointment Ceremony.

I’ve just finished the first draft of Book Three in the series Aliens Go Wild, and so wanted to urge you to continue reading by offering you

i) a 50% discount on Book Two, Flim Flam Flom, the story of a reluctant alien emperor, OR

ii) a 75% discount on Book Three, due out in the next few months.

Speaking of Book Three, maybe you can help me with something…

It’s about an alien family who escape their home world and try to live disguised on Earth, but I can’t quite nail the title. Which of these appeals to you best?

A. Ginge Gange Gonge

B. Tip Tap Top

C. Silly Sally’s Sorry

Or do you have a better idea…?

Drop me a line at [enter email address]

If you’re not quite ready to get other books from me, you can sign up for news about what’s coming up in the future here (another link).

Stay linked!

-Alan Wusgrove

Offers don’t always have to be discounts. If you understand your own work, you can probably get inside the head of the reader and perceive what he or she might be looking for next. Perhaps they’ve imagined a movie of your book — get a movie poster drawn up by an artist and offer that for a small price. They might be fascinated by a side character — pen a short story and offer them an e-download for pennies. Maybe they want to know more about the whole world you’ve created — have them join a dedicated social media group that allows them to share theories, ideas, comments and so forth — with plenty of links in it to purchasable goods, naturally.

The mantra here is ‘Engage, engage, engage’. This usually means ‘Money’ too, if you can think of other monetisable offers. Your aim is to make the prospect into a customer again. Yes, senior to money at this point is keeping the prospect linked up, connected, associated with what you have to give, but get bright: think of not only what you have to give, but what you have to sell, even if it’s just for a small amount.

The Big Money often comes from Step 3, coming up next.

Stay tuned.