Promoting Your Book via Email

Email has long been a useful tool to cost-effectively reach people around the world. Discover how to promote your publication via email – we’ve compiled some tips that some of our authors effectively use in emails to reach their readers.

Promoting your book using email

Before you launch your email campaign

Before you launch your campaign promoting your latest book, it’s important that you ensure you comply with any relevant privacy legislation. In 20189, the EU put its new General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) laws into effect. GDPR introduced new laws that offered much greater protection for an individual’s personal data, such as an email address or an individual’s browsing habits on a social network, and how it could be used. After the EU introduced GDPR, many other countries in Europe, Latin America, the Caribbean, Asia and Africa, took steps to introduce similar legislation.

The USA is unique in that it hasn't taken quite the same steps in regards to the protection of individuals’ personal information online, however some sectors in the US have adopted additional legislation to protect people’s personal data.

Why use email

If you’re wondering whether you should include email in your promotional toolkit, here are some of the many reasons why you should take advantage of all it has to offer:

Email allows you to easily keep in touch with people: Email is a great way to keep in touch with those who are already interested in your work and want to learn more about you and what projects you are working on.
It’s a very simple tool: With email, all you essentially need to do is write in order to connect with your readers. While there is the option these days to include graphics and more in your emails, these additional features are not a requirement.
It’s extremely cost-effective: Unlike social media and other online advertising, you can spend very little and still effectively communicate with your audience.

Types of email marketing

Promotion of your book via email is not only simple, but provides you with multiple options as to how you want to structure your email. Some of the most common types of email content used in email marketing are:

Welcome emails: These are simple emails to thank an individual for signing up with their email address.
Newsletters: Keep readers up to date with the goings on in your career with a newsletter. In order to stay top-of-mind with your readers, a more regular email schedule is recommended but be careful not to spam your readers.
Lead nurturing emails: Lead nurturing emails are essentially promotional emails, but the focus is on offering the reader value. This type of email could be a special offer you have on one of your books, news about an upcoming webinar or just some educational content that you think your readers will likely find engaging.
Re-engagement emails: If there are readers on your mailing list who aren’t engaging with your content, you can use this type of email to see whether these individuals are still interested in your content or not. These emails are generally surveys or other types of interactive emails that require the user to respond with an action.
Brand stories: These are stories about your “brand” and how it’s progressed or evolved. Many readers find the human element and story behind their favourite authors highly engaging.

Dos and don’ts for promoting your work via email

Before you spend hours crafting messages for your campaign, here are the most important dos and don’ts.

Do

Don’t

Review and adhere to all laws and regulations around data protection and privacy.
Set up the necessary tools to track your campaign so you can better understand reader engagement.
Fix a name for your campaign so you can easily identify it later.
Build an email template – most email marketing tools have pre-designed templates which you can adapt to suit your needs.
Decide who your message is aimed at and plan your message accordingly.
Ensure your email features a clear “call to action” and, if necessary, include an “offer ends” date to help drive conversions.

Don’t write overly long messages – the secret is to keep your writing punchy and compelling.

How we help our authors with their promotions

As a publisher, we can assist by providing you with the necessary media for your promotion. This includes high-resolution images of your book covers, banner adverts, teaser material for the content for the book such as the cover image, table of contents and a sample chapter, links for special promotions, and sample copies of your book or a chapter.

All the best with your email campaign

While this guide has provided the basic information to kickstart the development of your email marketing campaign, it’s just the first step on your journey to successfully promoting your book via email. Once your campaign is complete, we hope it will help the book get into the hands of readers across the globe and have the impact you desire.

More information for authors

For Book Authors

Are you interested in publishing your next book with us? Find out who we are, which areas we publish and acquire new books in and which one of our renowned book series could be the right match for your project.

Promoting Your Book on Social Media

To successfully promote your book online, it’s important to promote it on social networks. Discover the importance of these platforms and the best practices for using specific social media networks.

Promoting Your Book on Amazon

Authors must take advantage of every tool possible to help promote their work online. Look at what Amazon Author Central is, what it offers and how you can set it up.