And god it feels good! It’s like I’m on some kind of frenzied writing drug that’s given me wild zombie hair and a crazed look in my eye. I’m rampaging my way through non-fiction books faster than I can sift through Bloggers Bash nominations. I’m devouring articles, publications, magazines and anything else I can lay my chubby mitts on. (book recommendations welcome  – leave them in the comments)

Before the year is out I will have to make the choice as to which path I’m to follow. At the moment I’m 60/40 indie/attempting trad. *shrugs* maybe I’ll try the hybrid thing. Either way, I still need to know everything I can about marketing. Without those skills I can kiss goodbye to anyone other than Mumsy and the Wife buying my book.

I’ve been trying different methods to boost my subscriber list and these two methods, over a two week test period, have produced a 114% increase in NEW subscribers. Yeah really. 114% increase in NEW subscribers compared to the previous two weeks.

Now’s probably a good time to *cough* demand mention that if you haven’t subscribed to my newsletter, which is jam packed full of writerly resources, then you can do so here, the next one is due out next week.

So what are these whip-your-knickers-off-awesome methods I’m referring to?

ONE – STICKY POSTS

Is it just me, or does that sound rank? Sticky is in the same category of ‘cringe inducing’ as the words moist and clammy.

What is a sticky post? Let me remove that cotton wool confusion and explain.

If you go to my home page the first post you see, will always be the same: SIGN UP NOW FOR FREE, EXCLUSIVE WRITING TIPS & NEWS

Sticky means, a post, whichever one you choose, will be sellotaped in wordpress’ finest duct tape to your front page forever more (unless you remove it). No matter how many new posts you publish your sticky post will always be the first thing people see.

Why is this a good thing when you want people to see your newest blog post?

Well, because the best form of marketing (other than paid adverts) is by email. EVERYthing I have read to date uses the argument that any other form of marketing you do, can be ignored. Think about it. How often do you see posters or Facebook adds and roll your heavy eyes and scroll on? I’m betting, if you even saw the add in the first place, most of you will have scrolled on by.

But, lets say I personally send you an email, from my email address… would you delete it without opening it? I’m not sure I want the answer to that. But I am willing to bet that most of you would at least open it to see if I had anything interesting to say.

And that’s the key. Advertising, particularly paid advertising is impersonal. Sure it reaches thousands, but it isn’t a personal call to arms. There’s nothing stopping you from swatting the irritating advert off your page like a dead fly. But when someone sends you a personal email. Well now that’s 1:1 marketing. That’s me, sending you, a personal email. Think about it.

So use sticky posts to draw new readers to your most important message. If you don’t want a subscriber list, try putting a sticky post about your books up there.

TWO – POP UPs

When WordPress brought out the new feature Pop up feature, I nearly did a wee I was so excited. See originally, only website users who were self hosted through WordPress could have pop ups.

By pop up, I mean the box that ‘pops up’ in the middle of a website when you land on a home page. The box usually says, ‘buy this’ or ‘subscribe now’. It’s usually in the middle of the screen and unless you click out you can no longer move through the article.

It’s annoying. I know it is. It bugs the shit out of me having to repeatedly click off boxes when I go to my fave bloggers websites. BUT. I cannot deny the effectiveness of said boxes and so, I forgive them!

To create this magical wonder tool, you need to find the pop up widget in your widgets section.

WordPress have created a brand new ‘Mailchimp pop up’ widget especially for Mailchimp users.

To get it working, you need to fill out the ‘pop up’ form in your sign up section on Mailchimp then copy the code it gives you into the widget box back in wordpress. Hey presto! You have a pop up.

The beauty of the WordPress widget is it tracks by cookie or some other stalkerish method. Which means only new visitors will see the pop up. Repeat visitors will not, so you can rest easy knowing you won’t irritate your friends and regulars.

The benefit of using these methods is that you will most assuredly see an increase in sign ups. Some authors claim as much as a 1000% increase. I can’t claim that. In my first two weeks I had 114% increase in new sign ups which is more than amazing enough for me. It also convinces me that this method works.

Want even more FREE exclusive writing tips straight to your mailbox? Sign up for my glittery* newsletter right here. (*electronic glitter only)

The post 2 Super Easy Methods to Drastically Increase Your Subscriber List appeared first on Sacha Black.

I made mistakes. But I’m a writer. So standing up, dusting myself down and picking up the proverbial pen again is in my blood.

When I wrote the post on creating your perfect Author Newsletter I’d already found Mailchimp hard to set up and master. But SO many people said the same thing I knew I had to regroup and share some of the lessons I’d learnt doing my own newsletter.

MISTAKE 1 – NOT SPEAKING THE LINGO

Lists versus Campaigns

Lists

Like every social media outlet, Mailchimp has it’s own secret club language. But rather than handshakes, tweets and statuses, it’s lists and campaigns.

When you first set up Mailchimp – you can’t actually begin to collect email addresses without a ‘list’.

I know. I know. It sounds back to front – how can you have a list without email addresses?  But for Mailchimp – the first thing you have to do is create a list in which the email addresses you collect will filter into. You have to create a list in order to populate it.

The reason, I assume,  is so that you can have one Mailchimp account but multiple subscription lists for different things/projects/clients/books etc.

Before you do anything else – set up your list and name it something obvious like ‘Sacha Black’s Author List’ or whatever, in case you decide later you need an extra list. As far as I can tell (after a quick look) once you name your list, you can’t change it.

Campaigns

A campaign is really just a newsletter or a promo email or whatever you want to send out to your subscribers. For me it’s newsletters.

What’s important to know here, is that 1 campaign = 1 newsletter.

So if you send your newsletter once a month then EVERY month you need to create a new campaign. You can’t reuse a campaign once it has been sent.

MISTAKE 2 – NOT SETTING UP TEMPLATES

If you intend on sending a newsletter or promo regularly then it’s helpful if you don’t have to keep creating your newsletter from scratch. If you want to have totally different content in each newsletter then this won’t help, but I’m guessing even if its just a welcome box and sharing buttons, having it set up as a template will shave a few seconds off. And lets be honest, we’re all busy people, whether its having a toddler attached to your thigh whilst you simultaneously cook, email and iron, or your having a ladies that lunch date, every second counts in this life.

I you want proof it works, because I set up a template, my second newsletter has only taken about an hour to write, populate and link up, where the first took about three.

MISTAKE 3 – SHARING BUTTONS

If you send a newsletter you want it to be read, right? If someone likes it, you want them to share it with other people to in the hope it gets you more subscribers.

Numpty over here *waves*didn’t realise there was a difference between buttons. I really ought to do ‘detail’ more often. Sigh.

Mailchimp has two types of social media buttons:

Big thank you to Debby for pointing this out to me

MISTAKE 4 – AVOIDING THE SPAM FOLDER

Ah the joys of spam. Until I researched it – I had no idea just how many words and innocent actions would get you sent straight to the spam folder.

Apparently the fact I have a gmail account is a big no no, but not having the time or inclination to set up my own personal @me email address I’ll have to make do. The answer is to ask your subscribers to add you to their address book. Short, sweet and an easy solution.

Here are some of the actions that will get you binned:

Going crazy on the email size

Over doing the image balance

Starting the subject line with Re or Fwd or using all caps

There is a huge list of words that will also get you sent straight to the junk folder, have a look at this list or do a quick google.

What mistakes have you made? What other handy tips do you have for newsletters? Let me know in the comments

Want even more exclusive content straight to your mailbox? Sign up for my sparkly newsletter right here. (*electronic glitter only)

The post 4 Mistakes to Avoid When Using Mailchimp appeared first on Sacha Black.