How to Best Boost Book Sales with Powerful Email Marketing - BM382

Narrator [00:00:07]:
 
 If you're an author or plan to be one get excited because this podcast is for you. Book Marketing Mentors is the only podcast dedicated to helping you successfully market and sell your book. If you're ready for empowering conversations with successful marketing mentorss, then grab a coffee or tea and listen to your host, international best-selling author Susan Friedmann.
 
 Susan Friedmann [00:00:31]:
 
 Welcome to Book Marketing Mentors, the weekly podcast where you learn proven strategies, tools, ideas, and tips from the masters. Every week, introduce you to a marketing master who will share their expertise to help you market and sell more books.
 
 Today, my special guest is Matt Treacey, Matt is an international sought-after email marketing consultant who's helped some of the biggest business names in the world. What sets him apart? Experts like NirEyal, Perry Marshall, and Michael Bungay
 Stanier. who have endorsed him for his scientific background and proven strategies in creating growth-oriented email marketing systems.
 His best-selling book, "Natural Orders: Email Marketing Automation Strategy for Small Business" is your key to developing a prosperous and profitable email marketing database inspired by natural systems. With an engaging and thought-provoking writing and speaking style, Matt inspires businesses to embrace interdisciplinary approaches for unprecedented growth.
 
 Matt, it's an absolute pleasure to welcome you to the show, and thank you for being this week's guest expert and mentor.
 
 Matt Treacey [00:01:52]:
 
 Thank you very much, Susan. A pleasure to be here. I'm not sure how inspiring my talking would be today, but I'll try my best to move up to that bio
 
 Susan Friedmann [00:02:00]:
 
 I'm sure you'll be great. And by the way, listeners, just to let you know, Matt is with us all the way from Sydney, Australia. And it's very early in the morning for him today. And so I'm very grateful that you got up and you're ready and just -- will obsess to give us a wonderful podcast interview. So, Matt, let's dig in and talk about email marketing because that's something that I think some people think that it's dead and that social media has taken its place. Obviously, I don't think that's the case, but give us a case for email marketing.
 
 Matt Treacey [00:02:43]:
 
 I really think email is probably the most overlooked marketing channel. It's been around for a while, and I think that more than anything attested is how useful it is. Right? Number 1, it's the highest engagement channel by far. If you compare that to back in 2012, people were promoting the idea that your average Facebook post is only getting around 15% reach. You take that to today and your average Facebook post by comparison is only getting like 5.2% of your audience. you've got a hundred people on Facebook, around five people are gonna see your post on average. You compare that to email where the industry wide average open rate is something like 14%, which is terrible, by the way. That's significantly better than anything you'll get on most other social media platforms. And, look, with email, you really wanna be aiming for about 14%.
 
 Like, if you've got an engaged list, it's probably gonna be somewhere up around 30 or 40% for each email you sent. So just in terms of engagement, it's the best channel out there by far, but not only that, it gives you direct access to your audience. just using the Facebook or Instagram example again, you can have a large group of users on Facebook or Instagram. But you don't own that audience. You're not taking your offers direct to market. When you're on one of these other platforms, you're susceptible to the aptly named platform risk algorithm changes, and policy updates. In some cases, even anti-competitive practices, as we've seen with Amazon, when you own your email list, you own your data, you own your audience, and it cannot be taken away from you. That's a big thing about email. Yeah. I absolutely love that you said that because that is so true. The fact that you own that list, I mean, it's yours.
 
 Susan Friedmann [00:04:26]:
 
 And Facebook could go away tomorrow. LinkedIn can go away tomorrow. All the social media platforms can just dissolve into nothing, but yet you have your list. So that's gold dust Let me ask you. So many of our listeners don't actually have a list.
 
 Matt Treacey [00:04:46]:
 
 it's like How do we start one? That's often a question that I get. If somebody came to you with that question, how would you answer it? My answer for how to start an email list when you don't have one is to, firstly, get a traffic source. These channels that we're talking about, Facebook or Instagram or wherever else you're posting, getting traffic from, that's an essential first step. You always have to be getting traffic from somewhere But what I say to do is think of that traffic as being directed into growing your email list. So the place people will typically send their traffic when they're posting to social media is back to their website, right? Once the traffic gets to their website, They're not really capturing it in the most effective way.
 
 I typically say this to people who just have a little bit of a shift in your thinking about the purpose of your website. from an email marketing perspective, the most important metric on your website isn't your engagement rate. It isn't how many pages they view isn't the bounce rate. It's something that I call traffic to subscriber conversion TSC. So it's literally the percentage of people who come to your website that end up as email subscribers from my perspective I'm always thinking about optimizing the user journey, and the user experience on your website for becoming an email subscriber. And look, essentially, that means not spamming people with pop-ups, not doing it in a really aggressive over-the-top way, but doing it in a way that When someone comes onto your ecosystem, your website, they're immediately met with value. And for a reason, to give you their email address so that you can continue that conversation with them later. There's a lot of different ways we could do this.
 
 Susan Friedmann [00:06:36]:
 
 What are some of the examples of ways in which they can give value? I mean, first of all, obviously being able to capture a name and an email address, which these days, you've gotta offer something that is very worthwhile in order for someone to feel that they want to give you that because there's so much spamming going on. What do you feel coming from being an expert here?
 What are some of the really valuable things people can offer potential subscribers?
 
 Matt Treacey [00:07:09]:
 
 You hit the nail on the head. the pdf of the top 10 hot tips to actualize that, that's not gonna cut it anymore. And for good reason, people sign up for a lot of things these days, and they don't want to just have their inbox spammed to death. Right? And I think that's perfectly reasonable. I think the best things to convert are things that take your content that you've been posting about on medium or social or even the content from your book and then gives the person who's on your site a way to implement your advice in a way that they wouldn't have been able to otherwise. So I know that you had Alex strathie on your podcast recently.
 
 Susan Friedmann [00:07:51]:
 
 Yes. Alec was wonderful in terms of talking about Amazon ads?
 
 Matt Treacey [00:07:57]:
 
 He gave an example of the one-page marketing plan, and I thought, wow, that's actually just such a perfect example of what a really strong email opt-in looks like. That book, the one-page email marketing plan, it's all about how to, by the time you finish reading that book, that's you'll have this one patching or marketing plan. The email opting for that book is a template for that marketing plan, right? That's a perfect example. So it's something that allows you to take the advice from the content that you've read on one of these other platforms or your own book and then implement it in a way that they wouldn't have been able to otherwise So it's stuff like tools, calculators, templates. I think that stuff tends to have the best conversion, and that's the way that you should be thinking about getting people on your email list.
 
 Susan Friedmann [00:08:40]:
 
 Now once they're on your list, how often should you be contacting them? because I think that's a fear that people are like, what is too much? You know, what is? I'm bothering them. They're going to unsubscribe. What is a rule of thumb in terms of a number of times to make that engagement?
 
 Matt Treacey [00:09:02]:
 
 The answer for that, unfortunately, is it depends. It does depend on the industry you're in, and the type of business that you're running. But for the case of a nonfiction author, the sometimes contrarian advice that I'll give is "less can be more." It really depends, especially in the early stages. When someone comes on your list, the last thing you wanna do is be bombarding them every day with message after message, The only case where you might do something like that if it's a really burning red hot problem that needs to be solved right away, I say in general, less is more. But what you want to be doing is communicating with your audience in a way that always respects a relationship. So it's a value first the minute they come onto the website and you're providing extra value from the content that you've given them on other platforms. And then when they get onto your email list, you wanna double down on that. You wanna give them value again, again, and again.
 
 The way I sometimes say to think about doing this is every time you send an email, educate, inspire, entertain, you're doing one of those three things every time you send out an email, then you can never go wrong. Educate in Buyer and or entertain or all 3. Well, if you can do it. Yeah. Yes. There's so much value in every email. Right? if you just make that shift in your thinking, you won't have problems with your open rates or your clicks or your unsubscribes. And that's the biggest problem that people typically fall into when they're just getting started with email. So their engagement and their deliverability.
 
 Susan Friedmann [00:10:34]:
 
 But even getting to the point where somebody's going to click to open. I mean, there are so many articles and books written about the headline. Talk to us about that. What goes in that subject matter that is going to entice me to open an email?
 
 Matt Treacey [00:10:55]:
 
 So we're getting into copywriting stuff now. And, look, it's still fundamentally goes back to this idea of providing value all the time. The way I sometimes recommend people go about doing this in particular is using a framework called the 5 stages of awareness. and it's from a classic book called breakthrough advertising bug on named Eugene Schwartz. He breaks down your email list or it's from advertising originally, but it works perfectly at email into the level of awareness that the person on your email list has and then tailoring your communication for those 5 stages of awareness just to run through them quickly. So I think it's important is you start off completely unaware. That's not gonna be someone on issues on your email list, and the next stage is problem awareness.
 So they're aware that they have a problem. but they don't know exactly what that problem is. The next stage is solution-aware. They know that there's a solution to that problem, but they don't know what the solution is yet. The next stage is product-aware. They're aware there's a product that can help them solve the problem that they came onto your email list to deal with originally.
 And then finally, most aware, which is like sales objection handling. If you can find a way to slot your email subscribers, into each of those five stages of awareness if you can segment them to use a buzzword so that you're sending people in those 5 different stages, the right type of message at the right time, then you're going to be sending value all the time. And that's gonna determine what type of subject line you send.
 So just an example subject line from each one in a problem where stage when someone is more likely to join your email list, the subject line might be something like how to know you're dealing with x problem, right? Whereas someone in the solution-aware stage, the subject line might be something like 5 ways to solve y. for example. You know what I mean? With subject lines and copy, it's all about meeting the prospect where they are. at the right time to use another buzzword personalization. This is what it's all about. It's about timing and relevance. The better timing and the more relevant situation.
 And the subject line is the better success you're gonna have in terms of open rights and clicks and relevance and value.
 
 Susan Friedmann [00:13:16]:
 
 When you talk about personalization, does that mean putting somebody's name in the actual subject line, "Susan, here are five ways to do x."
 
 Matt Treacey [00:13:27]:
 
 I'm so glad you said that. No. That can work a little bit, but honestly, I don't even bother personalizing the name. It doesn't matter. Like, for me, a personalized email is really good timing, and it's a really relevant difference between relevance and value, the difference between spam is this timing and relevance, right, a well-designed solution to a problem your reader doesn't know about, that has zero value, right? A 15% discount on an irrelevant product is spam. That is the difference between a spam email and a valuable email. In general, poor timing is the best way to guarantee poor sales. To answer your question, Susan, no personalization isn't just putting someone's first name into the beginning of the email. It's about making sure that the message you send is sent with the correct timing and that the message that they're receiving is highly relevant to them. If you do those 2 things, it's going to be a personalized message. All the other stuff is kind of besides the point. What I'm getting from this, and feel free to correct me on this, but, you know, you talked about these 5 stages.
 
 Susan Friedmann [00:14:33]:
 
 which I love, and I love Eugene Schwartz's work, is that it's like you've got your list segmented, maybe, into 5 different awareness zones. Would you be putting people into those different segments so that you can send something that would be relevant to them because you don't necessarily know, do you, which stage they're at?
 
 Matt Treacey [00:14:59]:
 
 help me with that. Absolutely. So when someone comes onto your list, they're more than likely going to be other problem or solution aware, especially for someone who's a nonfiction author and has written a book. I say start the conversation from there.
 
 Susan Friedmann [00:15:14]:
 
 And you generally can't go wrong. You don't necessarily have to segment them at that point. For instance, I segment my audience into people who are Aviva publishing authors and then people who I email with the podcast. Maybe I've done another campaign, and they've responded to another campaign. then I might tag them with that.
 
 Matt Treacey [00:15:40]:
 
 Is that the way to do it? I generally break down the development of your email strategy into 3 stages. So the first stage is what we've just spoken about, and it's all about setting really strong foundations for your engagement. your open rates, your clicks, and making sure you're on subscribe below. That framework that I just spoke about, can be a really good place to start to make sure that you're sending the right mess just to the right people. But what you wanna do from there is to get a little bit more sophisticated with your segmentation, which is exactly what you're talking about. So this is the 2nd stage that we're moving into now.
 There's kind of like you can think of it in terms of, like, vertical, horizontal segmentation, right? Whereas this first thing that I spoke about those stages of awareness, it's kind of horizontal. So it's like your subscriber journey. You're progressing with the development. of that subscriber into a buyer slowly, whereas the other axis of segmentation is the things that you've spoken about. So what actual group that person is in? What are the characteristics of that person? What is their avatar? What are their interests?
 There are actually ways that you can uncover that naturally using your email strategy. This goes into a little bit more nitty gritty, but it's also relevant for authors. So One way that you can do this, I'm sure everyone who's listening has heard of abandonment sequence before. If not, it's something that's used in email marketing, especially for e-commerce.
 So I'm sure everyone listening has had the experience before where they buy something online, put it in their shopping cart, and then decide not to buy it. And then a day later, a week later, they receive an email from that store saying, Hey, you've left something in your cart, right? This is an abandonment sequence. And you're probably thinking, okay. Well, I'm an author.
 I'm not gonna set up card abandonment off my side. And that's exactly right. You don't set it up, but the mechanism behind an abandonment sequence is really powerful. And it leads back into this whole conversation of timing and relevance. reason these card abandonment sequences work so well is because they have really good timing and they're highly relevant emails They're about a product that you chose to put in your card sent a couple of days later after you put in your card to remind you to buy it. They are wise off the charts because of this. But you don't have to send emails with these sequences. What you can do is you can set up abandonment sequences at key stages that actually gather data about how people are interacting with your website. And you can use this data to add tags to people and sort them into these vertical segmentation buckets just as you've spoken about. An example of this might be you are sending emails out to your list, and you've sent 5 different emails in the last 3 weeks. And each one goes to a different article that's on your website, right?
 And there are 2 different categories on your website for types of articles. So category x, and category y, if someone is only opening and visiting the articles for category x, you can have one of these abandonment sequences going in the background that says, okay, this person is probably interesting category x. And if you have enough of these sequences and they're set up in a smart way, what that's gonna do is it's gonna over time, automatically segment your audience for you. And what this allows you to do is then send even more timely and relevant emails.
 
 Susan Friedmann [00:19:05]:
 
 That's fascinating. I mean, I'm, like, thinking of my own list in terms of that. Yes. And it's so true. I've had those abandonment emails where I've had something in a cart and either I've gotten sidetracked and not finished, or I'm second-guessing myself whether I actually really want that eye them. Yeah. But I definitely had those. Before I let you go, I want to make sure that we talk about some common steaks in terms of email marketing. Let's hone in on that because I know our listeners love learning about mistakes.
 
 Matt Treacey [00:19:42]:
 
 Yeah. Unfortunately, there are a few mistakes to be made. Right? I mean, the number one, look, is to try to build masterpiece from scratch. It's like there's so much you can do with email, and we've gotten a little bit into the technical nitty gritty today. You really need to start simple. So this is why I tried to focus on this idea of just like timing and relevance, you know, educate, inspire, entertain, If you have that mindset shift, you generally can't go wrong. But what sometimes people do is they put on the architect hat and they start penciling out this big complex flow of automations. Right? And what inevitably follows is is things become way too complex, way too quick. So this stuff I'm talking about with abandon and sequence and stuff that you need to have the foundation set beforehand. There's something called goals law. It's a complex system that works is invariably found to have evolved from a simple system and worked.
 
 And that applies to your email list. You need to start with simple building blocks and then allow the system to go around itself over time. this is really what it's all about. If you built these abandonment sequences that I was just talking about from scratch and you didn't know what the behavior of your customers were, they wouldn't work, you have to allow it to grow around itself over time. That's number 1. There's several. The other one is again, going back to that respect thing, one thing that typically happens with people early on is there's this negative feedback loop of poor engagement, which usually ends up with poor retention. So bad opens and clicks leads to bad unsubscribes, and the list spirals into itself or a boros. It collapses just like an ecosystem. Right? I mean, really this leads to the concept of the book, but the title of my book is natural orders. It's this idea that you need to grow and develop your email database, your email strategy like you would an ecosystem, right?
 
 So my background before getting into marketing was actually in ecology. I studied it, and I worked in the field briefly before I started working with non fiction authors. And, look, there's a lot of similarities between marketing and ecology. There's some of these seemingly superficial things like niches. Right? There's a niche in marketing, and there's a niche in theology. Right? There's another one of, like, the total addressable market. When you're starting a business, you look at your TAM. It's similar to, like, the carrying capacity of it ecosystem, right? There's also different types of market participants, select keystone and foundation species that help create ecosystems of their own. you might equate them to some, like, marketplace companies that you see in tech. Right?
 
 So there are these superficial similarities, but it wasn't until I started working with email marketing that I thought, oh, no. The analogy between the way ecosystems work and email marketing is like this is actually really, really valuable. And it was exactly those mistakes that really keyed me onto that. These things like feedback loops I spoke about with that engagement retention cycle or the necessary simple building blocks and the outsized effects that can come from that Those are actually features of what you'd call a complex adaptive system, or at least professor Paul Cilius would refer to it that way. Look, don't get me wrong. Sending out email marketing emails definitely isn't anything akin to complexity science. but there's definitely this tangled spider web of interrelationships that can easily get out of hand.
 
 We need to know how to best manage it. I found And I had the best success with email when I actually started using the management practices from the field like ecology or environmental science, which was my background to help us, number 1, avoid collapse of avoid all these common mistakes, but also on the upside, when you use those outsized effects and feedback loops in the right way. That's how you can build a really powerful, profitable, engaged, good email lists that's going to be with you, your whole journey as an author. Oh my goodness. This is so fascinating.
 
 Susan Friedmann [00:23:39]:
 
 I'm like, I would never have put those 2 things together. The whole idea of, you know, it ecology and email marketing. I know they begin with the same letter, but that's as far as it would have gone in my brain. This is so fascinating. I know listeners, you're gonna want to get a copy of this book, natural orders, fascinating stuff. Let's talk more about how people can find you, find the book, find out more about how you do all of this. What's the best way to, get in touch with you, Matt?
 
 Matt Treacey [00:24:14]:
 
 If you guys do natural orders book.com, That'll be everything about me. That's my website, but there'll be 3 free chapters you can download. And also, if you're it's on Amazon. It's the only platform it's on other than on my site. If you just type in natural orders, email marketing in Amazon will come up, but the best place to find me is that natural orders book.com.
 
 Susan Friedmann [00:24:36]:
 
 And that'll go in the show notes, and I'll make it a clickable link so people can go straight on there. There's so much fabulous stuff, their listeners. Matt, you know that we always like to end with a golden nugget. So what's your golden nugget?
 
 Matt Treacey [00:24:53]:
 
 My golden nugget is a reiteration. It's this, educate, inspire and entertain, send value with every email. What we've spoken about today can sound a little bit overly complex. But I promise you, if you just take that mindset shift, from the minute someone comes onto your website from the entire subscriber journey, if you focus on value the entire way through, you really can't go wrong.
 
 Susan Friedmann [00:25:15]:
 
 Fabulous. this is mind-blowing. And listeners, you're gonna have to listen to this a few times as will I have to go over this because there was just so much to take in. And thank you you know, map for even though it sounded a little bit complex, but breaking it down for us so that we could really understand it. I think that was invaluable. So thank you so so much for sharing your wisdom so early in the morning from Sydney, Australia.
 
 By the way, listeners, if your book isn't selling the way you want it or expect it to, let's you and I jump on a quick call together to brainstorm ways to ramp up those sales because you've invested a whole lot of time, money, and energy, and it's time you got the return you were hoping for. go to BrainstormWithSusan.com to schedule your free call. And in the meantime, I hope this powerful interview sparks some ideas you can use to sell more books. Until next week, he's wishing you much book and author marketing success.