Do you want to run advertising but don’t have the budget or the margins for it? Think about email marketing. Hey guys, Andrew here, and today I’m going to be talking to you about email marketing and how to combine it with your advertising efforts to create a strategy that’s going to help you grow your business without breaking the bank.
How To Calculate Your Marketing Budget
In publishing, the margins are generally quite low, so let’s take a quick look at them. Here is an ROI calculator I created; I call it the Publishing ROI Calculator, but it could be used for any type of product.
Here’s a book that I’m going to be releasing in June, called “A Pillbug’s Story” by Alison Conway. We’re very excited about this one, and we’re going to be printing between 500 and 1000 copies in our initial print run. For this example, just use 500. Increasing the inventory would bring down the unit cost, which would be ideal, but we only have so much capital to invest in new projects.
Let’s estimate, based on other similar titles we’ve published, that we’re going to sell about 50 of these per month. Our price is $25, and the unit cost is $3.50. This seems like a great margin, but wait until you see the other calculations to take into account the APR that I’m paying on the debt I sometimes use to acquire inventory.
I’m just going to use one channel here, which is the distributor, where most of the volume of the books is sold. Our wholesaler takes a 60% discount, so it’s a pretty huge cut. There are platform fees, like credit card fees. In the case of Amazon, there are fees if we sell there, but in this example, we don’t have any. Royalties paid to authors are 5% as a percentage of the cover price and roughly 12% as a percentage of the actual revenue. We don’t have to pay for shipping because that’s all taken care of by our wholesaler.
So, the unit cost divided by the price gives us 14%, which leaves us with a margin of just 21%. In the world of eCommerce, this is not a very strong margin. Often, we’re dealing with gross margins of 50% or higher, sometimes as high as 80% depending on the product and the industry. This tight margin doesn’t allow us much room at all for advertising. In fact, I’d probably budget about 10% or so for advertising; any more than that would really start to eat into our profit even further and make this not worthwhile.
How To Grow Your Email List On A Tight Budget
If you’re in an industry like this, where it’s a high capital investment and you’re dealing with very low margins, or you have a low budget to work with, like in publishing, I can definitely relate. But don’t worry, there are solutions for this type of situation. You might have heard of Facebook lead ads.
Facebook lead ads are one potential option you can use to grow your business. The reason I mention Facebook ads first is because they have an ad format built into Facebook that helps you capture leads directly on Facebook without your users having to leave to go to a landing page. Typically, the conversion rates are fairly high, and the cost per lead is pretty low. However, you do have to be conscious of the fact that sometimes the lead quality is also not very high because it’s so easy for people to sign up. A lot of times, people might sign up accidentally or might just forget that they had signed up.
It’s very important to try to make sure that you’re qualifying people in your ad copy and also that you’re sending emails pretty much straight away to make sure that people don’t forget about you. Introduce yourself, introduce the brand, and start connecting with these people so that you can start building the relationship right away and don’t waste the capital that you’ve invested in acquiring that lead.
What sells books? 6 Factors You Should Consider Before Building Your Email Marketing Strategy
I’m going to take a look at some of the product pages I’ve created on our website, and we’ll go over what I think sells books. Again, you can apply this to many different types of products. Please don’t hesitate if you have any feedback on the website; I’m always trying to improve it.
Let’s start off with a simple example, like Al Capone.
1. Eye-catching cover and Product Images
The first thing is a beautiful, eye-catching cover and, of course, a product image. Any product image should be beautiful and should have great photography, especially if it’s a physical product, which is more important than really the content of it, which is the case for a lot of products. Then you want something like your primary image or a cover image that looks eye-catching. I think this one does it. This is one of our best sellers.
2. A Blurb That Tells a Great Story in the Product Description
Okay, so there’s that. Now, a great story, so that comes across in a blurb, and this is the same for any product description. You want to catch people’s attention. There’s a book that I really like by Bobby Clink. His book is called “Email Marketing That Doesn’t Suck,” and I think about that a lot when writing blurbs. His formula is to start off with a hook, something that’s going to capture people’s attention and make them curious, usually just a sentence or so, and then a bit of a story. We want to get people down through what are the elements of a story—again, use this for any type of product—but you know, something that tells us about the conflict, the characters, the setting. Get us invested a little bit in what’s going to happen, what are the challenges that the characters are going to face, and then the call to action, which in this case is to buy this book.
I think any piece of writing, and Alex Hormozi says something similar to that. It’s inspired by this famous advertiser called Joseph Sugarman. He wrote a book called “The Adweek Copywriting Handbook.” He was a very famous guy, and basically, his philosophy is that the only purpose of the first line of your copy is to get your reader to read the second line of your copy. If you continue in that way, by the time you’re finished, they’ll have almost no choice but to purchase your product or service. I definitely recommend reading some of those books.
3. Align The Book to Current events or Classic Evergreen events.
Okay, so moving on. Next, the types of things that, in terms of media, in terms of books, movies, something that’s either current or classic works best. Something that’s very trendy, it’s a topic of conversation, a topic of a lot of thought at the moment. So, you know, search headlines, see what’s happening in the news, and try to relate your product or service—again, it goes beyond books and movies—because if you can write content that links your product or service, even if it’s not entertainment whatsoever, to current trends and news, then that’s something that people are going to respond to and people are going to gravitate towards.
4. Make Sure The Book is of the Best Quality Physically
Then it’s the physical product. So especially when it comes to books, people love to see the physical product and the quality of it. So in this case, you know, we just took some photos of the book. Actually, they could be lit a little bit better, so that’s something we may work on. But in this way, people can get an idea of how the physical product looks because it’s going to be something that’s going to sit on their shelves. It’s going to be kind of a collector’s item. And that goes again, it’s something that goes towards any product because if you have a product that is beautiful and functional as well.
You can put it in the hands of your readers and online, come as close to that as possible. If you can show what the physical product is going to look like when it arrives in the mail, then that’s something that’s going to resonate with the potential buyer. They want to connect with the company, or in this case, the author. So they want to know like, who are you? What’s your personality? Are you similar to me? Are you inspiring? Anything you can do, especially small brands, you can really lean into the founder’s story. Many times in this case with books, we have our author profile, so we’re telling people about our authors and our artists. Many times then we also have a link to bring them to the author page.
People want to know how the sausage is made. So when it comes to books, people want to see a little bit about the design, illustration process. So we have some videos which are going to be part of the email sequence that I’m going to show off in a little bit.
5. Solicit Reviews from Trusted Sources
And then most importantly, I think out of anything, are reviews and reviews from a trusted source. So this is one of the things that I think made a big difference on my publishing website was adding Amazon reviews because before we had reviews from people who had bought the book from our website, which is very few. I did before most of the sales would happen on Amazon or in a retail outlet, so we might have only, you know, a handful of reviews. Even still, this book only has 11 reviews. This came out in September, and currently, it’s January, so this will increase over time, of course. But people trust a source like Amazon. So if I have my website reviews here, it could be the exact same 4.71 reviews, they will trust it a lot less than Amazon.
And that goes for whatever your product is. Sometimes, Amazon reviews might be the most appropriate, but other times, Google reviews or Trustpilot might work best for you. If you’re a tour operator, you probably want to use TripAdvisor, for example. Amazon started as a book company, and today I think they have 52% of the book sales in the United States. So, it brings a lot of trust because of their review process. if you click there, then you come down and you can read all the reviews and you could click and be taken off to Amazon as well.
6. Generate Urgency and Scarcity
This is another, callback to Alex Hormozi Robert Cialdini David Ogilvy, Joe Sugarman, again, all of the great advertisers, and will tell you that urgency and scarcity are really important. We don’t want to create false scarcity, though. So, like, you can see here, I’m not trying to fool anyone. We do have 74 in stock. That’s not going to create any urgency. That’s not a low stock level, especially for a small business. So, there’s no false urgency here. That’s very important to me. But, you know, sometimes I will create some urgency by offering a bundle deal, a special offer, or maybe a limited edition. Sometimes they do metal bookmarks with these books, so I might throw that in for free, bundle that in with the book. But in that case, if I’m going to offer you a really special, special offer like that, I am going to put a countdown timer or put a limited quantity or something like this.
So, that’s another thing. When I’m at physical events selling books, like at comic festivals around the US and Canada, then the urgency is implied because it’s a weekend event. It’s only a two or three-day event. They know that I’m an independent publisher. They know that they’re going to save on shipping. They’re probably going to get a better deal. They’re going to get some of the freebies and merch. So, they have that sense of urgency just from the event. So, if you have anything like that where you’re able to go to a fair, then this is a great place to observe people’s behavior. When people come by your booth or your table and they look at your products and then they’re interacting with them, you see what they gravitate towards most and what makes them, sometimes you can see in the customer’s eyes the moment they decide to make the purchase as a very interesting thing to observe.
Email Marketing Tools You Should Use
Now let’s get into the email part of things. So, if you can swing it, I recommend using Klaviyo because they’re just one of the best platforms out there for email sequencing, automation, things like this. But on a small budget, I recommend using MailerLite. It’s a really great software. It’s very clean, responsive, and easy to use. So, I’m going to come over. I’m on the growing business plan right now, which, I’m not sure exactly what the price is, but I think you can start at about $20 a month and then, like, our list is about 3,000 right now. So, I think it’s around $50 a month, something like this.
Alright, so then we come to, we can do regular campaigns. So, a bunch of different campaigns that I’ve sent. And so, of course, I try to do this once weekly. And mostly again, all the great advertisers, I think, nowadays will say, and like Gary Vee for example, will say that he says, ‘Give, give, give, and then ask.’ And then Alex Hormozi says, ‘Give until they ask.’ So, the idea is to give a lot more value than you’re asking for. I think a good ratio is something like either, it’s probably about four to one, something like this. So, four messages where you’re giving value. It can be entertainment value. Doesn’t necessarily mean giving away products. It can be a story. And then for every four emails where you’re giving value, you have one email where you’re asking for value in return. So, you’re asking for a sale. Doesn’t necessarily have to be that way either because you could do something where you’re asking, you might ask for value in every message. It’s just a very small portion of your messaging.
Lead Magnets For Email Signups On The Website
Let’s look at a lead magnet on the website. This is another great way. If you’re not ready for paid advertising, you can do a lead magnet right on your website. Users are getting a free personalized graphic novel. Here’s our trailer so they can get them excited about it. Same type of text, let them know besides what you’re getting for free, what are you going to be getting on a regular basis from us? Try to create a bit of a connection there. And then just a bit of instruction, you’re going to sign up here. And then another thing that I like to do is sometimes, on our blog section, we’re just creating content that’s relevant or just tangentially related to our products.
So, with Al Capone, historical subjects, there might be a lot of different pieces of content that could be created for the blog that people are searching for. For example, like with Al Capone, a lot of people search for whether he had syphilis or not because it was commonly understood that he had syphilis and that was one of the causes of his death. But then there is some conflicting evidence which suggests otherwise. People are searching for this. Many other topics surrounding Al Capone.
So, we create some blog articles around those types of subjects. So, if someone is on this page and they decide not to purchase right now when they go to exit, an exit intent pops up that says,
“Do you want to read chapter one for free?”
OptinMonster gives statistics that suggest that people that answer this simple yes or no question at first before they sign up with their email address, they’re actually more likely to complete the opt-in and give their email. So, that’s what OptinMonster claims. We’ll see. I’m going to run some tests. So, if I notice anything significant, I’ll make a video about that. And then the next page is you’re opting in. So, first name, email. And then the next one is your success page. On this page, we’re going to add a Facebook pixel or Google Ads conversion tracking code. So that way, we’ll make sure that we have captured that when the lead has signed up. Trying to basically get your head around numerous different ways that people can sign up and then, therefore, lots of different ways where you can organically increase your email list as quickly as possible.
One of the ways is paid ads, but you don’t necessarily have to do that because if you can get a significant amount of traffic to your website through creating content, that content can be blog content on the website. It could also be Facebook, Instagram, or YouTube content. Then just driving people to sign up in exchange for getting something cool.
The Email Sequence Strategy
So technically, you don’t need to spend a dollar to do this and grow your email list pretty significantly. You do need to pay for an email platform like MailerLite or Klaviyo, as I mentioned. But let’s take a look here at the Al Capone sequence then. So, we have a 32% open rate, and a 5% click rate. That’s pretty strong so far. So, here’s the sequence. Not too many emails, but we’re basically trying to get people to, it’s the similar content that’s the reason why I showed earlier, similar content from the product page that will help bring people closer to conversion but just kind of expand it, telling people stories, getting people engaged, interacting with them, asking them questions as well. One of the things about email I found really surprising is that people answer you as if you’ve emailed a friend asking them a question many times, especially once they’ve connected with you and they’ve gotten used to receiving messages from you. So, that’s really, and I love getting emails from subscribers and potential customers. There’s just so much value in their messages and so many ideas that they give me. Just insane amount of value. So, let’s see. So, as you can see, you know, in total including what has been run on Facebook, 41 people entered this sequence.
You know, you can keep this very simple or you can complicate it a little bit. In this case, what I’ve done is I’ve added a condition, have they clicked on the free chapter one on any link in that email? If they haven’t, I’m going to wait, I’m going to remind them. And then if they still haven’t, I’m going to wait, I’m going to remind them again. So, in total, they’re getting two reminders after the lead magnet. So, we’re looking to see that most people are clicking on that. I just kind of wrote a story because I’m very interested in this character because also, my grandfather was a rum smuggler and he lived in a part of Canada where Al Capone frequented and purchased alcohol to smuggle into the United States. So, I thought that was just a cool story. This is a record of when my grandfather had his boat confiscated by the police. He was kind of in that same tradition. And you know, just to ease your mind, my grandfather was, he simply went to a French island off the coast of Newfoundland, Canada, purchased French alcohol, brought it back into Canada, did not declare it of course, and then sold it. So, more of a tax fraud type of situation. But no, he definitely didn’t shoot anybody or send anyone to sleep with the fishes.
I sent an email showing people some of the different review excerpts and quotes. I’m not asking them for purchase yet, I’m just sharing some of the reviews. Later, I’m sharing a little bit more about the authors, right? And some links there so they can go. Again, not asking for a sale, people are just going to engage with the authors on their Instagram profiles and things like this. So, hopefully connect a little bit more with them.
Later, I’m sharing a video interview with one of the authors, so between me and the author. Something a little bit better to engage with later on.
Next is a process video. Gets people excited about the process, how did this book come to be? Meaning some sketch art. I also have some video that’s kind of a time-lapse of the artists actually drawing some of the panels from the book, which is really cool.
Finally, an offer, a very special offer. In this case, like I mentioned, if I’m going to offer something very special at regular price, then I’m going to put a countdown on that. So, I use a plugin, I think it’s called Hurry Up Timer. It’s for WordPress. I’m sure on Shopify there’s probably something similar. And then, so what this offer is, let’s see if we can preview this real quick. The image is not great but to have a better one we’re going to swap out. So just a little bit of fun copy there, again, a little bit of story about the character. And then offering the book at regular price plus this brass engraved bookmark that has Al Capone on it. Then a bookplate. So, it’s basically a sticker that is actually signed by the author and it’s inside on the title page. That makes this a signed copy with a limited edition. There are only 50 of these brass bookmarks. And then, so I’ve added a three-day timer so you only have three days to take advantage of this offer.
Since this is a very important email, I’m running an AB test just with the subject line. So starting to get some interesting data on there. So you always want to be testing. You can see here so far even though more people went through this, B version, it’s a 26% open rate where it’s a 33%. So, it’s not really a large enough sample size to make any conclusions just yet. We just keep going down and remind them of the offer until it expires. So, in this case, I have when they click and load up this landing page, that’s when the timer starts. So, it’s unique for every individual that way.
You can keep the Evergreen campaign going on where you’re constantly gathering emails for this product and you’re people are starting their sequence and then they’re going through the countdown offer at different times. Then over time just optimizing, trying to improve the conversion rate. I think this one actually got one conversion.
So, one person purchased this offer which is not very much, right? So, for all this effort, we think only one purchase is $30, this is not worth it whatsoever if you think about it as a system that you’re going to be able to leave running for a very long period of time. If you think about it like, you know, each of these are only costing about 50 to 60 cents. So, in this case, you know, 41 people altogether, we didn’t pay to acquire all of these, I don’t think. But let’s see if we did all. So, 41 and we’ll say about 60 cents. Okay, so $24, maybe some more because they haven’t finished yet. So, maybe we’ll have a couple more conversions if we’re lucky here because we see only about, only about 28 people actually finished it.
You never know, we might get another one might be able to improve this, but not a bad because this is only their first purchase. Now, we’ve got them on an email list as well. We know what they’re interested in as they purchase Al Capone. So, what are the chances if we were to offer them another book, we have another book right here about gangsters, a lot of kind of similar themes. What are the chances that if I offer, you know, 25% off and do a good job of explaining this book, that they’ll pick it up? I think pretty significant. We’ve basically, all together spent a few dollars to acquire our customer. Over time we’ll be able to optimize this flow so that we capture more customers and at a lower cost of course. So, we’re just getting started with this. Maybe we can also optimize our ad creative and be able to reduce this cost per lead down even further and then, uh, sell some other related products that that customer is going to be interested in, right?
That’s the gist of the strategy, pretty straightforward, I think, especially in publishing. A lot of people focusing on building an audience. If you can build an audience consistently and improve the scale of that incrementally over time then, that can be something that can work well for you selling any type of product but especially a product that has a lower margin.