As I already hit my initial goal of 1000 mailing list subscribers in this 1000 “True” Fan blog series, I’m focusing on converting mailing list subscribers into TRUE Fans.
May’s focus is creating a mailing list subscriber sequence.
This past week, a fellow author asked me how many of my 2000 mailing list subscribers and twitter followers are “true” fans.
That’s a great question. How do you measure this?
Let’s break it down:
Mailing List (2200 subscribers): The best way I can tell is how many clicks my newest novel received when I emailed out this list. I emailed 1500 people…500 opened the email…42 clicked to by my book…though, I had over 100 sales over the two days and 14 sales of my previous book that day.
Twitter (2000 followers): I’m not seeing much luck here. I believe I have about 50 people that follow me that truly want to hear what I say. The rest are people shouting “buy my book” to whoever will listen. I’m not judging. I did that too.
Facebook (400 followers): I have gained a lot of followers from advertisements and cross promotions, but at least 100 or so family and friends. My guess is about a fourth of these are fans, so perhaps 100?
Blog (550 followers): I don’t know. 550 followers, but how many will actually read this? Plus you have people that check in from time to time that don’t have wordpress and don’t click “follow”. I have about 30-50 names I recognize due to consistent interaction.
So to answer the question…a conservative guess of how many “true” fans I gained since starting this journey January 1st…perhaps 200?
So, not even close to 1000 yet. What dose that mean? We keep moving forward.
Okay, the point of all of this.
I started adding up my reach. 2100 mailing list…2000 twitter…400 facebook…500 blog = about 5000 people, though a lot of my “true” fans are duplicated in various places. That’s a lot of potential readers! How do I convert these people who have a mild interest in my, my book’s genre, or my writing journey to hard core fans?
That is the million dollar question. Of course, it’s to give them what they want.
So, as I continue my journey of creating a welcome email sequence, I’m on week 2.
Last week, I sent out an email to thank my potential fans for downloading the 10% sample of my book (Blood & Holy Water), told them a little bit about me, and offered them another story free. My results? 48 of the 75 opened the email, 28 downloaded the second free book, and 4 bought the full Blood & Holy Water novel (Woo Hoo!) (I did have 2 unsubscribes)
This week (actually, today), I sent out another email out to that group, making sure they got the download okay, asking them if they liked it, and giving them more information on me. We’ll see how it goes. Here’s a link to that newsletter.
To see week 1 of creating a subscriber welcome sequence, click here.
I’m still sending these out manually, as it gives me more control as I figure out the best way to craft this welcome.
Next Week: I’ll update weekly on results of the emails.
So…how’s my progress going on my way to 1000 true fans?
Drum Roll…Ready?
Current Mailing List Subscriptions: 2213 fans / 1000 true fans (Up 321 people since last week.)
If you want to get caught up on 2017’s journey to find 1000 fans, check out the 1000 “True” Fan Landing Page.
Joynell Schultz, Author 
I’ve been reading all of these posts, can’t tell you how much I appreciate them, especially with trying to manage my husband’s newsletter. Thank you for sharing your journey and the details!
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I’m so happy you’re reading along and that you are finding some use of the posts. Mostly, I’m just recording my own journey for future use, but hope others find some use in it. Thanks for commenting, it keeps me moving forward. 🙂 Good luck marketing your husband’s newsletter.
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Interesting & helpful post as always! 🙂 I think finding true fans is definitely a difficult task… I’m thinking about it, and I probably have only a few true fans (though, of course, I haven’t been actively looking for them as you have). So it’s interesting to see how you try to draw more people in and show them what you have to offer.
I’m curious, how much does your mailing list cost? (I’m assuming you’ve gotten past the point where it’s free?)
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Hi Lana! Thanks for the compliment. Feedback always gives me a warm and fuzzy feeling. 🙂 I just upgraded my mailing list account and actually migrated over to Mailer Lite because it’s cheaper (and easier to use.) It cost $85 for the year, but you can pay monthly for $10. If I get over 2500 subscribers, the fee goes up. My goal though is to start kicking people off the list that don’t open my emails. Maybe I’ll host them over at Mail Chimp and send an email for new releases only…unless the emails continue to be unopened.
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Oh, cool! That doesn’t seem super expensive at the moment, thankfully. 🙂
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