Writing Tip Wednesday: How to Boost your Mailing List Open Rate

Today’s ten tips on how to boost your mailing list open rate are courtesy of author David Gaughran, who provides an enormous amount of help for indie authors on his website here.

In this YouTube video, Gaughran breaks down the top ten ways to improve your mailing list open rate, which leads to more engagement from subscribers, which leads to more book sales!

Here they are:

1. Ditch the free ads. Typically, when you use the free services of mailing list providers such as Mailchimp and MailerLite, those free accounts automatically place ads in the footers of the emails you send. This makes the email look spammy and may even cause the email provider to tag it as spam. When the email is tagged as spam, it goes into the recipient’s spam or promotions folder rather than in their inbox, which decreases the possibility of the recipient seeing and opening the email.
2. Ditch social media buttons. This came as a surprise to me since I usually include share buttons in my emails. Gaughran says not to go overboard with these buttons, because they provide more links for readers to click on. You want to direct the recipient to click on what you want them to click on (e.g. a buy link). If you give them too many options to click on, they get distracted. Gaughran indicates that he does not use social media share buttons at all.
3. Email subjects matter. Avoid using spammy words in your email subjects, which could cause the email provider to tag the emails as spam. Of note, the word “free” is a spam word, so use it sparingly. You can use the term “gift” or “exclusive” instead of “free.” To get a list of spammy words that you should avoid, check out this list of 188 Spam Words to Avoid.
4. Do not use exclamation marks or all caps in the email subject line. Doing this may also cause the email provider to mark the email as spam and send it to the recipient’s spam folder.
5. Check your emails using a dummy account. Send test emails to a dummy email address to see how they look and to see if they go to the inbox rather than a spam folder.
6. Always send a Welcome email to new subscribers. Give them the free gift or content that you promised. Start building that relationship! Also, make sure you send regular emails. Gaughran sends one email a month to his fiction list and one email a week to his nonfiction list. Of note, nonfiction readers appear to be more tolerant of frequent emails.
7. Do not engage readers only when you want something. Make sure that you are not only sending emails when you want recipients to buy your book. Email readers regularly and make sure that your emails provide value to them. Conversation beats broadcasting. Interacting with readers is key (it’s a two-way street). Write your emails as if you’re talking to another person. If people reply to you, then you’re doing it right.
8. Overload on value in every email. Don’t send filter emails just to send something. When you send content of value, readers will be excited to see your emails.
9. Cull the herd. Do not sand down your idiosyncracies. Be yourself, and don’t be afraid if that repels some people (Stephen King would say that if you don’t offend some people, then you’re not doing it right). You want to own your niche. Don’t freak if your stuff isn’t for everyone. You do not want to be for everyone because then you end up appealing to nobody. So don’t worry when people unsubscribe from your list.
10. Question your email provider. Gaughran recommends using MailerLite. Make sure that your provider is doing the job for you. If they’re not, don’t be afraid to change your provider.

I hope those tips are helpful! They certainly were for me! Check out Gaughran’s full video here.

Happy Writing!