1000 True Fans – New Subscriber Email Sequence (Week 3)

As I already hit my initial goal of 1000 mailing list subscribers in this 1000 “True” Fan blog series, I’m focusing on growing some TRUE Fans from this list.

May’s focus is creating a mailing list subscriber sequence.

So far, I’ve sent out quite a few welcome emails to new subscribers (um…like 1300 emails to multiple lists I’ve set up.) But, has it been successful?

It depends how you measure success. Right now, I think it’s too early to tell, but here are some of my wins so far:

• Open Rates: My standard monthly newsletter was obtaining open rates of 34%. I’m seeing open rates for these welcome emails at over 45% now…and some lists pushing 65%. (My welcome series are segmented based on how the reader found my list. Organic subscriber vs free sample vs free short stories.)
• Unsubscribe Rates: I don’t think unsubscribing to the welcome series is a bad thing. It helps me trim down my list to supportive readers. It keeps costs low and that is the purpose of the welcome. Overall though, my unsubscribe rates have been much lower than when I put these people directly into my monthly email list.
• Click to Free Book Rates: Over half of the people that open the emails are clicking for the free book. My fingers are crossed that they read it and become fans.
• Passive Sales of my other Books: There is definite increase in sales for my books whenever I send a newsletter out. This highlights the fact that a book won’t sell if nobody knows it’s out there.
• Newsletter Subscriber Engagement: Here’s a good one. In my final email going out next week, I’m going to have a link to click to become part of my VIP Advanced Reader Team. That’ll really show me if the welcome series was a success.

So, as I continue my journey of creating a welcome email sequence, I’m on week 3. Since last week, I gave them a link to a full novel, I’m not contacting the subscribers this week. I’ll follow up again next week with the final email in my sequence.

A few things I’m learning in this journey:

• I’d say a welcome series is needed in mailing list growth. I can see how people who sign up may not even remember who you are by the time your first email hits their inbox.
• Manually sending welcome emails is a lot of work! Especially if you’re managing multiple lists. This process needs to be automated. (And both Mailer Lite and Mail Chimp has tools for that.)
• Subscribers are fun, and I love their engagement. I love it when they reply to an email…so if you receive a newsletter, don’t hesitate to make it a two way method of communication.

To get updated on this process, you can check out WEEK 1 and WEEK 2 here.

For those of you following my newsletter subscriber growth, here’s how I’m doing so far:

Current Mailing List Subscriptions: 2319 fans / 1000 true fans (Up 106 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.

Please share your thoughts. I love input!