12 Clicks Away From A Best-Seller

To market your book with a measure of success you will need to play a numbers game and reach out to a certain amount of sales targets, a certain amount of times, and hope to breakthrough on at least a few occasions.  Part of your ability to be successful will depend on the quality of the emails you send out. Here are 12 tips on how to get more people to open and respond to your emails.

1. Shorter emails are more inviting than longer ones.  Get to the point-but make sure they are long enough to say something substantive.

2. Offer a link to click on – not three or five. Focus the reader to take a single action step.

3. Create targeted content -- don’t send emails that some recipients will not find to be relevant.

4. Personalize your emails.  Not only should you put the recipient’s name in it but put something in the email that sounds like you are speaking to them in a way that shows you understand their needs, desires, and circumstances.

5. Send emails when the reader is likely to open them, such as peak-reading times in the morning or just after dinner.

6. Don’t send attachments, distracting images, or multiple subjects.

7. Make sure the font size is readable and that you don’t distract by overly bolding, underlining, capping, or italicizing too many words.

8. Don’t just invite people to do something – such as follow you on Twitter.  Tell them why they should do so.  Give them the benefits and make them enticing.

9. Segment your lists.  Don’t send the same email to everyone.

10. Test your message to a certain sampling pool and see what type of response you get.  Adjust your message as needed.  Or simply try two different messages – one sent to one half of your list, the other to another half.

11. Take into account what else is happening on the day you send your email.  What else is going on that may impact how they react to your email?  Should you send an email on Election Day?  Probably not.

12. Lastly, did you inject some personality or emotion or humor into the content?  People want to feel something when they read your email – or it gets dismissed.

Brian Feinblum’s views, opinions, and ideas expressed in this blog are his alone and not that of his employer, the nation’s largest book promoter. You can follow him on Twitter @theprexpert and email him at brianfeinblum@gmail.com. He feels more important when discussed in the third-person.