Book Launch Marketing Ideas: Email Campaign

There are many book launch marketing ideas out there, but I’m focused on what has worked for other self-published indie authors: using my mailing list, Facebook and Amazon Ads, newsletter swaps, and promo sites (after the launch).

In this post and video, I’m covering setting an email campaign to send out to my mailing list in the two weeks leading up to my book release date (July 27).

Email Marketing

Email marketing is one of the most important marketing tools we have and the one where we have the most control over.

I’ve been building my email list for several years, but I’ve never managed it well. My mailing has been sporadic and inconsistent.

For 2022, I decided I would try to send at least one email per month. I missed one month, March, but the fact I was emailing somewhat consistent this year was a vast improvement for me.

Email marketing is tricky. I hate feeling like I’m being pushy and mailing too much. But that’s because I was looking at it from a writer’s perspective, not a marketer. And if I want to sell books, I have to look at the world more and more like a marketer.

There is a reason all the big companies like Amazon mail so much. It works. I also subscribed to many lists from very successful authors in my genre, and guess what… they email a lot more than I do… a lot more.

So, for my upcoming book launch, I purchased Mal and Jill Cooper’s outstanding book, HELP, MY BOOK LAUNCH PLAN SUCKS. And sure enough hit recommend hitting your email list a lot during your book launch. Jill Cooper even offered up her email templates, which is what I used to set up my book launch email campaign.

I have one email set to go off two weeks before the book launch date, then every 2-3 days, a new email goes out.

That’s seven emails I’ll be sending in two weeks. I’ve sent five emails in six months of this year. So it’s a big change. And yes, I felt a bit cringe, but I put on that marketer hat and move forward.

I know I’ll be getting a lot of unsubscribes, but that’s a good thing. I only want people who are interested in me and my books to stay on my email list, anyway.

Email Campaign

The nice thing is that with my email marketing software, Aweber, I can set up email campaigns that are triggered to be sent to my email lists based on a specific tag. I add that tag to my list and it triggered the campaign.

Aweber will automatically send the emails so I don’t have to fret about it or think that I’m emailing too much. Set up once, and the software handles the campaign, so I can focus on the rest of my book launch plans and, of course, so I can write the next book.