Email List-Building Resources
Hello! And Welcome!
If you’ve reached this page, it’s likely because you want to learn more about building an email list as an author. I’ve put together a number of resources based on a presentation I did on this exact topic.
Presentation: The 3-Step Framework For Building Your Email List as an Author
This goes through all the basics of what you need to strategically build your email list, and also frames the challenge in a simple-to-execute series of steps. I gave this framework to a friend and he was able to implement right away and get fantastic results on his blog. This all happened within two days, and all I presented him with was a watered-down version of this framework. (You get the whole thing!)
3-Step Framework Presentation Slides
I’m making this available for easy reference, especially because there were a number of lists within the presentation and many authors will want to dig in more.
List-Building Tools
These are some of the tools I use to implement my email list. Some of these are affiliate links, which means I get a small kickback (at no charge to you) if you click through and end up using the tool.
Ontraport
This is my current email provider and I love it because it is really easy to geek out on marketing tags, sequences, and more. You can also take payments through Ontraport and run an affiliate program as well. It’s not for everyone and probably not what I’d recommend for a beginner or even anyone with a simple business model, but I love what the company is trying to do, which is create one system to do “all the things” that entrepreneurs care about online.
AWeber
I spent a lot of time with AWeber as my email provider before switching to MailChimp a few years ago. It is a great platform and I believe still has the highest delivery rate of anyone. The reason I stopped using it was due to how ugly the forms were. This was 3+ years ago, so it’s maybe (probably) improved since then, and you can always customize your forms as well.
MailChimp
I also spent a lot of time at MailChimp and still hang on to my account there. The great thing about this platform is that you can get started on one of their free accounts. It is (over the long run) more expensive than AWeber, but MailChimp integrates with EVERYTHING, which is a great reason to use it.
PopupAlly
Billed as the polite popup, this is a free WordPress plugin by Natalie Lussier. Natalie is an amazing expert on list-building and created this tool because she wanted to create a popup tool that didn’t pester readers. You can decide what pages to show the popup on and can also set how often you want to show it (every 14 days, 30 days, etc.), so that it doesn’t interfere with your long-time readers’ experience. There’s also an upgrade to PopupAllyPro.
LeadPages
This is my favorite tool on this list. I create all my landing pages using their templates, and it usually takes me 30 minutes or less (and I am NOT a designer). I also love their LeadBoxes, which you can see all over my sites—the idea is that someone clicks on a link or image and gets a popup where the can enter their address. LeadBoxes are amazing because they convert like crazy, they are easy to implement (no messing with form styling) and they keep your site design clean (they’re unobtrusive to the long-time reader, while also being easily findable for new prospects).
Wufoo Forms
This is one of my favorite tools for creating diverse offerings like voting, polls, petitions, surveys, and more. You create a 2 page form and ask for the email on the second page. Wufoo can automatically move your leads from their system to your email provider’s API. They current support MailChimp, Campfire, Sales Force and WebHooks (as of 3/17). I unfortunately had to stop using them when I switched to Ontraport.
10 Stages of Audience Sampler
This is the sales funnel framework I mention in the video, which is a free gift I gave to audience members. The 10 Stages of Audience for Fiction Authors is a sampler of the Sales Funnel Gap Analysis I developed. It contains the first five stages in full + the worksheets, which will help you, as an author, map out a smart, easy-to-implement sales funnel to find readers and buyers for your books.
Prose On Fire content
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Thank You!
It was a pleasure to create this presentation for you, and something I’ve wanted to do for a long time. I appreciate your attention and support, and I hope you’ve learned a lot through this effort! Please stay in touch and share your questions, too.
