Are you thinking of writing a business book? Or maybe you have already? Want to find out how you can promote your book launch with email marketing?

Let's have a bit of a chat about that, shall we?

SOME EPISODE HIGHLIGHTS: 

(0:18) Want a FREE resource to get more clicks on your emails? Check out Click Tricks.

(4:28) Check out our sponsor Poster My Wall.

(5:08) Should you write a business book?

(10:53) How to use your book to bring in thousands of email subscribers!

(16:35) How to make your business book profitable.

(22:07) Pre-launch business book email ideas.

(24:48) Business book launch email ideas.

(27:10) Create scarcity with special editions.

(30:18) Business book buyer email sequence.

(32:02) Subject line of the week.

[podcast_subscribe id="7224"]

Should you write a business book?

A lot of business owners write books these days because we all recognise that some people like to learn by reading a book (while others prefer courses or videos). And it's definitely something that's on our radar for the future too. However, it's not something we're planning to do straight away because the way we teach tends to be very visual.

Having said that, when our clients ask us about writing a book for their business, our first question is always to check where their book fits within their business. Do they want to write a book because it gives them status? Or is it a step towards being noticed by a big brand like Netflix, for example? Is the book something they'll use on their front end so they can capture email addresses and send people through some sort of sales funnel? 

Before you even think of writing a book, you need to know exactly where it fits in your business. And if you decide to go ahead, you definitely want your book to help you with your list building and your sales.

Here's how.

How to use your book to bring in thousands of email subscribers! 

Something we think is key when writing a book is having the ability to collect the email addresses of your readers. Whether you're going through traditional publishing or the self-publishing route, you want email addresses that you can market to.

A few years ago, Kennedy wrote a book in the magician niche. And in every chapter of the book he included a call to action asking people to opt into his email list. How? Simply by inviting them to grab a free resource related to the topic in that chapter in exchange for their email address. Whether it's diagrams, cheat sheets, or videos (i.e. anything that adds value to your book), use that as an excuse to bring in email subscribers.

This is valuable to you because once people are in your world, you can acquire them as customers. If you self-publish your book on Amazon and collect money from the sales but are none the wiser as to who your readers are, you're missing a trick! Because you can't market them directly. It's only by getting your readers to opt in that more opportunities open up for you.

So make sure that you:

1. Do the advertising and bring people to your platform.
2. Seed things throughout the book that boomerang people back to you and your world. 

And now, let’s talk about what a book funnel might look like.

How to make your business book profitable

A book funnel obviously has the book as its starting point - you want people to come into your world and grab the book as the first thing they do. It can be a paid-for product or it can be free. If it's free, you can ask customers to pay for the cost of shipping and handling. And if you do, be mindful of how you phrase that, as you don’t want the “free + shipping” option to be more expensive than buying the book on Amazon! So definitely play with the economics of it.

You can then have a bumper offer on the shopping cart where, just before they buy, you’re offering the customer to buy something else together with the book for an extra, say, $17-27. This could be the audiobook, an additional chapter, or a digital workbook with exercises, for example. It’s something extra that’s complimentary to the book, rather than content you’ve taken out of it. So, again, be careful of how you frame that and make sure that whatever your bumper offer is, it’s not a physical product that’s going to cost you more to produce or send out.

Use one-click upsell offers

Another thing you can do is to have a one-click upsell on the next page. This is where you may be offering a course version of the book for $97, for example. Or you could even present a more expensive upsell, such as an implementation session for, say, $297, or a trial to your membership if you have one.

Another thing we've seen that we think works really well is to present a webinar registration form that offers an implementation session related to the content of the book. The idea is that people print off some worksheets and come to the webinar to learn how to apply the teachings of the book to their specific situation. 

Pre-launch business book email ideas 

Before you launch your book, you can build some excitement in advance and get people interested in it. Definitely start by letting people know that you're writing a book. When the time is right, you can tell them you've written a chapter, for example, and ask them to opt in with their email address to read it. Mind you, this doesn't have to be the introduction or the first chapter - in fact, it's probably more interesting if you intrigue them by giving them one of the middle chapters of the book. 

Or you could do a "Help me choose" pre-launch exercise, where you invite your audience to choose one of the titles or the book cover designs that you have shortlisted. By asking people to vote, you're getting them involved.

Kennedy, for example, when he was promoting his book, took a screenshot of the Contents page so people could see in advance what topics the book would cover. The trick here is to choose chapter titles that are fun and enticing, so you can get people excited about getting the whole thing. 

[thrive_leads id='8822']

Business book launch email ideas 

Our book launch campaign opens with the announcement of the fact that the book has finally arrived. For example, if you're launching a physical book, the day your shipment of copies arrives is exciting and interesting. So make sure you bring people along for the journey with you. Make them excited (as excited as you are) about the fact you’ve published a physical book.

Another thing you can do is to let everyone know that the people who pre-ordered the book are now getting their copy. And that makes everyone else who hasn't bought one yet feel like they're missing out!

Ask people to take photos with the book

Also, ask people to take photos of themselves with the book once they receive it and then share them both on social media and in your emails. Kennedy did this by sending out a physical note with the book and asking people to email in their photos - offering a prize for whoever took their photo in the most unusual place. And these photos aren't just perfect for your emails, but they're also great for social media posts and ads. So don't miss out on this opportunity!

As for adding these photos to your emails, we always say that images in emails aren't necessary. But this is a scenario where using photos is a good thing. It shows that real people all over the world are buying it, and it's undeniable - you're saying that people are buying this book, and you're proving it. You can also do this via testimonials, so ask people to send theirs in as soon as they've read the book. 

Create scarcity with special editions

Or, you can create some scarcity in your launch campaign by selling some sort of special or limited edition and letting people know how many of those are left so they want to hurry up and buy. We have a tool for that called Scarcity Hero that's included for free in our membership The League.

Kennedy, with his book, sold 100 collector's edition copies (hardback with a dust jacket), which were significantly more expensive. Remember that you don’t have to re-invent stuff all the time - simply dressing your book up differently allows you to present it differently.

Business book buyer email sequence 

At this point, you have a bunch of people who are about to buy your book or have bought your book. So what are you going to follow up with? You put them in your SCORE email engine to ascend them and move them to the next piece in your sales funnel. Because your book is usually the front end, you want to start moving them into the back end of your business by selling them your other offers. Make sure you do this straight away because this is the point where they're most interested in learning about this topic or developing this area from you. 

A business book offers opportunities for email list growth and can act as a front-end piece that allows you to ascend people to your more expensive offers. With all that said, we're not telling you to drop everything and go and write a book right now. If it's already on your radar, then go ahead and use some of these strategies. But don't derail everything you've been thinking about doing in order to go and write a book - you don't need to have one at all costs. But if you do, all these tips will be super helpful!  

[thrive_leads id='8854']

Subject line of the week

This week’s subject line was “You, me, Kennedy and 2,000 people” and it had to do with our Inbox live event, where we had over 2,000 people registered. So the email is basically saying “Let’s get together with the both of us and 2,000 other people.” It’s intriguing, right? So check it out!

Useful Episode Resources

Related episodes

How We Used A Facebook Group To Build Our Email List From Scratch.

Stop Wasting So Much On List Building by Using Traffic Loops.

Viral List Growth Using Giveaways With Derek Videll.

FREE list to improve your email marketing

If you want to write better emails, come up with better content, and move your readers to click and buy, here's how. We put together this list of our Top 10 most highly recommended books that will improve all areas of your email marketing (including some underground treasures that we happened upon, which have been game-changing for us). Grab your FREE list here. 

Join our FREE Facebook group

If you want to chat about how you can maximise the value of your email list and make more money from every subscriber, we can help! We know your business is different, so come and hang out in our FREE Facebook group, the Email Marketing Show Community for Course Creators and Coaches. We share a lot of training and resources, and you can talk about what you're up to.

Try ResponseSuite for $1

This week's episode is sponsored by ResponseSuite.com, the survey quiz and application form tool that we created specifically for small businesses like you to integrate with your marketing systems to segment your subscribers and make more sales. Try it out for 14 days for just $1.

Join The League Membership

Not sick of us yet? Every day we hang out in our amazing community of Email Marketing Heroes. We share all of our training and campaigns and a whole bunch of other stuff. If you're looking to learn how to use psychology-driven marketing to level up your email campaigns, come and check out The League Membership. It's the number one place to hang out and grow your email marketing. Best news yet? You can apply everything we talk about in this show.

Subscribe and review The Email Marketing Show podcast

Thanks so much for tuning into the podcast! If you enjoyed this episode (all about how to support and promote your book launch with email marketing) and love the show, we'd really appreciate you subscribing and leaving us a review of the show on your favourite podcast player.  

Not only does it let us know you're out there listening, but your feedback helps us to keep creating the most useful episodes so more awesome people like you can discover the podcast. 

And please do tell us! If you don't spend time on email marketing, what do you really fill your working days with? We'd love to know!

Unknown 0:20

Hey, it's Rob and Kennedy.

Unknown 0:21

Well hello to tell that email marketing show I'm going to be talking about how to launch and promote your own business book using some snappy email marketing.

Unknown 0:30

I was panicking then I had the wrong document opened up or I don't know maybe I'm not ready for this at all. Isn't that excited to have this conversation but before we dig into it, there's something we would love to give you a completely for free regardless of what it is that you're working on with your email marketing right now, one of the biggest things that you should be looking at is increasing the number of people who click on the links in your emails, it's just essential and drive so much growth in terms of engagement and deliverability and tonnes of other stuff. So we've put together something really cool. It's a free resource called quick tricks, and inside you'll find 12 really creative ways. To get more clicks from every email that you send stuff that you can start using in the very next email that you send, in fact, and it's yours FREE as a listener to the podcast, so just head over to email marketing heroes.com forward slash tricks, and you'll be able to download it.

Unknown 1:04

He wants a new airfryer it's comedy hypnotist, Robert Scoble. And he

Unknown 1:09

makes a great corned beef pie. It's psychological mind reader Kennedy.

Unknown 1:18

Know Is corned beef the word or is that the American version called beef? That's the that's the one. That's what it was called. I do it I only eat corn beef pie when it's part of it's called like on a birthday. Oh. Are you the same?

Unknown 1:33

I'll eat it so I do like it but I like your hot with some like roast potato chips or something like gravy, gravy, gravy, some piece.

Unknown 1:42

I don't know if I've had it with gravy before I've just bought from a buffet because you know if you're getting first before the grandparents I really like it but if it's all mixed all in Oh absolutely. Looks like it's a new thing. Oh, he's all over like a grandparent ongoing beef. I think it was he's all over it like gravy on corned beef five but you went for the cranberry. And what somebody else right because I think it was you who got me and air fryers in the first place. Yes. So I bought at the time what was probably a revolutionary one a million years. ago. But now it's like the cheap basic entry level. What are you spending? Yeah, it's the third one I've had. Because they break after a little while don't they? And then and it's cheaper to buy a new one the one fixed and then that's it, but now they're all the rage and you got the ones with multiple compartments. You know, I'm like I need a canary down the line in terms of technology and I tend not to buy anything unless I've seen loads of reviews but I did ask on Instagram a while ago what's the best one to get and 100% of people said the same brand never said brands got a bunch of models. I even got a message offering me one a knockoff one off the back of a lorry I can get you them troops on I can get you there and

Unknown 2:35

so now if anybody wants a deal on it not off airfryer obviously values that are damaged go to them. Don't go there shops and I can get you a cheap deal. If you meet Rob down the pub on a Friday night you can get some meat to put in there about the pub going on Jimmy's got some meat South East salad.

Unknown 2:52

Truthfully I haven't taken the guy up on the offer but not because I'm against the idea just because I'm sort of thinking well I've done everything go to prison for buying knockoff things in prison for selling knockoff things. I don't if you've got a reason for buying them. Though. I haven't got a clue. Please answer that I have a VAT receipt with you take care, Jimmy.

Unknown 3:06

I could just do Apple Pay if you want so, every week on the show, we show you how to make more sales and earn more money from email subscribers. We'll talk about email marketing strategy psychology tactics, and share what's working right now to make more sales online making you the email marketing hero of your business and a brand new episode every Wednesday. So make sure that you right now you hit the subscribe button on your podcast player.

Unknown 3:31

As you're listening to this as well. We'd love to know which episodes are flowing your boat and catching your fancy so take a screenshot of the podcast player three weeks off. They're so slick.

Unknown 3:41

Which ones tickling your bagel.

Unknown 3:42

I was so polished then I threw myself off and became less polished. Take a screenshot of this episode stick it on Instagram tag us at Rob and Kennedy. We do look at it as might not posting very much on Instagram. And we will it'll make us feel warm and fluffy inside

Unknown 3:53

it will it will rob we've got a sponsor for the podcast this

Unknown 3:56

week. We have it's posted on my wall post about what is posted my wall do basically they combined email marketing with graphic and video design and social media scheduling all in one place.

Unknown 4:05

What a bit like they give MailChimp and Canva and Lena all got together got down to it and how to be exactly that. Lovely. That sounds amazing. And they're sponsoring this episode of The Email Marketing Show. So definitely go and check them out. Go to email marketing heroes.com/post up my wall, email marketing heroes.com/poster my wall. Check it out. And remember by supporting our sponsors, you're also supporting the show. So a lot of people turn to turn to drunks honestly, if it can't fit the drugs in the tent or writing a book or they use the drugs to keep them awake enough to write to write. I'm not endorsing any of the any of the drugs. But it's true like a lot of people do. Write write books these days. People used to refer to it as their million dollar business card. Remember those days you got a million dollar business card or you've got a job it's a book

Unknown 5:22

your subscriptions in the magic industry although they're very different than that because in the magic industry they're very much a profit

Unknown 5:47

Think I can't think I'd buy them on my Kindle and I don't even own for the 799 on Kindle and I mean that's that seems a bit extortionate because the new paper and card getting ripped off. I think Amazon might be profiteering from me. So yeah, so some people read a book maybe it's on our radar I think to do one day but I was looking at as I actually just personally find the books that the hardest thing to really learn from and therefore I'm I assume everyone else does and I go, right that's put it on a course and then they can learn it properly. Because we kind of teach very visually, but then it sort of brings this whole thing of like a lot of people write the books and I think I'm gonna write a book and I always say like, when we've been doing this, when we've got our masterminds, we will do our level up mastermind days, various places in the world. People say to us, I'm gonna write a book. And our first question is why, like, Where does the book fit into the business? Right? Is it because of a status thing? We're trying to build a brand where you're trying to get on big stages and get, you know, big deals and Netflix deals and all that kind of thing that you see people do off the back of their books, Grant, great. We're gonna do if you're going to use it as a front end to like, maybe get people to buy just the book and send them and we'll give you a funnel idea for that in a second very basic, so a classic funnel with maybe a bit more meat on the bones than you use

Unknown 7:40

We could have said because he was sent to me

Unknown 8:06

The economics of it work but self publishing

Unknown 9:37

ebook or if you're doing it as a ebook, then I guess you've got the email addresses. And that's great.

every single chapter and on the first page of the book, I mentioned some kind of reason, some kind of call to action, that they should come and opt in to my world to a free resource. In this case, it was, it could be whatever you define what your book is, it could be diagrams, which helped make the thing easier. It could be cheat sheets, which make things faster, it could be videos, which makes the understanding much deeper, basically anything that adds value to that particular thing. And all the better. If you can't always all the better if you can make each of the thing at the end of each chapter relevant to the things let's say you were just talking about the let's say we did a chapter about our

right at the end of the next chapter where we're talking about a different thing do something similar what that means

It's zero I don't think I've ever

through in order to get the Amazon bestseller status and all of that stuff because all of that will help you. But then ultimately, whilst you can acquire those customers and get them to come and opt in at the point of acquisition which is possibly your most valuable opportunity, you've got very little opportunity to do the really good stuff so like when somebody's just bought the book on Amazon there's no nothing happens you don't get their details there crack on maybe read the book, maybe don't. And at that point, when you've got them, they've just spent money, you know, can't do anything with them. So you can have them obviously opt in as you've described, and then you can put them through a funnel why On the flip of that, what I would definitely say is, once you do all of that stuff and we think that's really valuable, I would be looking for most people to have most of the focus on your own funnel and your own opportunities. So let's talk about what a book funnel might look like.

Obviously the book is the starting point of it. So somebody comes along and they say hey, would you like this book and again, it can either be paid or it can be free plus shipping or whatever in other words, you can literally say pay me $20 And

also do this book. Or it could be pay me you have to make the economics work here PBX to cover or you know, towards what was that cover wording sort of towards the shipping and handling contribute X towards the shipping and handling it a little bit careful about the wording of that. If you're actually going to make a profit on the shipping handling at all. I'll send you this amazing book worth whatever. The only downside you have to be careful of is that if you're shipping and I've seen free plus shipping offers where the Shipping and handling is 1999. And I go, if I go to Amazon, I can buy the book for that and Amazon will ship it for free. So like you have to be a little bit careful to try and make it at least seem cheaper than just buying the book. But you can play with the economics on it.

Then so you have a book, say $20 And then you have a bump offer on that so that's when somebody gets the order form. So before they've bought to bought it's not an upsell before they have bought. There's a checkbox on the order form that says hey, would you like this to and for like an extra 17 or $27 I've seen it. You can either buy the like the audio book, or you can buy like a missing chapter. In other words, something that is related to the book. It doesn't make it incomplete by not being included in the books. It's not like a dodgy unethical

thing. It's like an additional piece that is complimentary to the book, rather than something that feels like you've taken it out. So you should be careful how you frame

that. But if it's a missing chapter, why don't you just print it out on some paper and put it in the book and send it with it with it. So you can do that. So that funnel is book plus a bump offer of like $17 something on the next upsell you have a one click upsells or something

Only the book that's amazing but also coming up next week we're doing some of these implementation sessions so you can choose one of the date and times on this next page here's another one

Don't revolutionary towards making it work for any business whatsoever and then basically there we've seen this before with lead magnet so you give away for

got like a workbook version of the book where it's got activities and stuff in it. Again, that'd be really cool. A really cool bump offer, again, in that because we just most of these bump offers notice most of the bump offer and the upsells are generally going to be non physical items, which means they have zero additional cost to you, and, and all that kind of good stuff. So, yeah, but it can't

be physical stuff. I mean, I remember the first ever upsell funnel I ever saw was Joe Vitali back in the day, and his front end was a physical DVD or CD or something. The next thing was more CDs or more DVDs and the next upsell was even more CDs. I mean, I'm just I was loving it and watching Uncle Joe sat at his kitchen table telling me about these additional things. I needed to grab. And again, it was adding more stuff into the box, which I think was a really, really cool thing. So when we're going to launch our book, there's sort of a couple of phases a bunch of stuff to do.

To see their interest in the book and to register to get the free chapter the free chapter does not have to be chapter one or the introduction it could be is basically, we're gonna first of all just announced the fact that the book has finally arrived. I remember when we shared our office back in the day, but before we had a business together when you're busy when your book magicians arrived, I remember you had the big pallet of books that you get your photograph taken with. So that's the sort of software thing when it was announced about this amazing, exciting things happen. It was interesting, a book probably more than anything else in this world is something you can kind of bring people along for the journey with you on so like people are excited for the fact that you've published a book and they don't, you don't really get that in the same way with most digital products. So it's a bit like when Apple launched a new iPhone, they take people on that buying this and it's undeniable we talk about say it, prove it without the sippy framework, don't we? And we were basically saying people are buying this book, and then we're proving it. Yeah, exactly. That's the main thing. Get people to send in testimonials. Again, a lot of people wait too long before they ask for testimonials. Like as soon as somebody's got the book and read a bit of it, you can get a testimonial from them. It's got a dust jacket, like we often talk about, take the same stuff, don't keep reinventing stuff and present it differently. That's exactly for that. So then you've got a bunch of people about buying your book read stuff. So what do we do with those people? Or what we do in the email sequence? Is we ask them to take photos with the book because whether they use that in the in the launch campaign in the in the email campaign, so as soon as they receive it, we say, Hey, would you please take a photo of the book, there are some two places one in the emails. And secondly, I have like a little, little note that I've typed out on the computer and hand signed, and I put in the envelope with each of the books, which says, Look, thank you for buying the book. I'm really excited for you, but also really be helpful if you drop me an email with a photo of you with the book. I do the exact same as the email email says take audio book arrives. Take a photo of you with the about people taking with the book make for great social media posts but they make a brilliant ads really brilliant ads alright so there you go and then what you gonna do after they've been through all of that once they've bought your book and you've asked them to take photos and testimonials and you're then Doing both those But if you are writing a book or you're thinking of writing a book already or it's already on your plan, then do it but definitely don't this is key. It's so tempting to derail everything you've been thinking about doing when you suddenly get excited and whipped up into a frenzy about doing something else, you definitely don't need to have a book or if you do want to have one I do have one are you planning to write one anyway, this is the perfect way to do it. Awesome, awesome sauce. week's subject line of the week subject line of the week and what have you got today? So bear in mind, the emails come from me and my name that will give context to this. The subject line was you come at me combat Kennedy and 2000 people it was basically it was to do with our inbox live event we had over 2000 people registered. It was basically saying, Let's get together you me Kennedy in 2000 Other people like that. I like that this week's subject line of the week subject line of the week. Thank you so much for listening to this episode of the show, right till the very end, bless you for hanging on. I hope you got loads of value out of it. And even if you're never planning on launching a book, you can see how you could apply this structure and some of the ideas from it across multiple areas of your business. Just think about that and try and connect those dots for yourself. I'd love to hear what it is that you're doing with them. Do let us know over on Instagram at Rob and Kennedy. And if you haven't already, make sure you hit subscribe on your podcast. Player. And we'll see you next week.