Hello Rebels, welcome back to The Rebel Author Podcast episode 31. Today’s podcast is with Derek Murphy. We’re talking about how to create a reader funnel, what one is, how to create it and why it’s key to developing a fan base.

This week’s questions is:

What kind of content do you put in your reader funnel?

Book recommendation this week is my book 10 Steps to Hero: How to Craft a Kickass Protagonist.

Grab a copy on Kobo here:

Find out more about our guest on his website: creativindie.com

Win a signed ARC of The Anatomy of Prose Competition 1, on Instagram here.

Competition 2 is through Rafflecopter, you can enter here:

Don’t forget The Anatomy of Prose is on preorder now, you can get it in ebook paperback and hardback here.

LAUNCH PARTY

I’ll be hosting a LIVE Q&A to celebrate the launch of The Anatomy of Prose: 12 Steps to Sensational Sentences. The Live will be on the 29^th May at 9pm BST, 1pm PST, 4pm EST, 6am AEST. If you’d like to ask me anything about writing, marketing, publishing or… unicorns then drop your questions in the blog, the Rebel Author Facebook group, or tweet me @rebelauthorpod

This week’s rebel is Adrian Farr.

If you’d like to be a Rebel of the week please do send in your story, it can be any kind of rebellion. You can email your rebel story to rebelauthorpodcast@gmail.com or tweet me @rebelauthorpod

Thank you to new patron, Paul A. If you’d like to support the show, and get access to all the bonus essays, posts and content, you can from as little as $2 a month by visiting: www.patreon.com/sachablack

THIS EPISODE IS SPONSORED BY KOBO WRITING LIFE

The post 031 How to Create a Reader Funnel with Derek Murphy 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.