Category Archives: E-mail Marketing

Let’s face it, nothing feels more frustrating than pouring your heart into a carefully crafted email, only to discover it’s taken an unexpected detour to your subscriber’s spam folder.

It’s not as if you can send an email to your subscribers asking them to safelist you, because those emails will just end up in spam. It’s a vicious cycle.

But what can you do to avoid your emails from going to spam?

To increase your chances that your emails make it safely into your subscribers inbox, there are some basic steps you can take to avoid spam filters.

In this blog we’ll highlight those simple and easy to implement steps to avoid emails going to spam. 

Plus we’ll share a well documented tip for staying out of the spam folder that, in actuality, has ZERO impact on where your emails end up.

1 – Avoid these spam trigger words

Do a Google search of “email spam words” and the top post list 188 or 168 or even 750 spam words to avoid. Yes, there is one blog that states 750 spam words to avoid.

These posts are stating you can’t use “buy”, “act now”, “limited time”, “urgent”, “weight loss”, “free”. So if you’re a health coach or someone trying to sell a product – good luck.

But do these words really trigger spam filters? The answer is NO.

This is an outdated concept.

Inbox service providers (ISPs) no longer rely on trigger words to label emails as spam. ISPs have learned from years of receiving emails what truly warrants an email ending up spam.

So, rest easy knowing that it’s not just about avoiding a naughty list of words anymore. And anyone telling you there are “spam words” you should be avoiding, really doesn’t know how email deliverability works.

Now let’s get into the actual ways to avoid the spam folder…

2 – Send from a professional email address

Gmail and Yahoo have new sender requirements which will take effect in February 2024 that will prohibit using a Gmail and Yahoo sending address. So you will need to send your emails using a professional email address with your own domain name.

Mailbox providers like Gmail and Yahoo Mail are going to start sending your emails to the spam folder if you’re not using a professional email address like sean@reallycoolbusiness.com. Just for knowledge reallycoolbusiness@gmail.com is not a professional email address.

Just listen to what email expert Brian Minick, the Chief Operating Officer at ZeroBounce says:

“Free email accounts, like gmail.com or aol.com, are not intended for commercial sending purposes. They’re also heavily abused and therefore, you have a higher chance of landing in spam or being blocked altogether when you use them for mass sending.”

3 – Ensure emails are authenticated

Once you have your professional email, you’ll need to set up DKIM and DMARC. 

You might be wondering “what is DKIM?”  It’s like a digital signature for emails. A way for the sender (you) to prove the email is really from you and that it hasn’t been changed by anyone in between. It helps keep emails trustworthy and secure.

What about DMARC?

DMARC is like a traffic signal for emails: SPF and DKIM set the rules for safe driving (authentication), and DMARC acts as the traffic police, directing the flow and instructing what to do when an email doesn’t follow the rules that you have set.

To avoid the spam folder, DMARC authentication is required if your daily send volume is over 5,000 emails. 

4 – Keep those complaints low

Your email complaint rate should be below 0.1%. Anything above that is a red flag to mailbox providers that your content is not wanted by your subscribers, so they’ll start placing your email in the dreaded spam folder.

Here are some ways you can lower your complaint rate.

5 – Send content your audience loves

One of the biggest factors in whether or not your emails reach the inbox is positive subscriber engagement. Good deliverability relies on high subscriber interaction, low complaints, and low bounces.

To get your subscribers to consistently engage (open, read, and click!), your email content must be valuable to them. 

You can add value to your emails by including educational content in them, like blog posts or videos, or even showing subscribers how your product or service will improve their life. If your emails solve subscribers’ problems and pain points, they’ll open them every time!

Not sure what your subscribers will find valuable? Simply ask them! Send a survey in your welcome email or ask them to reply to your welcome email and share what they’d like to learn.

You can use these ideas to craft valuable content your subscribers will love to receive. And that can increase your email engagement and your chances of reaching the inbox.

6 – Set expectations on your sign up form

Your subscribers shouldn’t be surprised by the emails they get from you. If they are, they might mark them as spam.

To avoid surprises, clearly explain on your sign up form what type of content you include in your emails and how often you send messages.

For example, Ann Handley, Chief Content Officer at Marketing Profs, describes the type of content she sends and how frequently she emails her audience on the landing page for her newsletter TotalAnnarchy.

7 – Build a segment of your most-engaged subscribers

One of the biggest problems we see is subscribers who go months without opening or clicking within an email. If your subscribers are not engaging with your content, you need to avoid sending to them regularly. 

One solution is to create a segment of subscribers who have opened your emails or clicked a link in one of your emails in the last 3 – 6 months and send directly to those groups.Sending to segments like this is a great way to increase engagement from your subscribers and improve your overall sender reputation. 

While this is a great way to target your engaged users, you shouldn’t ignore the rest of your list. Send to your entire list at regular intervals as well, however if someone has not opened or clicked in  6 – 12 months, it is likely time to remove them from your list. 

Keep in mind that users have clicked links in your emails will be considered your most engaged group of subscribers. They are the ideal group to target and are more likely to open and click future emails.

8 – Make sure you have permission

It’s illegal to send emails to people who haven’t subscribed to your list. And sending unsolicited emails is a sure-fire way to end up in the spam folder.

If you purchased an email list, delete those subscribers immediately. They’re just hurting you. Plus, they didn’t give you permission to send them emails anyway, so they are much more likely to mark your emails as spam or not open them at all.

9 – Make it easy for people to unsubscribe

A complaint hurts your email reputation which can (and will) cause your emails to end up in the junk or spam folders. 

An unsubscribe safely removes them from your list. 

If a subscriber doesn’t want to receive your emails, they will take one of these actions. Which would you rather they take? 

10 – Include your physical address in all emails

A requirement of the CAN-SPAM act is that all marketing emails must include your business address. This helps show that you’re a real business.

Related: How to Include a Physical Address in Your Emails Without Revealing Where You Live

Stick to the plan. Reach the inbox.

By following these steps, you can increase your chances of reaching the inbox and build a healthy list of people who want to receive your emails!

But remember that mastering the art of staying out of the spam folder is an ongoing process. Keep your content relevant, engage with your audience, and maintain a healthy sender reputation. 

Want to use an email marketing platform that helps more people reach the inbox? Create a free account with AWeber.

Fun history – why is spam called spam?

The modern meaning of the word “spam” has nothing to do with spiced ham. In the early 1990’s, a skit by British comedy group Monty Python led to the word’s common usage. “The SPAM Skit” follows a couple struggling to order dinner from a menu consisting entirely of Hormel’s canned ham.

Repetition is key to the skit’s hilarity. The actors cram the word “SPAM” into the 2.5 minute skit more than 104 times! This flood prompted Usenet readers to call unwanted newsgroup postings “spam.” The name stuck.

Spammers soon focused on email, and the terminology moved with them. 

The post How to avoid emails going to the spam folder – words to avoid and more appeared first on AWeber.

You know email marketing is a super effective way to nurture leads, turn them into paying customers, and retain existing customers.

But achieving your goals requires sending emails consistently and frequently — likely at least once per week. And coming up with that many email marketing campaign ideas is tough.

Maybe you’ve hit a creative dead-end. Maybe your previous activity hasn’t delivered the desired results. Maybe you’re new to email and just don’t know where to start.

Either way, you’re experiencing a major case of writer’s (or emailer’s) block.

Don’t worry, because we’ve rounded up 18 email marketing ideas to inspire your next campaign, backed up with real-world examples and segmented across the following common goals:

Generating more sales

Increasing email open rates

Getting more clicks

Nurturing leads

Increasing sign-ups

Boosting customer retention

Relax, take a deep breath, and let’s get into it…

Goal: Generate more sales

Promote a sale

Before we start discussing how to promote your latest sale through email marketing, let’s make one thing clear:

Sales aren’t a silver bullet. 

Run too many and you risk devaluing your brand. Also, consumers base their buying decisions on a range of factors, not just price. The biggest motivators are:

Customer ratings and reviews (cited by 94% of respondents) 

Price of product (91%)

Free shipping (78%)

Brand preference (65%)

Friend/family recommendations (60%)

So there are no guarantees a sale will even move the needle.

However, used effectively, sales can still be extremely impactful, with a high proportion of consumers across age groups saying they wait for discounts before buying online.

Now, let’s look at a real sales promotion email from interior decor brand Bougié, which effectively combined two of the top five buying factors we mentioned above by: 

Offering a discount on the product price

Providing free shipping

Of course, a lot of sales span multiple product categories (or even entire websites), rather than focusing on a single product like in Bougié’s example. If you’re planning such a specific promotion, your best bet is to target customers who’ve shown interest in a relevant product category.

In Bougié’s case, this could be people who:

Browsed other coffee tables

Browsed other Pitch Drop products

Browsed or recently purchased other living room furniture

Send cart abandonment emails

An astonishing 70.19% of online shopping carts end up being abandoned. It’s a tragedy for ecommerce stores; just think of all that lost revenue.

But it’s not all bad news, because cart abandonment emails consistently see open rates of 43% or more.

Not only that, but these emails convert at a rate of 18.64% — way higher than the average email conversion rate of around 8%.

The best abandoned cart emails contain the following elements:

Order summary

Product pricing

Product imagery

At least one CTA to complete the transaction

Let’s look at an example from menswear brand Huckberry:

As well as getting the basics right, Huckberry goes a step further by promoting “more good stuff”, just in case the recipient isn’t interested in buying the products they abandoned:

Use this tactic to recommend other products or categories the customer has previously browsed, or just to point them toward your top sellers.

Share social proof

Social proof is a massive source of buying inspiration. For instance, three-quarters of consumers “always” or “regularly” read reviews when browsing for businesses in their area.

But social proof isn’t just about customer reviews. Other types include:

Testimonials

Industry awards

Recommendations from influencers, thought leaders, or industry publications

Customer success stories

Accreditations

In our next example, furniture brand Keeps Home rounded up some of its most glowing press coverage from interior design and consumer review sites:

As you can see, this email also featured a prominent CTA. So if the email recipient is won over by all those impressive industry reviews, they can easily click through and shop the Keeps range.

Use scarcity and urgency

Want to motivate your audience to buy right now? Try adding scarcity or urgency (or both) to your messaging.

Scarcity and urgency are similar, but they’re not the same:

Urgency is about limited time. For instance, you might tell customers they only have 24 hours to take advantage of a discount.

Scarcity is about limited quantity. For example, you could say there are only 50 spaces available on your next course.

In our next example, Wix created a sense of urgency by making it clear the discount was a limited-time offer, as visualized by the countdown timer beneath the introductory copy:

Wix could have made this email even more impactful by combining urgency and scarcity, such as limiting the 50% discount to the first 100 customers who signed up. That would have created a real rush to the checkout.

Goal: Increase email opens

Split-test email subject lines

Email subject lines are your #1 tool for boosting open rates, with almost half of email recipients opening emails based on the subject line alone.

So if you’re trying to increase email opens, the subject line should be your first port of call. But while we can offer you dozens of inspirational email subject line examples, the only reliable way to figure out what works for you is to run a split-test.

That’s precisely what the folks at online marketing education company Authority Hacker did. Across 78 email outreach campaigns, they trialed three slightly different subject lines:

Question?

Quick question?

Question for you?

Similar as those options sound, the three top-performing campaigns in terms of email open rates all had the same subject line:

That’s right: between Campaign A and Campaign E, they managed to increase their open rate by 12.5%, just by removing the word “quick” for the subject line!

Before you start your own subject line split-test, remember not to change the other elements that affect email open rates (namely the email preheader and sender name — more on them later). That way, you can be sure any changes you see to the open rate are down to the subject line alone.

Use a complementary email preheader

The email preheader is a snippet of text that appears next to or underneath an email subject line, depending on your device and inbox provider. Confusingly, it’s also known as the Johnson Box or preview text. But whatever you call it, you can use it to increase your open rate by reinforcing or expanding on your subject line messaging.

For example, Sensi Graves Swim used the subject line to promote limited-availability products, then increased the feeling of scarcity with a preheader explaining there were “only one or two” left in stock:

Test different sender names

We’ve covered subject lines and preheaders, but there’s another — often-overlooked — element that can have a big impact on email open rates: the email sender name.

Should you use your brand name, like in this example…

…or choose a personal name plus your brand name to create a more human feel?

There’s plenty of evidence to suggest small changes to your sender name can yield massive impacts, with one organization reporting 50% higher open rates after adding a real person to its sender names.

But the simple answer is: you won’t know the right approach for your brand and audience until you test it yourself.

Pro tip: For best results, test subject lines, preheaders, and sender names to find the combination that delivers the highest open rates.

Goal: Get more clicks

Build emails around one CTA

When brainstorming email marketing ideas, you should identify one clear “goal” for each email you send. Use that goal to create a single CTA that prompts readers to take the desired action.

Add conflicting calls-to-action to an email and you risk leaving people confused — which means fewer clicks and conversions.

Adobe got it right in this email, which was solely geared toward driving downloads of a specific piece of content:

The lack of “noise” increases the chances of people clicking and downloading.

Use negative space in email design

Some emails make you feel like you’ve got a migraine.

I’m not talking about that out-of-the-blue message from your boss asking if you’ve got time for a “quick chat”.

Instead, I mean those marketing emails that are crammed with different GIFs, colors, fonts, images, emojis, and other visual bells and whistles.

When it comes to email design, less is more. Create more impactful emails by using negative space (also known as “white space”): empty areas in an email that help other design elements to stand out.

This example from Codecademy is an exercise in email design restraint, with the wealth of negative space naturally drawing your eye toward the offer and the CTA button:

Pro tip: Not sure where to start with email design? Don’t worry, because AWeber has a library of 600+ customizable email templates to inspire your next campaign.

Describe how your product will change the reader’s life

In a world that’s obsessed with audio and visual content, it’s easy to overlook the importance of email copywriting.

But the words in your emails play a key role in helping would-be customers picture what their lives would be like after buying your product or service. Which, in turn, makes them more likely to click through to learn more.

SectionSchool uses this tactic in our next example:

The email copy encourages readers to imagine themselves after three months of learning with Section and spells out the benefits they can expect. It’s exactly the sort of messaging that would resonate with someone interested in self-improvement.

Pro tip: As a general rule, your email copy should contain lots of “you” and “your”, and not so much “we” or “our”. Remember, it’s all about the customer, not you.

Goal: Nurture leads

Provide personalized product recommendations

Consumer expectations around personalization are increasing, with 73% of respondents to a 2022 survey expecting brands to understand their unique needs and expectations, up from 66% in 2020.

Which means one of the most effective email marketing ideas for nurturing leads is to provide personalized product recommendations.

Luggage and accessories brand Bellroy evidently understands this. In this email, it rounded up a bunch of relevant products based on the recipient’s browsing and buying behavior:

Importantly, Bellroy made it clear that these weren’t generic recommendations by using phrases like:

Just for you

Personalized to your tastes

Your picks

Hand-picked

Because why go to all the trouble of providing dynamic product recommendations if you’re not going to tell people about it?

Share relevant content

Email personalization isn’t just about introducing your audience to products they might love. It’s also about pointing them in the direction of content they’ll find interesting or useful (or, ideally, both).

For example, imagine you’re an HR manager looking to get more value from your organization’s learning and development spend.

During your research, you sign up for Filtered’s email list, but you’re not quite ready to request a product demo.

Then you receive this email:

There’s a good chance you’d join the webinar to learn more. Which, in turn, makes it more likely that Filtered will be front of mind when you’re ready to buy.

Celebrate milestones

Milestones are a tailor-made opportunity to nurture leads (and maybe persuade them to purchase something). There are various types of milestones, including:

Customer / lead birthdays

Company birthdays

Anniversaries since a specific user action (such as subscribing to your newsletter)

Our next example, from language learning platform Busuu, demonstrates how milestone emails can be used to encourage a lead to upgrade from a freemium product to a paid account:

Busuu essentially uses the three-month “anniversary” as an excuse to offer a big discount off its premium plans.

Goal: Increase sign-ups

Send referral emails

If I tell you to buy something, you’ll probably think: “Why should I listen to this guy? I don’t even know him. And how did he get my phone number?”

But if your mom or your partner or your best friend recommends a product or service, there’s a decent chance you’ll listen. In fact, consumers trust referrals more than any other channel: 

Referrals (trusted by 40% of respondents)

TV adverts (31%)

Influencer recommendations (1%)

For that reason, referral emails are one of the most effective ways to increase sign-ups for an online course, event, or webinar. But if they’re going to deliver the desired results, you need to come up with incentives for both the referrer and the person they’re referring, just like online training company GeeksforGeeks.

The brand built a simple but effective referral scheme that rewarded both parties:

The referred customer got a 10% discount on any GeeksforGeeks course

The referrer earned a 5% commission on the sale

That’s a real win-win.

Tease new course content

Just as an ecommerce company might launch a new product to boost sales, online course sellers can drive sign-ups by introducing and promoting new course content.

In our next example, the Content Marketing Institute teased its new content marketing certification, created in partnership with the American Marketing Association:

Don’t worry if you don’t fancy reading all that copy, because it basically says: this new course is launching soon, sign up to get notified when it drops.

Goal: Boost customer retention

Run win-back campaigns

Between 2013 and 2022, the average ecommerce customer acquisition cost rose by a staggering 222%, so retaining customers has never been more important.

Which brings us neatly to win-back campaigns. Also known as re-engagement or reactivation campaigns, they can help you keep hold of leads or customers who’ve stopped engaging with your emails or buying your products.

There are various types of win-back campaigns, but one of the most impactful is the last-chance email, which basically forces customers to opt back into your marketing list. If they don’t, they’ll be unsubscribed, so they’ll stop spoiling your email engagement metrics.

Let’s look at a last-chance email example from temporary tattoo brand Tattly:

Sure, this feels kind of counterintuitive: why would you encourage subscribers to leave your marketing list?

But when someone chooses to stay subscribed, that’s a clear sign they’re interested in what you have to say. And remember: it’s better to have a smaller pool of engaged customers than a massive list full of people who barely remember your name.

Reiterate your value proposition

The customers you’re trying to retain liked you enough to buy from one once upon a time. With a gentle reminder of why you’re so amazing, they might be persuaded to do it again.

Beauty brand AILLEA shows us what that reminder might look like:

First up, this email reiterates the brand’s value proposition, which is all about helping customers develop a more sustainable, eco-friendly beauty routine.

AILLEA goes on to ask the recipient two questions that are directly related to its value proposition:

By doing this, it subtly encourages the recipient to consider why they might want to shop with AILLEA. This messaging is supported by CTAs that prompt customers to browse the brand’s collections.

It’s all about persuading people to take another look at the AILLEA store, where they’ll hopefully find something they love.

Ask for feedback

There are two ways to figure out why a customer has stopped engaging with your emails, using your product, or buying from you:

Consult a soothsayer

Ask them

Personally, I prefer option #2.

Asking for customer feedback has a couple big benefits for brands:

Customers like being asked for feedback (provided you act on it). Four in five consumers say they feel more loyal to brands that respond to and resolve their complaints.

Even if a customer leaves, you can learn from their experience. Find out what put them off about your product or marketing — and fix it.

Here’s a textbook customer survey email example from dairy brand Tillamook:

Tillamook gets three things right in this email:

It tells the recipient what’s expected of them (i.e. answering three questions)

It clearly states the purpose of the survey (finding out if recipients find the brand’s emails useful and interesting)

It promises some sort of benefit (using the feedback to deliver better content)

Stick with this formula to get more responses from your feedback emails.

Successful email marketing requires the personal touch

Whether you’re encouraging a new email subscriber to make their first purchase, asking existing customers to recommend you to their friends and family, or trying to stop a previously loyal customer from leaving, one thing applies:

You stand a far better chance of success if you speak to people as individuals.

What are their pain points? What do they like about your product? What would persuade them to perform the desired action right now?

That sort of personalized messaging is impossible to deliver without the right email marketing platform.

With AWeber, you can use tags and custom fields to create dynamic segments that update automatically based on individual customer actions like: 

Browsing a product page

Making a purchase

Opening a specific email

That way, you can send the right email content to the right person exactly when they need it, which can increase your profitability and sales.

See for yourself by signing up for a free AWeber account.
Get started here!

The post 18 Email marketing ideas to boost opens, clicks and sales appeared first on AWeber.

Imagine successfully marketing your coaching services across several platforms with so many leads flowing your way that your waiting list is getting out of hand. Then imagine you did it all on a shoestring budget in just a small amount of time each day. 🏆

There’s a lot to do when starting a coaching business, and you don’t want to spend the majority of your time on marketing.

But new marketers often spend so much time promoting their services that they can’t keep up with the workload. As the unfinished projects pile up, the small amount of marketing success they achieve can’t be maintained because there are too many other things to do.

Pro marketers struggle with the same thing, but successful ones have learned a few secrets along the way and know how to market efficiently. In one morning, they can accomplish what it takes a team of people a full week to pull off. This lets them market more consistently and creatively!

In this guide, we share pro marketing secrets and tips that will help you build a successful coaching practice on a budget in a very small amount of time each day. 

Be sure to bookmark this guide, which is packed with information that will help drive new clients your way for years to come.

How do coaches find clients?

How to create a simple marketing framework

How to write a simple marketing strategy

How to write a simple marketing plan

How to build a simple marketing funnel

Using automation and AI in marketing

10 ways to find new clients for your coaching business

How do coaches find clients?

Coaches tend to find clients through marketing strategies such as word of mouth, email marketing, podcasting, speaking engagements, blogging, networking, and social media marketing.

However, if you’re running a one-person or small business, you can’t do all the marketing things all the time. So, how does a small business market its coaching services efficiently?

To market like a pro in a fraction of the time, use an efficient marketing framework paired with AI-powered tools and automation.

How to create a simple marketing framework for coaches

What if a few hours invested this week could save you hundreds in the future? Developing an efficient marketing framework — before you begin marketing — will improve your overall return on investment (ROI) and save you from costly errors in the future.

As a coach, you can create a marketing framework similar to what professional marketers use but simplified for a small business.

Your 3-step framework will include:

A written marketing strategy

A written marketing plan

A marketing funnel

#1 – Write a marketing strategy

A written marketing strategy is an overall plan that guides future decisions on where and how to invest your marketing time. 

A marketing strategy helps you:

Position yourself as the best choice for potential clients.

Avoid wasting time on marketing activities that won’t benefit you.

Focus your efforts and attention on areas that drive more clients to your coaching business.

Aim for a super-simple marketing strategy you can develop and write in one morning.

Create your marketing strategy by writing down brief answers to these questions:

1 – Who exactly do you want to reach?

What industry do they work in?

What job titles do they hold?

What pain points drive them to hire a coach?

Where do they congregate online and in person (social media, forums, organizations, etc.)? 

2 – What’s your core messaging?

Write a brief but specific answer to each of the following questions:

What mission and values drive your coaching practice?

What differentiates you from other coaches?

How will you position yourself in marketing? For example, will you be a thought leader who provides valuable tips in your content, an entertainer who makes people laugh, a muse who inspires people, or — something else? 

What is your personal story?

What are the top benefits of your coaching service?

3 – What are your marketing goals?

To create clear and attainable goals, think S.M.A.R.T.-  Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, and Time-bound.

How many clients would you like to enroll over the next 3 – 6 months?

What other objectives do you want to achieve through marketing?

Congratulations, you just completed a marketing strategy for your business! 

Use your strategy as a guideline when making decisions, such as what platforms and content to use, how to write ad copy, and how to fill out bios and profiles across multiple platforms.

#2 – Create a marketing plan for your coaching business

In step one, you created a marketing strategy, which is an overall plan to guide your marketing decisions. A marketing plan is an extension of your marketing strategy. The marketing plan outlines the steps, channels, tools, and content you’ll use to achieve your goals.

TIP: Read through the rest of this guide before writing your marketing plan. You’ll discover tips, ideas, examples, and guidance that may influence your marketing plan.

Create your marketing plan by writing down brief answers to the following questions:

What marketing channels (i.e., social media, email marketing, podcasting, etc.) will you use?

If you’re new to marketing or coaching, we recommend starting with a simple marketing plan you can expand upon over time:

One social media channel, plus

One landing page paired with email marketing automation, plus

One additional channel, if time allows, such as content marketing, speaking engagements, podcasting, etc.

Which software and tools will you use to market your coaching business? We recommend choosing one of each:

Email marketing software

Landing page software

Design tools

AI writing assistant 

Social media management software (to schedule your posts in advance)

Referral software

Additional tools for specialized marketing such as podcasting, video or audio productions, etc.

Many of the tools you need are included with AWeber, such as an AI writing assistant, Canva design software, and a landing page tool. Others, such as referral software, can be integrated with AWeber to further automate and enhance your marketing.

What type of content will you publish, and how often will you publish it? On what days and times will you publish?

This is a good time to create a generalized marketing calendar that allows you to visually reference your marketing plans. You can create a more detailed content calendar when you’re ready to begin publishing.

Any other steps for specialized marketing, such as podcasting or speaking engagements.

Congratulations, you’ve written your marketing plan! Next, you’ll build a “marketing funnel” that supports your strategy and plan.

#3 – Create a marketing funnel

The (often forgotten) marketing funnel is the hero of your marketing journey. It’s how you will turn your marketing efforts (readers, subscribers, followers, etc.) into profit. 

A solid marketing funnel ensures that your time investment leads to profits and you remain focused on running a successful business. It takes into consideration the five stages of the buyer’s journey: awareness, consideration, conversion, loyalty, and advocacy. 

The marketing funnel uses a different type of content at each stage of the buyer’s journey. This helps you guide them along an organic journey to becoming a paid client. 

Fortunately, we’ve done the geek work for you. All you need to do is follow the four steps below, and all five marketing funnel stages, with appropriate content for each level, are covered.

Step 1: Create a valuable, helpful ebook, tips list, or other type of lead magnet. Turn it into a PDF that people can download. Step two below will use this as gated content (high-value content that can only be accessed after providing contact or other information).

Step 2: Create a landing page that offers a free download of your ebook or tips list to people who sign up for your email newsletter. The free download is “gated” behind a subscription form (thus the term “gated content”).

Step 3: Send your subscribers a weekly newsletter that educates, inspires, or motivates them with tips relative to your coaching specialty.

Include a strong call-to-action (CTA) at the end of each newsletter that encourages people to schedule a free 15-minute coaching call with you. 

Use a calendar scheduling tool that lets people set their own appointments for a free mini-coaching call. Make that free coaching call amazing, and encourage them to sign up for a paid coaching plan at the end of the call.

You can easily create materials for this stage of the funnel with AWeber, which provides you with email marketing automation, built-in Canva features, and an AI writing assistant to help you create stunning landing pages and newsletters in minutes. 

Sign up for a free AWeber account today

Step 4: Send your former coaching clients a weekly or monthly email newsletter. Use it to provide valuable tips and guidance relevant to your coaching program graduates.

Use email segmentation to automate newsletter delivery to your alumni.

Include a strong CTA at the end of each newsletter, encouraging people to refer your coaching services to friends, family, or colleagues.

Congratulations, you just built a simple marketing funnel that will help turn your marketing efforts into new clients! As you develop your content, look for software and tools with built-in automation and AI to help you create more efficient and effective marketing campaigns.

Automation and AI-powered tools for coaches

Now that you’ve created an efficient marketing framework, there’s one more element needed to ensure an efficient, effective approach to marketing: Automation.

One of the best things you can do for yourself — and your business – is take advantage of automation and AI-powered tools that help you do your job quicker and more efficiently.

As you decide which marketing tools to use, lean toward tools with built-in automation and AI functions whenever possible. 

Automation allows you to set marketing tasks on autopilot so that programs work for you, even when you’re sleeping. AI (such as writing assistants, analytics, and more) can help you make better choices so your efforts are more likely to be successful.

10 Ways to find new clients for your coaching business

Here are ten of the best ways to find new coaching clients, plus tips to get you started in the right direction.

#1 – Word-of-mouth marketing

Ask any coach about the best way to get new clients; most will quickly answer, “Word of mouth!” When clients refer your services to their friends, family, and colleagues, their recommendations carry a lot of weight. 

Word-of-mouth marketing earns the type of trust and respect you need to quickly build a long list of clients.

“The most effective client-attracting strategy is talking to as many people as possible and telling everyone what you do. Coaching businesses are built through relationships and conversations!”

– Stacey Brass-Russell, Life & business coach, host of “Passionate & Prosperous” podcast

Make it easy for current and former clients to refer you using an automated referral tool like ReferralKit paired with user-friendly email marketing software.

You can also boost word-of-mouth referrals by getting involved with local community organizations such as the Chamber of Commerce.

#2 – Email marketing and automation

Imagine setting up a series of email newsletters that are automatically delivered to your subscribers at the perfect time – and you don’t need to lift a finger to make it happen! 

Email newsletters are a great way to convert potential clients into paying clients, especially when you use them to provide helpful tips and guidance relevant to your coaching business. 

You can quickly write a series of valuable emails with help from AI, then schedule it to send automatically on the days and times you choose. 

Like a pro marketer, you can also take advantage of email “segmenting.” Segmenting allows you to personalize email content by automatically sending different email series to specific groups of people based on their interests and behavior. To use segmenting in your email marketing, look for user-friendly email software (such as AWeber) that provides personalization and automation features.

For example, a relationship coach might send dating tips to people looking to meet someone or tips on recovering from a breakup to people just getting out of a relationship. 

#3 – Social media marketing

Social media is a powerful tool coaches can use to promote their businesses. It’s a great way to connect with potential clients, build relationships, and share your knowledge and expertise.

Source: Instagram @annadkornick, @lewishowes

If you’re new to marketing, start with one social media channel and expand to others only after building one successful, engaged audience. 

How do you pick one social media channel for your coaching business? 

Choose the social media platform where your target audience (target client from your marketing strategy) is most likely to congregate.

Facebook is great for general audiences, including adults, families, and businesses. It’s also an excellent platform for starting a group or community page.

LinkedIn is a top business platform, ideal for business coaches whose target audience includes executives, managers, and business people. It’s a great choice for business coaches who love to blog (or mini-blog) and network with other business people.

Instagram is a popular platform for young adults and millennials who share content related to their personal (and sometimes professional) lives. It’s a solid choice for coaches wanting to reach an audience that embraces personal self-help and self-care. 

YouTube is an excellent platform for reaching almost everyone of any age. People often turn to YouTube for educational video content, making it an ideal platform for coaches wanting to create and publish helpful long-form (5+ minutes or more) video content tutorials.

How to build trust on social media

When making a decision about any product or service, people turn to social media for “social proof.”  Social proof is content that validates the benefits of your coaching and establishes trust so people feel comfortable investing in your services.

Providing social proof is equally as important (if not more) as helpful, engaging content.

To provide the type of documentation that makes people feel comfortable hiring you, include the following social proof on your social media profiles/channels and website:

Reviews

Customer testimonials

Awards and recognition

Additionally, consider the following tactics to build trust with your audience:

Respond to comments and questions, negative or positive, quickly and kindly.

Partner with influencers.

Run contests or giveaways that encourage user-generated content.

#4 – Press

While social media has become an important channel for communication, generating press is still a valuable tool for attracting media coverage and promoting your coaching business.

Press releases can be used to announce new information about your coaching business that gets you mentioned or featured in news outlets or other publications. For example, a new product or service launch, a new partnership, or an award are great reasons to send a press release. 

Build relationships with journalists by answering questions and volunteering for interviews. A service such as Help A B2B Writer or Help A Reporter Out (HARO) can help you connect with writers and journalists seeking information and quotes in exchange for a link to your site.

#5 – Speaking engagements

Speaking engagements are a fantastic way for coaches to establish themselves as thought leaders and connect with a large number of potential clients. 

If you enjoy public speaking and think this would be a good way to market your business, networking with other speakers and event organizers is a great place to start. 

Organizations such as the National Speakers Association, Toastmasters International, and TED Masterclass are excellent places to hone your speaking skills and network for future engagements.

Coach Michael Bungay Stanier speaking at TedX on YouTube

#6 – Podcasting

Looking to amp up your reach and establish yourself as a leader in your niche? Podcasting and guest appearances provide an abundance of opportunities for coaches. 

The intimate and conversational format of podcasting lets you build a rapport with listeners. It’s an excellent way to build trust and credibility while paving the way for an influx of new clients and partnership opportunities.

Want to learn more about starting your own podcast? Check out Buzzsprout podcasting resources and the Buzzsprout Facebook community, Spotify for podcasters, or LinkedIn Learning’s Podcasting courses.

Insert AWeber YouTube video “Podcasting Tips from Podcast Movement”:

#7 – Influencer marketing

Want to rapidly reach a wider audience, build trust, drive traffic to your site, and generate leads and sales? 

Influencer marketing is one of the rare methods that can help you gain instant exposure and quickly build a social media audience (and client list).

Can a solo coach on a budget afford influencer marketing? You bet! 

The key to affordable, effective influencer marketing for small businesses? Work with micro-influencers!  

Insert AWeber YouTube video “Does Influencer Marketing Work for Small Businesses?”:

Micro-influencers have smaller but highly engaged audiences (10,000 – 100,000 followers). Micro-influencers often partner with businesses in exchange for a trade of services or a small fee.

For example, Carla Jian is an Austin Mom & Wellness influencer with more than 8,500 followers who consistently engage with her content.

She partnered with @monicaandandy pajamas for a promotion that featured an image of her family wearing their pajamas.

You can find influencers by searching online or using an influencer tool like Modashi to conduct filtered influencer searches. Tools like this let you view important details such as their engagement rates, followers, location, and interests.

#8 – Courses, classes, and tutorials

What if you could generate passive income, enhance your coaching skills, build a loyal community, and market your services — all at once?

For coaches, publishing courses on platforms such as Udemy, YouTube, and Skillshare is a gift that keeps giving. 

It takes time to put together a valuable, high-quality class, but every course you create has the potential to drive clients and passive income for years to come.

For example, Coaches Natalie and Joeel Rivera offer transformation-based courses on Udemy. 

The coaching pair has been creating Udemy courses since 2014 and now has over 700,000 students from more than 200 countries on the platform.

Coaches Joeel & Natalie Rivera’s class on Udemy

#9 – Search engine optimization (SEO)

If you work in person with local clients, local SEO may be a good investment of your time and effort. 

However, you may want to skip or limit your SEO marketing efforts if you do not provide local services. 

Competitive national or global SEO requires extensive technical and content training. And there’s no guarantee you’ll rank well, even with expert-level knowledge.

Instead, you can use social media to drive traffic to your website and landing pages. 

Social media has its own SEO, called social SEO, that you can learn much quicker than Google’s. Each social media platform has different algorithms that determine how many people see your posts. How you optimize content for their native search engines can have a significant impact on how many people see your content.

For example, Instagram has a newsfeed algorithm that’s entirely different from its Reels algorithm. So if Instagram is your primary social channel, it’s worth your time to understand how those algorithms work and what you can do to optimize your profile and posts.

If YouTube is your main social channel, spend an afternoon watching a class like “YouTube SEO SECRETS Course” by Sumner Hobard. 

Or browse a wide selection of social media SEO courses to find one that’s right for you.

#10 – Remarketing campaigns

Engaging past clients can provide steady business for coaches, and there are several effective ways to reconnect with your alumni.

Segment your email list based on past interactions, interests, and engagement levels to personalize your outreach. You can customize separate email campaigns to fit specific types of clients. This lets you promote relevant services and exclusive offers.

Offer incentives and rewards such as ebooks, discounts, or complimentary sessions to existing clients who recommend your services to their network. 

Introduce new services or add-on packages that cater to evolving client needs. You can offer specialized workshops, group coaching sessions, or personalized mentorship programs to cater to your former clients’ diverse interests and learning styles.

Create and promote books or branded merchandise that provide value to people who have benefitted from your coaching.

Coaches can effectively reconnect with former clients by leveraging email segmentation and referral marketing tools to introduce new services or add-on packages.

Empower your coaching business through marketing

As you move forward with your marketing efforts, remember that the heart of your work lies in empowering people to achieve their goals and reach their full potential. Creating efficient and effective marketing campaigns will allow you to spend more time cultivating growth for you and your clients.

Keep in mind that marketing is not just about acquiring new clients; it’s about nurturing existing relationships and fostering a vibrant community of individuals committed to personal growth. 

Engage with your audience as much as possible across all your marketing platforms. Create a sense of belonging and camaraderie that lets your clients know they are part of a larger community. And automate, automate, automate!

Looking for an all-in-one, beginner-friendly platform? AWeber email marketing software provides automation, AI assistance, landing pages, Canva design tools, and segmented email campaigns. Sign up for a free AWeber account today!

The post How to market your coaching business: a guide to increasing clients and sales appeared first on AWeber.

Event email marketing is a key strategy for building anticipation for your next event—whether online or offline. This post explores key event email marketing examples and strategies to help.

When a survey asked event marketers their most effective strategy for getting the word out, the results were interesting:

The best strategy wasn’t word-of-mouth. It wasn’t social media.

It was email.

Over 75% of the event marketers polled said email marketing was their preference. They reported 45% of their total event ticket sales came from email marketing campaigns.

That makes event marketing simple, right? Sign up for an email platform, tie in an event marketing platform like Eventbrite, and you’re good to go.

But just because one medium is the most effective doesn’t guarantee future results.

To make event email marketing work for you, you need to learn what it is and how to use it. You’ll need announcement and drip campaign emails to pump up excitement well before the event. And a few examples to show how it’s done won’t hurt, either.

Let’s dive in.

What is email marketing for events?

Email event marketing is a newsletter-based strategy for building urgency and attention for an upcoming get-together. A good email event marketing strategy has a few different features:

Building excitement and anticipation for the event, which helps you sell more tickets

Announcing, with perfect clarity, the key details—such as the date, the time, and how to get to your event

Providing links and details if your event is web-based

Answering questions about the event upfront. This creates less confusion when the day finally comes

These steps sound intuitive enough. But remember: event email marketing can be different than your usual email marketing strategies.

The typical strategy might be to filter new potential customers to your lead magnet. The benefits you can receive from this strategy can build over time, with no end in sight.

Event email marketing best practices

Email event marketing is more like building a campaign around a story. It has a beginning, a middle, and an end: the event itself.

If you want to do it effectively, you’ll need to keep a few best practices in mind:

Personalization

An event should feel more “real” than most newsletters. 

Events mean meeting people face-to-face, either on a webcam or in person. It’s one thing to get a potential customer to sign up for a lead magnet. It’s another thing to get them to commit to attending, say, a conference.

With a good email marketing platform, you can incorporate personalization features aplenty:

Use a platform like AWeber to automatically enter each subscriber’s unique first name

Use subscriber segmentation and tag each user with a specific category so you can send them event-specific content

Add code to your website and engage with subscribers based on their particular site-browsing habits

Set up your campaign correctly from the get-go, and your event emails will come across as eerily telepathic. 

But there’s nothing strange going on. You’re just practicing good personalization habits and skipping those newsletter subscribers who might not be interested.

Customer segmentation

Speaking of customer segmentation: you wouldn’t invite an email list of cat lovers to an event at a dogs-only park, would you?

Not if you wanted anyone to show up.

With customer segmentation features, you can tag specific subscribers. Or you can drill down even further, separating subscribers by the types of events they might want to attend.

If you have a far-reaching audience, for example, you can tag “NY-Events” for subscribers local to the New York area.

Segmentation ensures that you don’t waste any time by campaigning to crowds of people who have no intention of ever attending your events. 

It’s not enough to have a “[CUSTOMER_NAME]” box at the beginning of your email.

Use customer segmentation tags to ensure every email feels relevant to every group you’re engaging. Your goal? Identify specific niches of subscribers who will be enthusiastic enough to reserve a spot at your event.

Making the event seem real

There’s a funny thing that happens with online interactions. We often forget we’re interacting with other people. As Psychology Today notes, one survey found that college students had the greatest increase in well-being when they interacted with people in person.

 Simply put, online interactions don’t register quite as “real” as face-to-face interactions do.

And that can be a hard sell. After all, you probably got most of your subscribers from online interactions. 

Now, with event email marketing, you’re asking people to start seeing you as a real person. You’re asking to change the context of your relationship, which requires a different style of engagement.

Start by making the event seem real:

Open loops that can only close in person. For example, maybe someone enters a contest online—but they can only collect the prize in person. 

Use compelling visuals. Do you have snapshots from a previous event? Include them. Even if your event is completely online, include headshots for every guest who will appear.

Share a personal story. Does the event come out of a personal story or realization you had? Share it with your audience. If your event is a lecture or web conference about a specific topic, talk about the personal circumstances that led to your discovery of that topic.

How to use email marketing to spark interest in your event

Email marketing is like any other type of marketing. Except this time, you want more than a click. 

You need to motivate people to turn up, sign up, or even pay a hefty amount of money just to get in.

Those are big asks. If you have a young newsletter subscriber base, they’re especially big asks. You may still be in the middle of building familiarity with your audience.

To ensure your event sparks enough interest, build the following strategies into your campaign:

Get your announcement in early

Ever notice how Hollywood doesn’t kick off a movie campaign with a full movie trailer anymore?
It’s usually a series of teases. They’ll release pictures from the set years in advance. Or they’ll hype up a brief “trailer tease” on YouTube.

Finally, the full trailers become blockbuster events themselves: sometimes they debut during halftime of Monday Night Football.

The final trailer. Tune in to Monday Night Football on @ESPN to watch it live. #TheRiseOfSkywalker pic.twitter.com/QAme0H5j0D

— Star Wars (@starwars) October 19, 2019

The key to this strategy is starting early. Plant those seeds of excitement. Get on peoples’ radar well in advance of the event.

Excitement begins with your first announcement email. So now’s the time to start brainstorming.

Brainstorm your email subject lines

We’ve got a few ideas for best practices on email subject lines. Let’s do a brief review:

Keep them under 45 characters. This ensures people can read a complete thought without clicking. Otherwise, your subject lines might fade into ellipses in your recipients’ inboxes.

Use the “sentence case” for your headers, which keeps things casual. These emails should look like they’re coming from old friends.

Create a “curiosity gap.” This means you should introduce a mystery with your subject line. If readers want to solve it, they’ll feel compelled to click the email.

Then write down a list of your best ideas for announcement subject lines. 

And here’s the trick: sleep on them. When you’re fresh, look at them anew. Ask yourself which one popped as the most compelling.

Chances are, that’s your winner.

Build an event landing page

True: an event is not a static thing. It will come and go. Building a website can feel like overkill when you know this is just a temporary campaign.

But you still need a centralized hub where people can find key information and sign up for campaign emails.

Within AWeber, you can build a specific landing page with customer tags. This way, only the newsletter subscribers who might be event attendees will get the segmented emails.

You can also use the landing page as an opportunity to do some of the legwork.

Any event is going to have Frequently Asked Questions:

When and where? How can you attend? How much do tickets cost?

You’ll likely repeat this information in social media posts and emails. But having FAQs up on a landing page will ensure the answers are there for anyone who wants them. 

(More on building your landing pages in a moment.)

Begin capturing images from the venue—or use stock images

If you’ve already booked a venue, use that venue’s existing images to make the event seem more “real.”

It’s one thing to say you’re renting an auditorium. It’s another thing to show a picture of 100 empty seats and write the headline: “Three more days…”

If you don’t have access to those pictures, you can always choose stock pictures, including those relevant to the event’s city, to help build anticipation.

Or ask guests for headshots you can include on your landing page and emails.

Photographs are so important to our perceptions, they can even influence our memories. The more visual your campaign gets, the more “real” it will feel when the week of the event rolls around.

Create periodic reminders

A typical story has a three-act structure:

An inciting incident, which pulls the story out of its complacency and creates urgency

A second act of increasingly complex problems and escalating tension

A climax where the fate of the story hangs in the balance

You don’t have to turn your event emails into a novel anytime soon, true. But you should have a loose sense of this structure as you build anticipation for your event.

Enter “periodic reminder” emails.

If the announcement email was your inciting incident, these period reminders will fill the space of a long second act. 

And that can be a challenge. The exciting first announcement and the third-act buildup to the event are typically the most exciting parts of an email campaign.

What do you do to create periodic reminders in between? Here are a few ideas:

“Unpeel the onion.” Like a great mystery writer, only unveil one clue at a time. Create intrigue by presenting images, prizes, and other elements from your event out of context. Keep your audience guessing, then slowly reveal what each layer of the onion means to the ultimate event.

Give away the details. No need to be coy about the logistics of your event. Instead, allow people to add events to their calendar—including dates, times, and web addresses.

Build your reminders in sequence. It’s more fun if your emails run in a specific order, with each email expanding on what you wrote in the previous edition. For example, Canva sends instructional emails where each lesson adds mini-skills on top of the emails that came before.

Create a drip campaign. Schedule your “second-act” emails as a drip campaign from the outset, which helps you create a natural chronological timeline that feels like a story unfolding.

Gather FAQs and store them on your landing page

It’s only natural: an event is going to garner some questions.

When? Where? Who?

If you treat your event email marketing campaign as a true-blue campaign, then every campaign needs that landing page. 

This is the “sales page” for your event. And like a good sales page, it should anticipate—and answer—every customer question beforehand.

Start with Frequently Asked Questions you know people will have. The five Ws: who, what, where, when, and why. 

Explain what people can expect to get out of your event, even if it’s something as simple as a fun night out.

And as questions come in, don’t forget to note these and jot down your answers. Ideally, your landing page will be a complete “hub” of any and all information related to your event.

All that’s left for the customer is to invite themselves by entering their email address. From there, you can tag them to a segmented email list and get them started on your drip campaign.

Get involved on social media

Event email marketing may be the best way to get people to sign up, but you still need people to discover your emails in the first place. And social media can be a great way to draw them in.

One strategy is to maximize your use of hashtags:

Create an event-specific hashtag (like #Your-Event-Here-2024) to build a hashtag “hub.” Anyone who wants to submit their post, attach a photo of their invitation, or announce they’re attending can use this hashtag for visibility.

Use event-adjacent hashtags to get more eyeballs on your posts. These are particularly effective when you have industry-specific hashtags you can use. People in your industry—who may already be looking for events—can find your posts with a simple search.

And keep at it. Maybe your hashtag posts won’t draw 500 likes and engagements overnight. But every new post keeps your event at the top of the search results whenever someone looks for the hashtag.

Social media is also a great place to begin contests and prizes to create excitement. You can even use Re-posts on X and other social shares as ways people can enter, drumming up even more engagement from your audience.

In the example above, an event for Ukraine Aid shows off how to create social posts:

Inspiring, high-contrast visuals to draw the eye

Essential information: who, when, where, what, and why

Hashtags like #PossibleWithU help enhance the visibility.

Tips for building urgency when it’s crunch time

Now we enter the third act of your campaign: the climax. 

It’s crunch time.

Your tool for building urgency here should be to play on scarcity. Scarcity is simple: the less of something there is, the more people will want it. 

Scarcity is a natural fit for event email marketing because an event is inherently scarce. It only happens once. And chances are, there are all sorts of opportunities to highlight scarcity:

You may only have a certain amount of online guests

There are only a certain number of seats or spaces

A venue may have a maximum capacity

If the event is only happening once, your audience could miss it

A limited number of VIP spots

That latter point is key. Creating “VIP tickets” can be a great way to inspire new sign-ups when you’re still in the “Drip campaign” phase of the overall campaign.

For example, “Withings” watches once created a Cyber Monday sale with the following headline:

“Tomorrow is too late.”

It’s an instant eye-grabber. 

Why is tomorrow too late? If I take action now, am I one of the lucky few?

If you don’t have special VIP offers, you can build urgency with unique incentives. Maybe time is running out on a prize contest. Maybe there are only so many prizes you can give out at the door.

These incentives are particularly useful if you’re approaching the event date and still don’t have enough signups. Some customers may just need one final nudge before they commit to your event.

Types of event emails (with examples)

Using story structure, you should split your event emails into three major categories:

The announcement is the inciting incident: you want to surprise people, pull them out of their lull, and tell them what they can get by attending your event.

The drip campaign emails are the long second act: slowly build urgency, reveal new answers (such as mystery guests), and remind people of what’s coming.

The excitement emails will be your big climax: building urgency for the event.

Announcement emails

XXIX’s ten-year party announcement email starts with a fun “incitement” sentence: Unsubscribe if you don’t like parties.

Well, we all like parties. Now they have our attention.

Here are the keys to this announcement email’s success:

An opening sentence that challenges the reader and creates a bit of a curiosity gap. Don’t tell me I don’t like parties!

It gets the announcement out early by mentioning a key milestone: XXIX turning 10 years old. There’s the answer to your “why.” It also makes the event date a little easier to remember. 

The email gives details right away so people who are already interested can start saving the date and putting the address in their calendars. Yes, it’s good to create intrigue, but you don’t want to be mysterious about the logistics.

Here’s another example, from TwitchCon:

With the confidence of “you’re going to be there,” this announcement email gets straight to the point:

It explains why you’d want to attend TwitchCon in Paris: “Get ready to celebrate all the stuff that makes Twitch special.” And it answers another “W” question by explaining who will be there.

It uses social proof with specific faces and usernames of popular streamers. This immediately draws the interest of these streamers’ followers.

Drip campaign emails

Bloomreach uses specific details to draw your interest. If you’re part of their audience, there’s a good chance you’ll find something at this event you’ll like.

This email for Bloomreach re-invites people by mentioning the specific event details they must know. But it doesn’t have the big “splash” of a launch email. Instead, it tackles the meat and potatoes of the reasons to attend the event, including specific topics and speakers.

Includes basic details about when the event is, along with an above-the-fold call-to-action for people who are immediately interested.

Now let’s look at a similar example from a 2023 conference from Maze:

Keys to success:

Notice the time here, a fun, urgency-building transition to the final leg of the campaign. 

The email still highlights what the fun of the event might be: “Join online on September 19 for X, Y, and Z.”

The email mentions the DJ entertainment while discussing specific speakers at the event, giving you more reasons to join in.

It finishes off with a strong call to action: registering for free.

Excitement emails

It’s almost time! ⏰ We’re back tomorrow for G2E 2022.

Follow along on our pages this week, October 10-13, as we share highlights from the show. It’s not too late to register: https://t.co/WolNcdnYIY pic.twitter.com/ZqgBUO69EM

— Global Gaming Expo (@G2Eshows) October 9, 2022

Although not an email, this tweet with an animated “timer” builds urgency and anticipation by letting you watch the seconds tick away.

Notice the line “it’s not too late to register,” along with a strong CTA. It may be a tweet, but it reads like an email.

The animation highlights how quickly time is passing, which builds urgency—even if it’s unconscious.

Sundance’s upcoming 2024 film festival uses some similar principles:

This email for the Sundance Film Festival doesn’t go off-brand with last-minute contests and prizes. But it does highlight that a “countdown” is beginning:

The email builds urgency by highlighting that the lodging is selling “fast.” Even if people think they have plenty of time left to register, there are other elements of logistics you can use to build scarcity.

The email includes specific event details, which is essential at this stage of event marketing emails.

Finally, the email includes a new offer that can help nudge people who were on the fence about attending.

Build an event email marketing campaign

An event email marketing campaign is still like other campaigns you’ve attempted. It should have a specific landing page, populated with all sorts of information. You should use customer segments to personalize your messaging.

What’s different? Every event is a story with a beginning, a middle, and an end—a climax that culminates in the event itself. If you can build urgency up to the end, you’ll have a successful campaign.

But it all starts with a capable email platform. An email platform that allows for effective user tagging, customer segmentation, and automated drip campaigns to help build excitement.
Don’t have an account with AWeber just yet? Sign up for free today. After all, the clock on your next event is ticking.

The post Event email marketing: How to build excitement for your next event appeared first on AWeber.

You can’t go on vacation these days without seeing someone on their e-reader. 

And that’s fantastic news for ebook creators. The ebook market should hit $14 billion in the U.S. alone by the end of this year. It will expand to an expected global market of 1.1 billion readers by 2027.

But even in a hefty market like that, success isn’t guaranteed.

If you want to sell ebooks in this climate, you’ll need to stand out from the other sellers. You’ll need to know how to position and persuade people to buy your book. 

We’ve previously tackled how to create a successful ebook. Now it’s time to talk about market liftoff. 

How can you sell your book online? How can you distinguish it from others already on sale? How can you ask for a price people are willing to pay?

To learn that, let’s tackle the best strategies for selling your ebook in the current marketplace:

First things first: creating your ebook

Have you created your ebook yet? 

No? Here are a few quick reminders from our post about building an ebook for the first time:

Position your ebook by starting with your market and your idea. Is it fiction or nonfiction? Who is your ideal customer?

Outline and draft your ebook with the help of AI writing tools. You can also draft the ebook yourself, or simply hire out the work to a ghostwriter on Fiverr or Upwork.

Build your ebook with tools like Calibre, Reedsy, or Canva so it’s ready to publish in the format of your choice.

Your ebook should hit on a key pain point for your readers. Consider Paula Rizzo, whose book Listful Thinking tackles a specific subject: using lists to get organized.

Still with us so far? 

Good. Because once you’ve worked through those tips, you’ll have a shiny new ebook in your hands—digitally speaking—that’s ready to sell.

For many, this is the fun part.

Building a cover to make your ebook’s “pitch”

If you handle your cover right, a sale could happen in an instant. A customer only has to think: “Hmm…that looks good.”

It’s a simple fact of life. Readers do judge books by their covers.

A good title—like “The Joy of Cooking,” with the font placing emphasis on “joy”—should immediately fill the hunger pangs of your ideal reader.

But beyond the title, your cover has to do an effective job of conveying what’s inside. Consider:

Color palette: Colors impact our perception of what’s inside the book. Study color psychology to harmonize what’s on the front and the promise your ebook is making. For instance, a color like green works for books about health, fertility, shedding stress, nature, and gardening. 

Typography: Font size, style, and positioning all weigh into the messaging of the book. Serif fonts, says Kindlepreneur, tend to be best for traditional themes. Scripts—fonts that look like penmanship—are best for memoirs and passion projects. 

Eye-catchers: What’s the chief element of your book cover? Maybe the title takes up most of the space. Other elements—like flowers in a book on gardening—should have immediate appeal to your target audience.

Space: Finally, pay attention to the use of space—including empty space. There’s only so much real estate on a book cover you can use before it gets crowded. 

Platforms for selling ebooks

Once you have your ebook—and a cover to help sell it—your next step is to make it easy to download.

Enter the ebook platform.

Major platforms like Amazon KDP (Kindle Direct Publishing) and Apple Books are great starting places. They’re where many voracious ebook consumers turn to fill their e-readers.

Before you market your book, remember that old show business adage: 90% of success is showing up. Let’s explore what it means for your ebook to “show up” by maximizing your exposure to the top platforms:

Amazon: Amazon KDP is one of the largest marketplaces for ebooks in the entire world. Every year, almost 500 million ebooks go through Amazon.

It features a dashboard for monitoring your sales. And you’ll have power over how you sell your book. Title, cover, price, advertising, category: it’s all under your direct control

Apple: Apple Books, sometimes known as the iBooks store in the past, may be your primary conduit to people who swear by their iPhones and Macs. You’ll earn 70% royalties here on your self-published work—about industry standard.

To kick off the process of publishing, head to their Authors section. There you can start to build your book’s presence in the Apple world and measure your long-term success.

Smashwords: There have been over 31 million ebooks published on Smashwords. And the fun thing about Smashwords is how it’s built for the ebook market. 

Smashwords features extensive categories in both fiction and non-fiction. You shouldn’t find it too difficult to find your ebook’s home, no matter your category. 

It’s also common to see ebooks fetch as much as $9.99 and up on the platform, which puts your book in an advantageous pricing context.

Kobo: Kobo Writing Life is a great “gateway” for writers who want to focus less on selling and more on writing. If you have your ebook file ready, it just takes a few short steps after signup to have it ready to sell on the platform.

The downside? You might give up a little control. Amazon Kindle Direct Publishing, for example, offers you all sorts of variables to control. 

If you find all of that overwhelming, try getting on Kobo as a “gateway” to the rest of the other platforms. 

Google: Google Play is the main marketplace app on Android phones, which is why Google Play Books is the key touchpoint here. 

It’s especially useful for people who want to target customers who love to read on their phones. That number eclipsed 50% of readers in the mid-2010s. And as phones only become more ubiquitous, you should consider Google Play Books an essential platform.

Draft 2 Digital: How about a self-publishing platform that handles other platforms for you? Draft 2 Digital offers a distribution service for getting your ebook out to multiple ebook storefronts worldwide.

If you prefer the hands-off approach to publishing, it may be the platform for you.

The downside is cost: Draft 2 Digital will take a 10% fee for the retail price of your book in each sale. But it also has no upfront charges and lets you continue to edit your book without additional fees.

Lulu: Lulu is especially popular as a print-on-demand service, but it also offers services for ebook publishing. Their guides and templates constitute a beginner’s “toolkit” that can serve as a handy introduction for anyone who’s breaking into ebook publishing for the first time.

Gumroad: Thanks to its popularity for social media creators, such as those on Twitter, Gumroad is a platform that works great for publishing info products. Gumroad’s easy-download interface requires minimal signup friction from the buyer’s perspective, which is essential for turning engaged followers into customers.

AWeber: Build a landing page with AWeber and you’ll essentially build your own ebook selling platform. Because AWeber isn’t a marketplace, you will have to build an audience, too. But the advantage is that AWeber won’t ask for a cut of every ebook sale via royalties.

How to get readers to want to buy your ebook

The number one challenge for ebook creators isn’t getting their ebooks online. It’s convincing people that their ebook is a must-purchase.

If you’ve already positioned your ebook appropriately, you’ll have done some of the legwork already. But if you want people to pay what you ask, you should learn another aspect of customer psychology: pricing.

Pricing your ebook

After the cover of your book, what’s the second thing most customers look at? Dollars and cents. They need to know what the words inside your book are going to run them.

Pricing an ebook always happens in context. $9.99? Cheap—until you’re next to someone charging $7.49 for theirs.

On the other hand, a hardcover cookbook that costs $40 might not make readers bat an eye. Not when there are other cookbooks on the shelves that cost $50.

So how do you make context work in your favor? Here are a few ways:

Conduct research into your niche. Use the platforms listed above, especially Amazon and Smashwords, to browse what ebooks cost within your niche. For example, a look at “featured new releases” in the Health category on Smashwords shows books from $0.99-$4.99. $1.99 is common here, and likely a good price point.

Look for long-lasting prices. Don’t just browse the new releases, either. Look for prices on bestsellers and books that have been listed for weeks, even months. If the price is working for other sellers in your niche, it can probably work for you.

Pricing psychology tips

Just as there’s a lot of psychology to your book cover, pricing psychology can be downright complex. Consider the following: 

Charm pricing: Ebooks often sell for $0.99, $1.99, and $4.99 for a reason. Dropping the price by one cent does make a difference, dropping the first number your customer sees by one. When you shop, your eye gravitates toward $1.99 rather than $2.03.

Tease pricing: This is the same concept behind launching a lead magnet. For example, author Eric R. Asher offers a free novella to people just for signing up for his newsletter. This helps him build an audience, which generates interest when it’s time to sell his full-length novels.

Create your context: You might have heard of this strategy in restaurants. A “wine list” might include low-end and high-end wines—with the idea that a discerning customer will want to choose the relative bargain of the medium-priced wine. You can “create your own” context similarly by offering multiple ebooks for sale at different price points

Go for an aspirational price: If you’re selling comprehensive info products, you might also consider redefining it not as an ebook, but as a full-length course. Package it with other elements on Gumroad like videos, and you can charge much more. As with wine, a higher price often gets customers to ascribe more value to what the product contains.

Build social proof into your ebook offering

If you can’t control your pricing, you can still control the perceived value of your ebook through social proof.

Social proof is a concept dating to Robert Cialdini’s book Influence. It essentially means that we humans have an instinct to conform to what other people are doing. 

Take Andy Weir’s ebook-turned-mainstream published novel, The Martian. Buy it now, and you’ll see “Now a Major Motion Picture” stamped on the front cover.

If we see other people loving the ebook, we’re more likely to want to buy it ourselves.

But for social proof to work, it has to appear organic. Spamming fake online reviews won’t work. How do you incorporate social proof into a static product like a digital download?

Testimonials. High-quality reviews, especially on Amazon, can help introduce your ebook to a new audience. This is so powerful that many Amazon products will build phrases like “over 500 5-star reviews” into their product descriptions.

Author blurbs. If you’re connected to well-known authors, even a single sentence from them can be game-changing to include on the cover. You can get over the “name recognition” problem if you can secure a recommendation from someone your market recognizes.

Author forewards. The phrase “foreward by [author]” is another sneaky way to work in additional social proof. Forewards are typical for nonfiction in which an established author within a niche or industry will lend their credibility as an introduction to the rest of the content.

Author bios. In your author bio, stack up as many awards, recognitions, and honors as you can related to your field. You may not have a long resume as an author, but if you’re writing a book about selling real estate and were the #1-performing real estate agent in your metropolitan area, it’s worth mentioning.

Marketing your ebook to sell

By now you should have the elements for a sellable ebook: proper positioning, an evocative cover, a good price, and even your “social proof” ready to go. 

Now, whenever someone in your market comes across your book, they should think: this is exactly what I’ve been looking for.

The only thing left? Getting more people to see your ebook. People have to have heard of it if they’re going to buy it, which is why the final piece of the puzzle is amplifying your message.

Avenues for marketing your ebook

Social media posts: It always helps to have an established social media presence. But maybe you don’t. How do you get attention for an ebook with limited follower counts?

Create compelling visuals: As Forbes notes, 91% of consumers prefer visual to written content. This gives any social media post with effective visuals an instant “boost” in engagement potential.

Do breakdowns of popular figures: If you don’t have a large social media presence, you may lack “credibility” as you build it. But one way to borrow such credibility for your social media content is to play on the name recognition of others. If you have a YouTube channel, for instance, you can do breakdowns of successful figures in your field by playing selected clips from their interviews.

Find relevant hashtags: Let’s say you’re a writer marketing a new self-published fiction ebook. Did you know there may be a built-in audience on X or Instagram with established niche hashtags, like #Steampunk? Research hashtag popularity before scheduling your posts to ensure maximum engagement.

These might seem like small details now, but every view counts. And don’t forget that every new follower is a potential new engagement for future posts. 

Social media ads: Sponsored ads will cost you money, but they also guarantee a certain level of engagement. If you don’t have a big audience, guaranteed engagement comes at a premium. Just make sure you stick to a few rules:

Clearly define your target audience: If you’ve done the work on “positioning” your ebook, you’re already halfway there. Tools like Meta ads allow you to get specific about who sees them, from age/location to people who have expressed interest in similar ebooks.

Create multiple versions of your sponsored ads: Writing one ad is not the end of the line. Sure, you might get some engagement from it—after all, you’re paying. But you can boost the performance of your campaigns by A/B testing unique headlines and taglines. 

Offer incentives: Promotions, discounts, and contests can all make your ebook offer more interesting. These tactics are especially important when introducing yourself to your audience for the first time. If you’re unknown to your audience, you’ll need that initial spark.

Newsletters and email blasts: Eric R. Asher offered his readers a free novella to people who signed up for his newsletter. That was the goal: build a community of readers. Once they were signed up, he had a group of customers ready to buy his writing.

Good newsletter marketing doesn’t end with the email capture, either. Asher created automated campaigns to slowly introduce new subscribers to his writing:

It’s time to mix things up a bit! I hope you enjoyed “Days Gone Bad” and “Whispers of War,” but now it’s time to jump into a totally different world. “Steamborn” is a YA steampunk adventure…

With each pivot and explanation, Asher gave something away. Think of it like the sampler platters at the grocery store: you’re more likely to try something new if you get a piece of it for free.

Guest posting on other sites: Another strategy to discover your audience is to borrow someone else’s. You can do that by creating a free blog post and submitting it to popular blogs. The only payment you ask in return is a link to your website, where an ebook landing page awaits.

The key? Don’t be salesy. Create genuinely helpful posts with specific audiences in mind.

Danny Iny started a business called “Firepole Marketing,” for example. But it wasn’t until he wrote “38 Critical Books Every Blogger Needs to Read” for Copyblogger that he found his audience.

Use “link in profile tools” to convert: Once you’ve established an audience, you need a place to funnel your newfound social success. You can use a Link-in-profile from AWeber that makes it easy to create one link for your various ebook landing pages. Or simply send your new visitors to one ebook landing page and call it a day.

Online discussions, forums, and communities

Want more eyes on your ebook? Go where the people are.

And online, people are talking:

On Goodreads, a platform for sharing what you’re reading—and loving

On Reddit, a social media site full of distinct “subreddits” for specific topics and interests

On Quora, a forum for asking all of lives questions—and sharing your favorite responses

Notice something all three of these sites have in common: they’re big platforms for finding small niches.

The best way to market your book is to start with the people most interested in your topic. Would you rather sell 2 books to 10 relevant customers or 1 book to 100 people who couldn’t care less?

Chances are, those two sales you made to highly relevant customers are people who are going to love your work and recommend your ebook to others.

Join these sites and start joining in the discussions. You don’t have to sell your ebook at first—just build a reputation and some credible user history.

Over time, you can start creating valuable content and then throwing your ebook link into the mix.

Nurturing ebook leads with AWeber

Once you’ve used the tools and platforms above to get more eyes on your ebook’s landing page, it’s time to start nurturing.

What is nurturing? Here’s how we’ve explained it before:

Nurture emails are automated and generally tied to a lead magnet — something you give to people when they subscribe to your email list. Nurture emails include targeted content based on the lead magnet they downloaded. The goal is to encourage prospects to convert to customers.

You don’t have to make the sale right away. Not if you’re properly nurturing leads.

All you have to do is capture the lead.

Give away a small piece, like a sample of your ebook or a handy guide in the same field. This encourages sign-ups.

You can then create a series of automated emails introducing your ebook’s concept. Address how the ebook can help your customer’s pain points before you ask for the sale.

When you send potential customers the link, they should already be interested.

Even if a newsletter list is small, giving away a small “piece” can help to ensure that more leads and potential buyers are interested.

In the long run, you capture more interest this way than if you had simply asked for the sale upfront. And using a tool like AWeber makes it natural to build a “nurturing” campaign that unfolds logically:

Sell more ebooks with newsletter tools from AWeber

If you use all of the strategies above, you’ll nearly guarantee more people will come across your ebook—and become willing buyers.

But you still need a next step. 

Even if this first ebook isn’t as successful as you like, it’s still the first step in an important journey. So make sure you capture every customer’s email address so you can market future ebooks simply by asking for the sale. Sign up for AWeber to start building your list today! 

The post How to sell your ebook: From marketing and launching, to building an audience appeared first on AWeber.

Imagine your Etsy shop is thriving, sales are skyrocketing, and your loyal customer base hangs on every new product release. Behind the scenes, your store only requires a small amount of time each day, leaving plenty of time for your family and creative endeavors.

Sound far-fetched? Not anymore. Automation and AI have come a long way in the past year.

Crafting the perfect product is only part of what makes a successful Etsy store. The other part is good business management. But, SEO, marketing, research, and customer service require a contribution of time and expertise you may not have to give. And tasks like inventory tracking, shipping, and taxes require a level of accuracy that’s tough for any busy person to achieve.

Some days the responsibilities feel endless and can leave you overwhelmed and pressed for time.

What if there were a better way?

Now, you can grow your Etsy business quicker and more efficiently using popular Seller tools. Whether you need help choosing products, writing listings and marketing content, or putting your routine tasks on autopilot, there’s probably an Etsy tool that can help you get the job done.

A well-chosen stack of Etsy Seller tools can drive customers and boost sales in a big way. And the best part? Thanks to all the time you save with automation, you’ll also make it home in time for dinner!

In this article, we walk you through the top Etsy Seller tools on the market today. We’ll show you what each tool does, how it can help you, how much it costs, and what customers have to say about it. Find your way to the best tools quickly in our guide below.

Ready, set, automate? Let’s go!

Best Etsy email marketing tool

Best Etsy referral marketing tool

Best Etsy social media marketing tool

Best Etsy design tool

Best Etsy product research tool

Best Etsy SEO tool

Best Etsy inventory management tool

Best Etsy accounting and tax tool

Why tools matter to Esty Sellers

Building a good stack of Etsy Seller tools is like having five or ten expert assistants by your side working 24/7 to help your shop succeed. Suddenly, tasks that used to take hours to complete are finished in minutes. 

You’re able to execute critical functions like taxes and inventory with a speed and accuracy never before possible. 

You create full-blown marketing campaigns with a quality you never imagined yourself capable of — before it’s even time to break for lunch.

Etsy Seller tools can be a game-changer for any shop, but with all the choices available, how do you choose the best ones?

5 tips to help you choose the best Etsy Seller tools

Here are five tips to help you choose the best Etsy Seller tools for your business.

Automation, automation, automation! Look for tools that can automate repetitive tasks.

AI-powered tools will almost always give you an edge over those without AI. Don’t be shy about using them!

Look for tools that can grow with you. For example, tools with scaling fee structures or free starter plans are perfect for small Etsy stores.

Look for user-friendly tools that come with great training resources. A helpful customer support team is a huge bonus!

Read verified customer reviews. When possible, check out customer reviews on sites like Capterra or Trustpilot. Reputable, verified reviews can help you understand the strengths and limitations of a tool before you commit to using it.

Best Etsy Seller tools

Here are our picks for the top Etsy Seller tools to help you automate, market, and elevate your store and its products.

Best Etsy email marketing tool: AWeber

Wouldn’t it be nice to email market like a pro without any prior experience? Imagine creating well-written, gorgeous emails in minutes, then automating them in a way that allows your list to grow — and sell — on its own. 

If you’ve ever wished you could reach your sales goals quicker, AWeber may become your new best friend. 

As the only email marketing software showcased by Etsy, it fully integrates with your Etsy shop. That means you can set it and forget it with Etsy email automation that does most of the work for you.

Get your customers to buy again — even while you’re sleeping. Use the autopilot feature to effortlessly cross-sell, upsell, and follow up on abandoned carts for you.

Do words like segmentation, integration, and automation sound intimidating? No problem! 

Even email marketing newbies can get more sales on Etsy thanks to a complete video training library, email templates, and 24/7 customer solutions. Its built-in AI writer and Canva design tools mean you can create stunning, well-written emails in minutes. 

AWeber AI-assisted email composition tool

Here’s why you’ll love AWeber:

Provides autopilot and automation features specific to Etsy Sellers

Keeps you compliant with Etsy email marketing policies

Auto-syncs customers to your email list

Includes built-in AI writing features and Canva design tools

Auto-sends announcements when you add new products to your Etsy store

Automatically drives repeat sales with behavior-based, personalized messaging

“For a long time our team was on the hunt for a tool that would help us better communicate with our customers on Etsy – then we found AWeber! There are so many fantastic features that make email marketing that much simpler. From setting up landing pages, and email flows, to seeing all of our new subscribers that join daily, we have loved using AWeber!”

Abbey Hertzler

AWeber Pricing:

Free plan

Lite plan: starting at $12.50/month

Plus plan: starting at $20.00/month

Unlimited plan: $899/month

Ready to start driving more sales through email marketing? Sign up for a free AWeber account today!

Best Etsy referral marketing tool: ReferralCandy

Looking to boost sales, grow your customer base, and build customer loyalty? You can grow your Etsy shop through word-of-mouth marketing using a fully automated referral tool like ReferralCandy.

ReferralCandy dashboard

Why we like ReferralCandy:

Fully automated referral program

Customized reward system

Several promotional tools, including post-purchase popups, referral widgets, and referral links

Seamless Etsy integration

Easy integration with other apps like AWeber and Google Analytics

“What I like the most about ReferralCandy is that it makes the business grow while making the customers happy, and their friends too!”

Francesca A., Capterra

ReferralCandy Pricing: 

Free 14-day trial, 

Premium: $47/month + 3.5% commission fee

Plus: $239/month + 1.5% commission fee

Enterprise: Contact for pricing

Best Etsy social media marketing management tool: Outfy

Social media marketing can dramatically increase your Etsy Store visibility, leading to more sales and subscribers. But sticking to a regular posting schedule, creating quality content, and engaging with your audience can be a full-time job.

That’s where a good social media management tool comes in.

Outfy helps Etsy Sellers quickly create engaging posts, collages, videos, GIFs, and promos in minutes. Then, you can schedule them to auto-publish on specific days and times in the future.

Outfy promo example

We love Outfy because it’s designed to support Etsy Sellers with an autopilot mode. Integrate it with your Etsy Shop, and it can automatically select products for promotions! 

Why we like Outfy:

Integrates with Etsy

Puts your Etsy promotions on autopilot

Automates social media posts

Creates videos and other media in minutes

Lets you publish to Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest, TikTok, YouTube, and Twitter

Affordable and easy to use

“It’s a very nice application which helps me market my products on social media without the hassle. I’m definitely sticking with this one!.”

Nick Olsson Digital Design, Reputon

Outfy Pricing:

Free forever plan

Free 7-day trial

Starter plan: $15/month

Pro plan: $30/month

Ultimate plan: $52.50/month

Enterprise plan: $90/month

Best Etsy design tool: Canva

If creating professional graphic designs for your Etsy shop sounds like a challenge, you can breathe easy — Canva’s got you covered. 

High-quality visual design can make or break your business on Etsy. Most sellers use visuals like a storefront header, product videos, and social media content to promote their shop and products.

But hiring a graphic designer is pricey, and there’s no guarantee you’ll be happy with the results.

The good news is that you can create eye-catching, professional designs in minutes with Canva. On a budget? You’ll love the affordable pricing and its generous free plan. 

Canva Etsy shop banner examples

Why we like Canva:

Magic Studio AI tools let you create images and other media from text

Create videos, ads, social media visuals, and Etsy headers in minutes with AI or by choosing from thousands of prebuilt templates

Save your brand colors and instantly apply them to any design.

Affordable, easy to learn, and integrates with AWeber email marketing software

“I use Canva every day for designs and creativity. It’s online-based and provides high-quality assets to create presentation videos and website graphics. It’s so extensive that I can create a complete video with this tool including text-to-speech.”

Ngala Emmanuel, Capterra review

Canva pricing:

Free plan

CanvaPro plan: $14.99/month

Canva for Teams plan: $29.99/month

Best Etsy product research tool: Etsy Hunt

Want to give yourself an edge over Etsy’s 48 million products and 120,000 Etsy shops? A great product research tool can help you instantly discover what products are most likely to become winners. 

EtsyHunt is a dedicated Etsy product research tool that can help you pinpoint in-demand products for your niche. It’s a top choice for Etsy Sellers because it goes beyond what you’d expect in a product research tool.

EtsyHunt product research tool

Boost your chances of getting noticed by optimizing your shop and listings for its native search engine. 

EtsyHunt gives you access to historical, price, favorites, and review data to give you a behind-the-scenes peek at what’s selling on Etsy.

The free search engine optimization (SEO) keyword tool helps you choose the best keywords to use in your product descriptions. 

EtsyHunt can also help you write better listings by providing suggestions for titles, tags, and prices.

Why we like EtsyHunt:

Analyze multiple products at once

Receive automated alerts on the latest listings

Instantly research and optimize products, listings, photos, pricing, shipping costs, and more

Manage your Etsy reviews in real time

Optimize Etsy SEO with keyword research and data-based recommendations

“I like that it helps me improve my Etsy shop’s ranking and increase its visibility in the market. It helps me research and optimize Etsy SEO, Logo, Listings, Pricing, and more.”

Capterra review

EtsyHunt Pricing:

Free plan

Basic plan: $9.99/month

Pro plan: $19.99/month

Team plan: $79.99/month

Best Etsy SEO tool: ERank

Get your products in front of more shoppers with a well-rounded Etsy search engine optimization (SEO) tool like ERank.

ERank helps sellers get more views on Etsy. Its comprehensive features help you master all aspects of Etsy’s search engine, including listing optimizations and competitor analysis.

ERank keyword research dashboard

Why we like ERank:

Analyze your shop’s SEO and receive feedback on how to improve

Monitor your keyword rankings over time

Discover up-to-date information on top sellers, keywords, and print-on-demand sales

Track your competitors’ prices so you can make informed decisions when setting your own prices

“Erank is the sole reason I get all of my traffic. It’s a great tool. You just have to learn how to use it. YouTube helps“

Reddit user Shaynon17

ERank pricing:

Free plan

Basic plan: $5.99/month

Pro plan: $9.99/month

Expert plan: $29.99/month

Best Etsy inventory management tool: Craftybase

If you sell physical items on Etsy, you do more than create products. You also manage inventory, fulfill orders, and track shipments — all with the expectation of complete accuracy at every stage.

Want to spend more time creating and less time managing inventory? A good inventory management tool like Craftybase can help you get there.

Craftybase automates your inventory across all sales channels, including Etsy. It tracks your materials and product inventory with real-time data and cost of goods sold (COGS).

Craftybase inventory management software

Craftybased is designed for small-batch Etsy Sellers. Small batch manufacturers are businesses with a total annual revenue of less than $1,123,531 who sold less than 7,501 units in the prior year. 

Why we like Craftybase:

Real-time inventory tracking

Streamlined Revenue tracking

Raw materials monitoring with product “recipes”

Ability to record expenses and generate reports for bookkeeping and taxes

Connects with multiple online stores, including Etsy

“I couldn’t run my business without craftybase. I run a jewelry shop with thousands of orders per year. I’ve got over 200 skus with 70 variations each and CB makes it simple to create product recipes, manufactures, and adjust inventory.”

Lisa E., Capterra review

Craftybase pricing:

Free 14-day trial

Studio plan: $39/month

Indie plan: $79/month

Business plan: $119/month

Growth plan: contact for pricing

Best Etsy accounting and tax software: TaxJar and Quickbooks

Wouldn’t you love to hear the word “taxes” and think, “No problem!” A good accounting and tax tool can automate your sales tax process across multiple platforms. 

TaxJar automates tax compliance by collecting the correct amount of sales tax on every product you sell, then submitting your filings and payments for you.

With TaxJar, you’ll never experience tax anxiety. The correct tax is added to every sale you make. Record-keeping, filing, and payments are automatically handled for you. TaxJar ensures that your Etsy shop is compliant and that the correct sales tax is added to every purchase.

TaxJar AutoFile example

It only takes one click to integrate TaxJar with Quickbooks accounting software. Quickbooks is an easy-to-use (yet robust) bookkeeping software that lets you track all your business income and expenses.

Why we like TaxJar:

Seamlessly integrates with Etsy

Calculates your sales tax in real-time with over 99% accuracy

Automatically files and pays your store taxes to every state in which you’re registered

Provides comprehensive sales tax reports from all of your e-commerce channels

Provides resources and customer support 

Easily integrates with Quickbooks

“Calculating taxes for several states and countless municipalities is daunting, TaxJar made it easy.”

Tracy H., Capterra review

Pricing:

30-day free trial

Starter plan: $19+/month

Professional plan: $99+/month

Making the most of Etsy Seller tools

Running a profitable Etsy shop requires a balance of creativity and business skills. Whether creating unique products or managing marketing and inventory, successful sellers have a lot on their plate.  

With the right tools, though, you can succeed as both a creator and business manager.

In this guide, we explored some of the best Etsy Seller tools on the market. From keyword research to inventory management and marketing, they can help you reach a wider audience and generate higher profits while saving you a significant amount of time.

As you move forward with your Etsy shop, remember that it’s normal to feel overwhelmed at times, especially in the beginning. But investing your time into adopting tools that can automate tasks and advise your decisions leads to real value: the freedom to spend more time doing the things that matter most to you and an income that lets you enjoy your free time to the fullest.

The post The 8 best Etsy Seller tools to boost your sales and efficiency appeared first on AWeber.

I’m a big fan of the Gram–Instagram that is–and have been for a while. During the pandemic, my husband and I would find silly memes, stories, and posts that got us laughing like crazy–much needed distractions from the stress of unprecedented times. 

Things only got better on Instagram, IMO, with the introduction of Reels back in August 2020. A response to the video frenzy intensified by TikTok, Reels gave Instagram creators and businesses another way to express themselves in the app, another way to engage, entertain, and retain your audience.

Even now Instagram seems to prioritize Reels in its all-too-enigmatic algorithm, which means Reels are what really help boost your overall visibility and reach on the platform. 

I have started creating more Reels on AWeber’s Instagram account and have found this to be true: our Reels garner WAY more engagement and reach WAY more followers and non-followers than our static posts, carousels, and stories.

Check out the Instagram Reel we posted for Labor Day–one of our most popular Reels so far! 

How to get more views on Instagram reels

Over the past couple of months, I’ve been researching, experimenting, and learning how to get WAY more views and engagement on Instagram reels.

Creating Reels can be daunting–it’s certainly more stressful and farther outside of my comfort zone (why? Because I star in most of the Reels. That’s right, that’s me above) than sharing static photos. But seeing the tremendous awareness, loyalty, and affinity, makes it worth it.

Whether you are already creating Instagram Reels for your business or have yet to create your first, understanding how Instagram Reels algorithm can work in your favor will help you get more out of your Reels as you experiment, create, and share.

Create In Instagram, vs other apps

When I first started making Instagram Reels, I edited them in Canva, but as soon as I switched to editing them in Instagram, I saw a jump in views and engagement.

Our Instagram Engagement:  

See the peaks? Each one is from when we posted a Reel. 

It makes sense that Instagram would prefer that you create your content in-app, although I’ve noticed that there are some annoying disadvantages. For example, sometimes the in-app editor can be glitchy, and overall I just prefer to use my computer keyboard vs my phone. 

However, this is more of an issue for videos that require a lot of editing. Instagram is pretty convenient to use for single shot content, and is especially so for when you are lip-syncing to audio. 

It took me just a few minutes to film this lip syncing video in Instagram, and it got great engagement! 

Main takeaway? You will lose reach if you do not create your content in the Instagram app–so best to stick with it when you can.

Use trending audio 

The next time you scroll through Instagram Reels, look in the bottom left corner of your screen. Is there an upward arrow next to the track name? If so, you’ve found yourself some trending audio, or a sound clip that people are showing increasing interest in. These will be discovered more easily when used by creators.

After you have found a trending audio, tap on the track to see exactly how many times the audio has been used. It’s best to hop on a trending audio early–20,000 uses or less (the less the better)–and ride the momentum as it gains in popularity.

You can also follow social media marketers/managers/coaches on IG who find and share trending audio. Some are really good at identifying trending audio early! Here are a few accounts I’ve been using to find trending audio: @shannonmckinstrie, and @smallbusinessgrowthclub.

Hack: You can get the Instagram reels algorithm to show you more trending audio by scrolling through Reels quickly until you see the upward arrow–then stop, watch, and interact with those Reels. The IG algorithm will realize you want to see more Reels with trending audio.

Keep it simple! 

Creators and social media professionals say that the sweet spot for Reel length is only 5-7 seconds! Keep this in mind, and it will help you simplify your content and reduce the amount of time and effort you spend creating your Reels. 

A lot of social media coaches say that your next Reel is already in your camera roll. Find a good audio, write up a snappy hook and caption, and share. 

Don’t let me discourage you from creating longer form content though! Some audio and trends require longer, more produced videos (think the Wes Anderson trend from earlier this year), or you may have a high-value tutorial or message for your audience. These still have an important place in your social content, but sprinkle them here and there so you aren’t constantly bogged down creating longer content.

Show up daily and consistently

There are plenty of blog posts and articles out there that tell you the peak times to post your content. 

What is the best approach? 

Even seasoned social media marketing professionals will acknowledge that social media is largely chaos and posting content is a gamble. 

While there are good tips and tricks out there, the best way for you to figure out what time you should post your content is to relentlessly experiment, then look at the data. Instagram Insights will tell you when your audience is most active. Use that as your guide.

So, time to experiment! But marry your experimentation with consistency. Post and interact regularly–daily is best! This is where a social media content calendar will come in handy. 

Interact! Interact! Interact!

Instagram wants you to actively interact with your followers. Don’t just post and walk away! 

The more you interact, the more Instagram’s algorithm will make your content discoverable–and the more your followers (and potential customers) will feel like you are a person, not just some disinterested business. 

Make sure you reply to comments and messages in a timely manner as well!

Bye, bye, Hashtags. Hello, Keywords!

Wait, WHAT?! This was big news to me! 

Instagram CEO Adam Mosseri  apparently announced last year that hashtags are no longer an important factor in increasing discoverability and reach. Instead of throwing 8 to 12 hashtags in your captions–which is now considered spammy–start incorporating more descriptive SEO keywords into your posts.

You can keep using hashtags, just in case; just put them at the end of a very well thought-out and worded caption.

Now go create!

Not every Reel you create will hit the jackpot, but don’t let that discourage you! Keep showing up, and focus on creating simple, valuable content.

Happy Creating, friends! 

The post Boost Gram views: 6 tips to master the Instagram Reels algorithm appeared first on AWeber.

Ebooks have been around since the dawn of the digital age. 

But that doesn’t make them a relic of the past.

If anything, ebooks are getting hotter. Since 2011, ebook readers have risen to their highest levels: 30% report reading one in the past 12 months. And that’s higher than the rate of audiobook listeners (23%).

The largest category of readers? Those who read both physical and digital books.

And why not? Ebooks are convenient; you can read them anywhere. You can easily distribute them for all sorts of reasons, including:

Direct sales (offering an ebook for a discounted price compared to a hard copy book)

Lead magnets (using an ebook as a free reward for signing up for a newsletter)

Establishing thought leadership

Fulfilling your dream of becoming an author

But whatever your reason for creating an ebook, you won’t get off the ground until you know everything there is to know about ebooks. Especially if you know how to create an ebook for free.

The good news: you don’t have to be an expert writer.

You just need a step-by-step formula for brainstorming, drafting, and editing your ebook until you’ve polished it to a fine sheen.

In this post, let’s handle everything from the abstract (how do you come up with topics?) to the nuts and bolts of building an ebook that looks great on any modern device. Here’s what you’ll need to know about how to create an ebook.

Writing the ebook: ideas, brainstorming, and drafting

It all starts with an idea.

In Eric R. Asher’s case, he was a talented suspense and urban fantasy author. He’d even found representation with a literary agent.

But Asher had one problem. His most recent work was, according to his agent, “unpublishable.”

In this day and age, the word “unpublishable” has never been so subjective. Asher knew that. So Asher turned to Amazon and the world of self-publishing.

Using email marketing with AWeber, Asher created an email list, offering a free book download for new subscribers.

Subsequent emails (sent automatically through AWeber) further introduce his readers to his other works.

It worked so well, Asher started running all sorts of his book promotions through AWeber.

The key all comes back to the idea behind it. Asher had a pre-vetted match between his established audience and the contents of his latest ebook.

Without a similar match, you can’t be sure that your ebook will resonate with your audience. So before you put the pen to the pad—or, in this case, the keyboard to the desk—you need an ideal match between what your audience wants to hear and what you’re saying.

Generating ideas for your ebook

Step one: find your niche

Your niche is the specific topic or audience you want to work with. For Asher, it was a literary niche: suspenseful urban fantasy. 

That’s a niche with specific appeal to a community of readers. If Asher had sold his book as generically “exciting,” there’d be no telling who the intended audience was. 

But if you don’t have an established audience, you’ll need some ways to identify your best niche.

Here are a few things to keep in mind as you select the right ebook audience you want to work with:

Avoid a generalized audience. “Fitness,” for example, is more of a market than a niche. You have to find your specific appeal within the fitness world to stand out. For AWeber customer Alycia from Zumba with Alycia, that means specific notes on making the most out of Zumba classes.

Specific, but not obscure. What if Alycia had niched her audience down even further? “Zumba for women aged 25-34, who earn between $50,000 and $100,000 per year, and live in the northeast” might be specific—but unnecessarily so. If you start shooing away potential ebook readers, you might be getting too obscure.

Find the problem you want to solve. Take the example of Paula Rizzo. She was struggling to find items to fill her apartment, so she decided to get proactive in organizing her priorities. The result was Listful Thinking, a helpful book for people who have too much on their plate.

Step two: brainstorm niche-relevant ideas

Brainstorming can be more than sitting in a chair and thinking. Ideally, it will be far more than that.

There are now AI and SEO tools to speed your brainstorming sessions along, including:

ChatGPT: you fill in a simple prompt and ask for ideas, and it spits a list right back at you. Even if you dismiss most of the ideas, there’s a chance one or two will light a spark.

Ahrefs: Use keyword and SEO tools like Ahrefs to identify the top trends in your niche, giving you ideas for ebooks your audience is already searching for.

Don’t rely on AI or SEO tools. But do put them to work. They’ll help you turn vague hunches about what kind of topic might work best for you…and turn them into definitive ideas with structure.

What if you’re still struggling to come up with ideas?

Start with a big concept: maybe you want to help people master their finances. You just don’t have your ebook’s particular “hook” yet.

You can also use strategies like mind mapping to work from a big topic, and then branch off into smaller topics in which you have some expertise. 

Or you can run searches in your own social media posts. On X (formally Twitter), go to search-advanced and look at your highest-performing tweets about your favorite subjects. 

Now read through the comments. What are the common pain points people are bringing up? Or which topics seem to resonate the most with your social media audience?

Follow those breadcrumbs. 

There’s a good chance an ebook topic is waiting at the end of them.

Building the ebook’s content

Once you know what your ebook is about, it’s time to fill it with engaging content. 

The trick is coming up with angles that people haven’t heard before.

Your first step? Interview people. Look for specific stories and case studies.

Maybe you already know people in your niche who can offer unique insights. But this isn’t a requirement. You can also run social media searches for topics in your niche and ask people if you can interview them.

Next, assemble your research. 

Look through the existing notes, articles, and books you’ve already drawn inspiration from. Start bookmarking and highlighting the best points. Save the most salient ones into a physical folder or a Google Doc.

This is similar to the Ryan Holiday note-taking method.

Holiday, a prolific nonfiction author, says he did research for three New York Times bestsellers in his “spare time.”

One strategy he uses is the “common place book.” This is a book of quotes, sentences, stories, and other tidbits he can draw upon for material.

He organizes these tidbits by themes and ideas. Whenever he needs an example or an insight, he returns to his “common place book.”

Finally, you can look for stories. 

In “Atomic Habits,” the bestselling book by James Clear, he starts most chapters with a demonstrative example of the principle he’s about to explain.

For instance, he opens the book with an anecdote about the successful habits of the British cycling team in the 2000s.

Don’t think you have to be credible as an authority in your niche to get your ideas across.

Draw upon other sources as the demonstration of your key ideas. Organize your thoughts by these key ideas, then let the storytelling approach unveil and unwrap each idea with its own unique flavor.

Deciding what your ebook will look like

Once you’ve started research, you’ll start to get a sense of the material you’re working with.

Now it’s time to figure out what form that material will take.

What will your ebook look like? 

Will it have lots of visuals, including charts, graphs, and pictures? Or do you want to rely on text and storytelling?

Will you design an ebook based on an ebook template, or will you generate a template as you go?

Or maybe you have no idea.

If your answer was “C) I have no idea,” don’t worry. You can draw upon some existing templates to fit the ebook’s structure to the research you’re assembling.

Resource compilations, for example, can be fun “listicle”-style ebooks. Maybe you’ll use a simple format like a unique tool or tip for each page. 

Common titles might be “XYZ Best Practices for Making Your First Sale” or “5 Tips for a Beginner Weightlifting Routine.”

Story-rich ebooks, or even fiction, are simple enough. Your ebook should emphasize basic readability for large swaths of text and dialogue.

Some titles that might work? Symbolic phrases you pull from the book can hint at a key event in the story. 

How-tos and tutorials should feature easily accessible, step-by-step guides. These often come packed with illustrations, which makes proper formatting the emphasis here.

Common titles include “What You Need to Know About [Niche].” Or you can get creative, as Mark Manson did with his book “The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F***.”

Interviews and case studies can include a mix of illustrations, graphics, and storytelling. You may even adopt a magazine-like approach of including visuals alongside the examples.

You can use a symbolic phrase here, or create one that summarizes your approach. “Atomic Habits,” for example, uses the “atomic” metaphor to hint at small-but-powerful changes, as the book explains.

Draft the ebook with the format in mind

Does it sound like putting the cart before the horse?

That’s okay. Drafting the ebook with the format already in mind could save you a lot of unnecessary headaches.

For example, if you know you’ll use a listicle style for a lead magnet ebook, your research and drafting should reflect that.

It’s far less efficient to draft your ebook first, and then decide its overall shape during editing.

To make the drafting process as effortless as possible, stick to these basic steps.

Build an outline

Using the research you’ve conducted, you should have arrived at a few themes. Here are a few potential ways to organize them into a firm plan:

What ideas are strong enough to have their own sections? Start categorizing your research by these themes. These could be individual chapters, or even entire sections.

Once you have a few of those, what order makes sense? If you have a listicle-style ebook on your hands, you may have to include some tips before others for context. Some tips may require building on others; provide the foundational tips first.

If all else fails, start with the most compelling stories and case studies. Maybe your ebook is a loose collection of insights. Start with the insights you believe will “wow” your readers the most.

Write!

An empty page. A blinking cursor. 

There’s no more avoiding it: it’s drafting time.

If you’re learning how to create an ebook to sell to your audience, you’re going to need original content. You’re going to need an ebook worth the price of admission.

But drafting doesn’t have to be the scariest part of the process. Here are a few tips for getting the writing done as efficiently and painlessly as possible:

Work on the cloud. Failing that, regularly back up your progress. Google Docs, for example, automatically saves for you. Other tools, like Scrivener or Reedsy book editor, can be beneficial to people who struggle to stay organized.

Work in milestones to stay motivated. If your goal word count is 25,000, finishing a 1,000-word section won’t be very motivating. Give yourself weekly or even daily milestones to keep up the feeling of steady progress.

Don’t let perfectionism slow you down. As author Jodi Picault said: “you can’t edit a blank page.” Even if something strikes you as “off,” simply make a note to edit it later.

If that still proves overwhelming, you can always outsource the drafting.

But maybe you don’t want to know how to create an ebook for free; you just want to get it published.

Hire freelance writers on Upwork or Fiverr to complete some—or even all—of your ebook. Or experiment with tools like ChatGPT for drafting suggestions.

When finished, lean on tools like Grammarly (AI edits and suggestions) or Hemingway (readability test). 

Still not satisfied with your ebook? You can also subcontract an editor to get an extra pair of eyes on your draft.

Publishing your ebook: design, publishing, and marketing

You’ve got the words down. Now you have a powerful resource ready to distribute to the masses. Just one little hiccup:

No one’s going to read it if they never hear about it.

And even when your audience hears about your ebook, problems accessing the file can get in the way. 

Your ebook should be easy to find, easy to digest in the customer’s preferred medium, and easy to read once downloaded.

Let’s make sure you’ve got all your bases covered.

How to get a great ebook cover

We all know we shouldn’t judge a book by its cover. Yet it’s precisely what readers do.

Your ebook isn’t necessarily a tangible book your customers can hold in their hands, but a good cover will convey professionalism and value. If you’re selling an ebook—or even if you want to use it as a lead magnet—your cover should reflect the quality content it contains.

Yet you don’t have to be a professional designer, either. Here are a few ways you can get your ebook’s cover up to snuff:

Outsource it, using platforms like Upwork or Fiverr. If you want to see multiple iterations, 99Designs lets you post a project and review designers’ entries first.

Defer to AI. Sign up for Midjourney, and AI can give you multiple iterations of ebook covers for a monthly subscription fee. You can also choose from four iterations to help the AI zero in on your favorite concepts.

Use templates. Canva’s online ebook maker features pre-existing templates. Experiment with fonts, colors, and illustration elements to build the ebook cover yourself, for free.

Use DIY Book Covers, which includes ebook templates that are so easy, you simply select them and edit the text to insert your title.

Prepping the ebook for publishing

Using the tools above, you can craft a stellar ebook cover without being a professional designer.

But the inside of the book can get a little tricky.

The inside of the ebook should look clean, professional, and readable. And that’s not hard to achieve these days.

What is hard to achieve? An ebook that looks equally beautiful and readable no matter what e-reader the customer is using.

Fortunately, you can defer to these publishing tools to keep the style consistent:

Calibre is an open-source ebook publishing tool. Use it to convert your Word and PDF files into ebook-ready formats, like EPUB or MOBI. (Note: e-readers like the Amazon Kindle work with .mobi files.)

Sigil is an ebook editor you can use to publish directly to the EPUB format. As with Calibre, you can import text documents to convert to ebooks.

Reedsy lets you write within the software, then save directly to PDF or EPUB. It also includes a writer and reader community for distributing your ebook once it’s ready.

At this point, you’ll also need a Table of Contents (TOC).

If using one of the tools above, you can create the TOC with hyperlinks directly in a word processor like Word or Google Docs. 

To keep it as easy as possible, use consistent header styles for chapter titles. For example, in Google Docs, maybe your chapter titles are “H2.” Then simply publish to the new format with those tools, and they’ll preserve your links.

TOCs are especially useful for readers with specific pain points. If they’re downloading your ebook as a lead magnet, they might use the TOC to zoom right to the section that addresses what they’re going through.

How to create an ebook in Canva

Earlier on, we mentioned Canva as a resource for building your ebook cover.

But it turns out you can do it all in Canva.

Cover pages, attractive color schemes, selecting typography, adding visual elements—it’s all here. There’s an entire section in Canva to steer you through the steps involved. 

Think of it as ebook design for dummies. 

These templates are useful because Canva lets you copy/paste your content directly. You can also choose from a handful of pre-designed graphics to spruce up each chapter heading.

As you work, Canva will automatically save your progress.

Once you’ve figured out how to create an ebook in Canva, download the file in the appropriate format, directly from the platform. There’s nothing to pay to Canva unless you use premium elements features. But those are luxuries, not necessities.

Reviewing your ebook and prepping for publishing

Download.

Once you click that button, you’ll be excited. You will be tempted to share your masterpiece with the world. 

So here’s the hardest step: sleep on it.

No matter how hard you edit, there are going to be errors. And they’ll be harder to fix after you publish it.

Send your ebook to a few loyal readers, or family and friends. See if they can spot any obvious mistakes. Solicit their feedback, then make any last-minute changes to the draft itself.

And once you’ve used tools like Canva or Calibre to download your ebook in a new format, give it a glance. Reading it in a new format will give you a fresh perspective.

Any obvious errors? Glaring mistakes? Additional context you need to throw in at the last minute?

Now’s your last chance.

Create an ebook people will love

From picking a niche and idea generation to polishing your last file to a fine, shimmering gleam, building your first ebook will sound like training for a marathon.

But don’t fret! There are great free tools, from ChatGPT to Canva, to help you along the way. 

And once you’re done, you’re done. You’ll have an ebook you can use to drive email signups or sell directly. 

Plug it into AWeber as your lead magnet and watch as your newsletter grows. You’ll never have to lift another finger as the ebook—and your newsletter software—does the rest of the work.

But if you want to make money off it, there’s just one more step. Learn how to sell your ebook to reap the benefits of what you’ve just accomplished. 

The post How to create an ebook: tips, strategies, and free tools appeared first on AWeber.

Growing your newsletter audience can be a bit like trying to find your way in a maze. It’s not always easy to get your awesome content in front of the right people. You pour your heart and soul into crafting the perfect newsletter, but sometimes it feels like it’s disappearing into a black hole. Ever experienced that frustration? Well you’re not alone!

Getting people to discover your newsletter can be a real challenge. Imagine having a great story to tell, but no one is around to listen. That’s a tough spot for creators, right? 

But there’s a way to guide more readers to your newsletter, and it starts with sharing your creation in newsletter directories. These directories help readers who are looking for content you have to offer, find it in a convenient place. 

To help you grow your subscribers we’ve put together a list of newsletter directories you can add your newsletter to – for free.

But first, let’s start off with exactly what newsletter directories are and why should you use them…

What are newsletter directories?

Newsletter directories are organized platforms or collections where readers can easily find newsletters based on their interests. These directories categorize and list newsletters, making it simpler for people to discover and explore content they like.

Benefits of a newsletter directory

Submitting your newsletter to a newsletter directory offers several advantages:

1 – Increased visibility: Your newsletter becomes more discoverable to a wider audience as directories attract readers looking for content in specific niches.

2 – Targeted audience reach: Directories categorize newsletters by topics, helping you reach a more relevant and interested audience.

3 – Enhanced credibility: Being listed in reputable directories adds credibility to your newsletter, as readers trust curated platforms.

4 – Improved SEO: Backlinks from directory listings can enhance your newsletter’s search engine ranking, driving more organic traffic to your content.

5 – Cross-promotion oOpportunities: Directories often promote listed newsletters through social media and other channels, exposing your content to a broader audience.

6 – Networking and collaboration: Being part of a directory can connect you with other newsletter creators, fostering potential collaborations and partnerships.

List of newsletter directories

Now, let’s get to the good stuff! We’ve done the research and gathered a bunch of fantastic newsletter directories. 

These are the go-to spots to increase your newsletter signups and connect with your ideal readers. Without any delay, let’s introduce you to these game-changers for your newsletter. They’re your ticket to growing your audience and attracting more enthusiastic readers.

Duuce

Where to submit your newsletter: duuce.com/directory

Find Your Newsletter

Where to submit your newsletter: findnewsletters.com/submit/ 

InboxReads

Where to submit your newsletter: inboxreads.co/submit 

LetterHunt

Where to submit your newsletter:  letterhunt.co/

LetterList

Where to submit your newsletter: letterlist.com/submit/ 

Newsletters.co

Where to submit your newsletter:  newsletters.co/add-your-newsletter/ 

Newsletters Directory

Where to submit your newsletter: newslettersdirectory.com/add-newsletter/ 

Newsletter Junkie

Where to submit your newsletter: newsletterjunkie.com/

Newsletterest

Where to submit your newsletter:  newsletterest.com/suggest 

Rad Letters

Where to submit your newsletter:  radletters.com/add-newsletter 

The Sample

Where to submit your newsletter: thesample.ai/submit/

Slick Inbox

Where to submit your newsletter: slickinbox.com/newsletters/submit 

StackLetter

Where to submit your newsletter: stackletter.com/submit 

Stoop

Where to submit your newsletter: stoopinbox.com/publisher-contact 

Substats

Where to submit your newsletter: substats.com/add-newsletter 

Thanks for Subscribing

Where to submit your newsletter: thanksforsubscribing.app/submit-your-newsletter/ 

Get it to your audience

When it comes to growing your newsletter subscribers you don’t want to rely on a single strategy. Your ideal audience can be found anywhere. Here are a few other ways you can gain new subscribers:

Ask your social media followers to sign up for your newsletter

Promoting a lead magnet

Improving your sign up forms

Now it’s time to grow your audience and make sure your fantastic newsletter content gets the attention it truly deserves. 

The post Newsletter directories – Your key to increasing newsletter signups appeared first on AWeber.