It’s easy to tell when there’s a push to propel a book to a number one spot on Amazon and Barnes and Noble. Your email in box floods with free offers from any marketer who’s participating.
To spike high rise sales, the formula calls for participation from dozens of marketers who agree to promote the book to their email list or blog audience on a certain day.
In order to be featured as one of the promotion partners each marketer submits an image, a link to the product and a description. This in itself is a great way to get free visibility.
After you buy the book, you can collect all of the “freebies.” But, in exchange for the free item – usually a .pdf or mp3 download – you often have to enter your name and email address. That puts you on the giver’s emailing marketing list. Seems fair, doesn’t it? An email for a report or how-to audio.
As a marketer, the prospect of being on a list that goes out to 2 million or more people is alluring. When I had the chance to participate in one of these book promos, I jumped on it. Dreaming about adding hundreds of names to a list overnight is heady.
But, it’s just that – a dream. Almost every “lead” that came in unsubscribed. Immediately. These people have no interest in a relationship, only collecting products. And that’s okay. Why send out emails to people who will never, ever open them?
Today I updated a page from one of these offers. Noticing that I’d “attracted” a few more grab and runners, I changed the offer page to redirect them to my site and my blog. Now, if they’re really interested they can still reach me and isn’t the prospect of 300 free articles better than one report? I think so.
What do you think?
Contact Barbara about advertising, a creative project or a speaking opportunity.
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11 thoughts on “Spiky Book Sales Publicity: Do Email Marketing Leads Stick?”
I despise these Amazon and B&N campaigns.
Back when I didn’t know any better, I’d gladly give away my valuable product as a bonus, but I refused to do special mailings to my list. Why? Because my list of 40,000+ trusts me. And one book title will appeal to such a small slice of those people, anyway, that I can’t justify pestering the rest of them.
Today, I neither give away the product nor email to the list. So authors, please leave me alone.
These campaigns are like stuffing the ballot box. They’re no reflection of the actual popularity of a book.
I wish authors would stop wasting time on this and spend it instead doing keyword research, then blogging, writing articles, submitting to content-sharing social media sites, creating videos about their books and posting them to YouTube—the types of things that pay off weeks, months and even years later.
I’ve heard about these on a few other lists, but have never been a part of the Amazon “best seller campaign.” It seems to make sense, but I’m not a big fan of email marketing myself. However, from what I hear they do work.
Joan – you make some excellent points. As a Publicity Hound fan, I appreciate your selective endorsements. Your author publicity suggestions line up with what I think of as a long-term strategy, which separates serious authors from one-hit wannabes.
Newbie – these campaigns do work to spike sales, but the success and ranking tends to fade away within days, if not hours. I have a problem with people who claim to be best-selling authors because of an email campaign.
Warren: Appreciate the counter perspective. My experience comes through someone else’s campaigns, not yours.
If there’s a way to make a book a best-seller, you’re the guy to see. That’s why I asked for your response.
From a marketing perspective, I’d like to see more instruction from the promotion manager as far as examples of what to offer along with guidance on whether or not registration should be required in exchange for the giveaway.
From a PR perspective, if you’re going for free publicity and you don’t care about new subscribers, this is as you say, “your chance to shine.” Being seen alongside big names is a boost up for beginners.
Also posted on Warren’s blog.