Unlocking the Magic of Effective Email Marketing for Authors with Holly Darling

Ever felt like your email marketing efforts just vanish into the digital void? Email wizard Holly Darling joins us to cast a spell that'll ensure your emails not only reach inboxes but open the door to meaningful reader relationships. 

Holly unravels the technical skein of email authentication, with the alchemy of SPF, DKIM, and DMARC records, and why a domain-specific email is your golden ticket in the eyes of email giants like Google and Yahoo. Buckle up, authors, as we equip you with the essentials to keep your marketing emails from becoming the proverbial message in a bottle.

Let's talk strategy - it's not just about sending emails; it's about sending the right ones. We chat about starting small, the significance of engaging early with your audience, and the magic of finding your unique email voice. With Holly's insights, you'll learn the art of repelling the wrong crowd, embracing your beta reader squad, and the critical importance of keeping your emails spotless under the discerning eye of Google's new sender requirements. By the end of our conversation, you'll be writing emails so captivating, they could rival the charm of your novels.

And because every author knows that a story is only as intriguing as its characters, Holly shares how to infuse life into your email persona, maybe even under a pen name. Imagine crafting emails that are not mere messages but extensions of your narrative world. We also explore the interplay between social media buzz and the intimate conversations of email marketing, offering strategies to funnel your fans into a space where you hold the reins. Get ready to transform your email list into a riveting tale that keeps your readers hanging on every word.

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Website: https://thedaringpress.com/

Transcript

Jenna Lee: 0:08

Welcome to the Daring Author podcast, the show that takes you behind the scenes of building a successful author business, bringing you inspiring interviews and information on writing and marketing ideas for your book so that you can build an easeful, empowering and profitable author business. I'm your host, jenna Lee, owner of the Daring Press, a virtual marketing and support agency where we help indie authors who are ready to take their author business to the next level with more ease, growth and time. You can find the episode show notes and a bunch of marketing resources at thedaringpresscom. Let's become Daring authors by diving into today's episode. Hello and welcome back to another chapter of the Daring Author podcast. Today we have a special guest, holly Darling. Welcome to the show.

Holly Darling: 1:02

Thank you, excited to be here.

Jenna Lee: 1:05

Yeah, Now, Holly is the owner of Holly Darling HQ, which is a business that focuses on helping authors create and implement their email marketing strategies to sell more books and build brand loyalty. She has worked with creative business owners for the past 10 years, helping them grow a business that is data driven and automated, allowing them to spend more time writing their books. Dream dream, isn't it?

Jenna Lee: 1:34

That sounds so good so that's what we're going to be talking about today email marketing and I wanted to have somebody on the show to talk about this and then I thought, ah, I know somebody I think I heard you at. I couldn't remember where it was at, but it might have been. I don't know if it was Incascon or something like that.

Holly Darling: 1:56

Yeah, most recently I was at Incas and I've done a few other places, but yeah, that one was probably the largest one in the last six months or so.

Jenna Lee: 2:05

Yeah, I wasn't sure if it was that or Ram, I couldn't remember which one.

Holly Darling: 2:10

I saw yeah.

Jenna Lee: 2:11

Yeah, okay, cool. So, yeah, I watched your speaking there and I thought, ah, you just were amazing with all the information that you shared for authors.

Jenna Lee: 2:21

So, yeah, I'm excited to chat about that today. The first topic I'm going to hear is something that's really, you know, happening right now with the whole authentication is a hot topic, so I thought maybe we could kick off with um. Maybe you could explain exactly what it is, what you know, what, what's happening at the moment in terms of the email marketing and the authentication, and what authors should be doing if they're like, oh, I don't even want to touch it, but they should.

Holly Darling: 2:52

Yeah, it's been a wild six weeks. I mean I didn't know it was going to be this big, but it's. This is perfect timing, because it can be incredibly overwhelming and confusing and complicated, and yeah, so what it is, what we're talking about is Google and Yahoo have decided to create what they call bulk sender requirements, but I think the biggest piece that kind of is not working for everybody is their marketing around it. You know it's their the words that they're using in the language, and it's incredibly confusing, and people that work in email marketing were even like I don't know, I don't really know, and still things are still shaking down. So a lot of it is TBD, but what they really want to do, the impetus behind it, is great. It's just the execution of it seems to be a bit confusing, and so what they're trying to do is make sure that there are less emails out there that are arriving in their users inboxes that are spam related or phishing. So they're kind of clickbaity or they have been kind of a list that's purchased and or bought, controlled and so, which is honorable and great. However, in order to achieve that, when they say bulk sender requirements, it really kind of started out as just people that were heavy users, but then it evolved into and heavy users they defined as 5000 emails per send, but now it has evolved into anybody that's in the marketing email, and so they really should have kind of maybe led with that.

Holly Darling: 4:40

And so that was one component, and I'll talk kind of a bit high level about each component. And that really is that when you do send an email that you are running through what is kind of loosely termed as a verified system, so you have an email address that belongs to a domain, not a free site like a Gmail, hotmail, outlook, yahoo kind of thing. It has to be a derivative of your domain and unfortunately, most of those do cost money, not too much, but this way I usually liken it when I talk about the subject, to traveling across borders. So you have, you know, kind of photo ID that your country has issued, like a driver's license or something which is kind of your verified email, and then they want you to authenticate yourself with two records that are an SPF and a DKIM, and you really don't need to know what those stand for, just know that those are records and those are kind of like your passport, and so there are records that all of this is happening on your domain, not your website, not your email marketing service. It is inside of your domain and it's just a string of code that you place there. And so then the receiving algorithm so if you send it to somebody with an address at gmailcom before they are able to see that in their inbox, gmail is going to go oh, is this a spammer, a bot, a fisher, whatever? And they check based on this strings of code. So you've kind of got your verified email address is level one, your DKIM and your SPF is level two, and then your DMARC, which is new player, you know, to most people, and it is a third record that you're going to need to place on your, on your domain. Again, has nothing to do with your website, your email system. This one is straight up right into your domain and it's kind of like your iris scan, like kind of rounding out everything, and it is really meant to stop and hold emails at the border, for lack of a better word. So that is the most complicated part of the three kind of new requirements.

Holly Darling: 6:58

Some people hire people to do it. Highly recommend that. I'm one of those people that could do it. Other people tackle it on their own and make out just fine.

Holly Darling: 7:07

There are some really annoying nuances to each domain, so it depends on who you have. Your domain purchase through. That can trick you up. So that's where people kind of get overwhelmed. But know that when you get it done it is just making your emails that much better and the user experience that much better. And it means, if you have done it, you over time because it is going to take a few weeks and a few email sends for things to kind of the wrinkles to kind of smooth out you will become more deliverable, which means you're going to land on more inboxes. The second piece to it I'll just breeze through these two because they should be kind of not your job but the job of the email service provider which is the one click unsubscribe. That should already be implemented and your email service provider would have done that for you. Which just means when an email lands in your readers inboxes before they even open it, they can unsubscribe from the side of the subject line.

Jenna Lee: 8:11

And then finally, I've seen that lately. I'm like what's this new thing that I can just click unsubscribe right there.

Holly Darling: 8:18

Yeah, I mean I've used it. Yeah, I mean as a user, I love it. As a marketer. It's frustrating, but then again it's just. It's just making you better at sending emails because you have to really think, like, does the subject line resonate? Does my name when it lands in somebody's inbox? Is it recognizable and equated to value? Like, do they really like what I'm doing? And if they don't recognize it and they don't think that emails are valuable, they're going to unsubscribe. And that's unfortunate, that it's easy. But it's also really going to force you to think about what you're doing and how you're marketing to them.

Jenna Lee: 8:57

Yeah, yeah, I love that and I love how you explained it all, because the language around it like when I was looking at it all and the language around it was quite like I didn't even know these words Like what are you able to talk?

Holly Darling: 9:10

about.

Jenna Lee: 9:10

Let's just simplify it so it makes sense. And the way that you just did, yeah, it's not even scary. Like when I did, I was like, oh, that was easy, Like it was fine, they had instruction, Like there was heaps of depending on who your email provider is. I use ConvertKit myself and it was quite, yeah, an easy process. And then it was like, oh, who's my domain through? I can't even remember my host. Yeah, All of that, but yeah, it's not as scary. And I think it's, yeah, I think it's a really great, not looking at it as a hassle, but like looking at it that you know the way, like it's going to create more. Your email has a better chance. If you are doing you know, if you are captivating the audience and you know you're, you're, you're verified and all of that, Like you have a better chance of reaching the inbox than than not. So I think it is a good, a good thing, yeah.

Holly Darling: 10:01

Yeah, the problem and the thing that is going to happen is that if you don't adhere to these and you continue to use, you won't even be able to use an unverified email address. You just won't be able to send emails, which is really sad. So, yeah, even though putting it in a corner and ignoring it because it feels overwhelming and intimidating is just not an option. You can't. You can't do it. You have to have it in place or your email service provider will not let you send emails.

Jenna Lee: 10:29

So yeah, simple as that. Yeah, if you are looking for somebody to help you with it, reach out to Holly. We'll have. We'll have her details in the show notes. So, yeah, it's really great that you have somebody that can you know. I know a lot of authors like, oh, I don't even want to deal with it, can you just do it for me? So that's nice, nice to have that. Yeah, all right, awesome, I'm glad we got got that out the way and know what's happening there. Now I want to switch gears and, you know, for authors that are just starting out with email marketing. So I want to give you some of the essential steps to really building an effective email list.

Holly Darling: 11:05

Yeah. So the first thing I always say for authors that are just starting an email marketing is to start, as opposed to think I need to wait until I have a big backlist or I have a lot of stuff to tell people about. There are two reasons for kind of starting before you're ready. In any business, you know you you're going to be able to test the test things out before it's revenue, you know relevant and by that I just mean that you have a release and if your emails aren't, aren't sending like for saying you don't have your authentication done and you need everything to happen on this day but it's not working. So you can get the bugs out and learn the system and decide if you really like the system. And yeah, you're going to have a small list, but you're going to have great metrics. You know if you have a small list and that just means you're giving strong signals to the receiving algorithms the Gmail's, the hotmail's, etc. That they don't really care if you only have 10 people, they care if you have, if you have an 80% open rate and a 20% click rate, because those 10 people are your best friends, that they don't care who they are. Like you're giving them good, dad, and they're like oh wow, everybody seems to like this person. So you're testing the waters. You're giving the system data. The email is a data driven marketing tool. It's just not something people often think about. From the data angle. It's just as important as what's going inside of it is. You know how. You understand what your metrics are doing. You know for your for that. So if you start right away, you get to learn what works and what doesn't work.

Holly Darling: 12:38

The other thing you're doing is building these brand loyal readers. You can start to kind of use them almost as like a beta or an Arc team. You know where. You're asking them questions, you can give them snippets, you can do all sorts of things, but you can take them on your journey. Now, like I've had some clients that are like I'm a year out. I'm like, okay, so a year out, maybe wait.

Holly Darling: 13:00

But like, when you're three months out from your first book launch, it's time to start digging in and saying, hey, you know, can you do you want to join? I am writing a book, I would love to have you. And then, when it's launch time, you actually have a bunch of people that are going to open your email and buy from you and then tell other people, so you've primed them, they're kind of almost your little sales team and that kind of rings true moving forward, but it's never more true than when you're selling your first book and so, yeah, and then the other thing that I think that is essential, so starting and having some sort of automated welcome to anybody that does join your list. It can be as if you're beginning and it's really intimidating and you don't really think you have much to say to them. One single email is just fine. And then as you grow and you have more things you want to say or you get more confident, you can start to build on that sequence.

Holly Darling: 13:55

But at least one email.

Holly Darling: 13:58

And so I was think like, let's say, you, we all are joining newsletter lists left, right and center, and if we sign up for something and then we get distracted and we go away and then a month later somebody sends an email from that it typically tends to get ignored in their inbox.

Holly Darling: 14:14

And if you signed up and then automatically you knew like you saw something appear in your inbox because you're, it's relevant, you're there and you're kind of looking for it or your brain has not forgotten, you know that you did sign up for it and then that recognition and that connector piece happens and so inside of there it's just a welcome.

Holly Darling: 14:34

Who are you? What to expect, what are you up to? Your your writing voice kind of starts to come through. And then you also do something really important which is scary to people but you repel the wrong person is if that email is kind of well written and thought out and really kind of tells them who you are transparently and what you don't want are people on your list that really don't want to buy books from you or that will unsubscribe or mark you a spam. Especially spam, is one we didn't talk about in the new Google sender requirements. But keeping your spam rate and then squeaky clean is really important always, but more important now because it will get you non deliverable. And so by having a welcome email you start to build that trust, that brand name recognition, and you start to teach them about who you are and why they want to stay.

Jenna Lee: 15:26

Yeah, I love that and I love you that you brought up that welcome sequence, because I know a lot of people Get get quite stuff on it of like you know what to put in there, how to start it, and you get gave some great examples there and I want to talk about like the writing voice in terms of I don't know what it is and I get like this too, like we can write in so many different characters voices with our books.

Jenna Lee: 15:51

But when it comes to email marketing, it's just like Uh, what am I right?

Holly Darling: 15:55

Who do?

Jenna Lee: 15:55

I and somebody's told me once, like you know, pretend to be your cat, like your, your pen name Is your character and who that person is, and really developing that and using that in when you write the newsletter and that helps so much for me in that way. Do you have any ticks around? Yeah, like finding that writing voice in that way. What are your yeah, thoughts on?

Holly Darling: 16:19

that. Yeah, I absolutely love that. There are a couple things that you can do and and if you can create kind of a pen name persona, it sounds kind of really basic and simple. But you know, when I have a couple pen names and they each have kind of a profile like who is this person in my, in my, in my imagination, like you know, who are they, what do they like, what do they sound like, what are they into, and this helps you kind of Get that voice and that vibe. But the other thing a lot of authors, or some authors that I've worked with, do is they'll write, um, you know, emails from a character point of view, you know, and so if you're in this pen name Actually I have one client who writes from her pen names point of view, but as if she's in the world that she's creating.

Holly Darling: 17:10

So she's moving through as a secondary character and she integrates everyday life, her like social, tell stories about her everyday life, but she'll kind of these stories are kind of existing inside of the worlds that she's Creating, which is a really interesting idea and a way to kind of get your pen name, you know, the point of view and the voice, and Also connect it to something that the brand and the and the voice that you want to sell and the books that you want to sell and this particular author that I'm thinking of that did this also Wrote every single email in this manner, you know, like as if this person was wandering through as a secondary character and then compiled them all and made it a little companion book to Her books, and that's a really kind of interesting thing, or you can make it as bonus, but really my, my method is I have no the notes up on my phone or on my desktop and as things happen, as mundane as they feel, I just kind of write them down and I've taught myself that over many, many years and it's harder at first to think, oh well, I walk the dog today, that is really really not important.

Holly Darling: 18:29

But what if you have a dog in one of your books and You're walking your dog and you start to think, like your pen name, if that dog kind of growled at another dog going by and you're like okay, and then you start to use that writer brain and switch it on. You know well this, this pen name author, and because you've done your profile and you know like say they're bold and they're or they're kind of Funny, or whatever. They start to think like. If I was writing this in my book, what would I, what would I say about it? And it doesn't have to be long and and Exciting, just has to connect with your reader. And so, yeah, I always I'm bouncing around a bit because it makes me laugh that writers are the worst at writing- at writing emails.

Holly Darling: 19:15

It cracks me up every single time. I did hundreds of authors I've worked with. They're like, oh, I'm so boring. I'm like, no, you're not. You know. Like you write books for a living, you know, or even as a part-time job who cares? You've written a book, you know. It's like that's pretty cool.

Holly Darling: 19:29

And I always will use my own experiences, like from my pen name, which I have a very kind of Rom-comy voice. When I write with one pen name, which is and and the, the situations the heroines get in are very much kind of drawn from my Private and personal life. And I've written many Emails I call them holly versus my house, and so I'm a single mom, and I've written emails about changing the toilet seat for the first time, catching a mouse in my house, all these things, and those are the ones that I get the most amount of replies from, which is like email gold and so bravely, kind of thinking, you know, I'm gonna try this. I walk the dog, my dog, like he's a, you know, a male dog and it's attracted to, like all these weird dogs, you know whatever. Like all of a sudden you're like, say, you write romance, your romance brain is like, oh okay, there's something there, you know. But if you're like into like mystery or thrillers, you know You're walking your dog and your dog is analyzing everybody and sometimes it gives people a wide berth and sometimes they go close. So you just started to like Look at life a little differently and you can think, oh, that's kind of funny.

Holly Darling: 20:38

And I always say the final piece to it is to connect it, whatever it is you're talking about, whether it's mundane or exciting. Back to a book. You know, like, oh, this reminds me of I'll always say, oh, this reminds me of when Eleanor, you know, took her dog for a walk and it ran away and it ran into her the town enemy, you know and and bit his leg, you know. And then all of a sudden, and then you're like, oh yeah, you want to buy that book right here, and then they can really connect that brand, who you are and you know, the stories that you're trying to tell that continue on into the book. And that's why it's important to kind of write these emails With that pen name voice in mind, um, so that when they read your emails, they read your books, they read any social media content. It feels very connected.

Jenna Lee: 21:28

I love that. I love all of that and I was writing down notes saying so. I'm like, oh, this is exciting there of the way to look at email marketing that way. And yeah, look at it as if you were like writing, writing one of your characters and like all those tip like, yeah, I think that's very Inspiring and it makes me excited. So hopefully it makes other authors excited to actually Write their newsletter. If you think of it in that way because I think most of us think of it like, oh, it's a you know, we have to say this and it's boring and I think, if you think outside of the box and make it fun, like you do with your writing, I think that that is definitely something that's going to help people write more engaging emails. And, yeah, just to connect to your readers as well with of your writing voice and you know that smart way of you know, talking about your personal life but then linking it into a story.

Jenna Lee: 22:21

I think that's very, very smart. I love that so much, so much. Now, in terms of like looking at, you know, email marketing as opposed to social media marketing. Why? Why do you think it's more important to focus on email marketing than then say I know, we do need to do social media marketing as well, but why? Why? Email marketing would be more beneficial than others?

Holly Darling: 22:51

Well, I'm sorry there's so many things right through my head, oh, because of that. But the big thing is you control the whole process right. And with social media marketing you are marketing with somebody else's rules, and with email marketing you're marketing with your own rules and typically, for the most part I mean there are some extreme examples you can. If you're a spicy writer, you can get spicy inside of your emails. If you are a thriller writer, you can talk about things that are taboo to talk about inside of social media. And if you're a nonfiction, you can really kind of link things out and not be suppressed for inserting links or whatever. You're not at the mercy of the platform that you're using. And then, but what I like to do is kind of almost connect them. So in my marketing plan, even though I don't use social media that much, when I do I make sure that there's kind of. For me I call my email marketing the hub, and so everything else kind of circles around it and moves people into my newsletter. And so with your newsletter, if you're using social media, I like to often talk about oh, go to my newsletter, you'll get a free book or whatever. Go to my newsletter, go to my newsletter and then the newsletter is kind of talking about the same thing, the social content is, so you're not doing the work twice. But then your newsletter can kind of expand upon whatever you're doing in social media and bring them deeper in.

Holly Darling: 24:18

But then the other amazing piece of newsletter email marketing, that you can track things. So like you have, you know, yeah, you can track some clicks in Facebook and sometimes it's most of the time that it's reliable. Sometimes it's very unreliable, but you can see and some services are better at this than others, but you can see what people are clicking on. And then you can retarget, you can put them in tags or groups or segments or whatever. And then I mean this is next level and feels very overwhelming to some people. But I'm like oh hey, you know everybody is in here who clicked on this specific enemies to lovers question, you know. And then I have an automation that says in three weeks I have a book coming out that's enemies to lovers. So in three weeks start to drip only enemies to lovers content to these people. So you can get so finite based on what they've done.

Holly Darling: 25:13

The data that you can get from an email is just so much more reliable than what you're going to get? That's pretty vague. From social media marketing you can get some great vanity metrics. So you see, oh, 10,000 people like this, or even you know 500,000 people, clicked on this TikTok and they went and bought a book. That's great, but have you captured their data so that you can continue to make sure they bought the rest of what you have? Maybe probably not, you know. So, with newsletter email marketing as a kind of a partner to what you're doing on social media, if you can drive them over there, either in back matter or front matter or links and bio or whatever you can, you know, catch a decent percentage of people and just drive them deeper into your brand so that every time you have something new to talk about, or even if you don't, you want to sell your backlist or you want to talk about, you know, sales or whatever that you have you have a captive audience there.

Jenna Lee: 26:15

I love that and that's what I was going to ask too, in terms of, like, where you're going to get people on your email list and I know a lot of people talk about putting it in the back of your books, you know, because there's going to be a few ways that people find you and I think, like email marketing is that nurturing stage of it can be.

Jenna Lee: 26:33

Like they can come into the funnel of like you know, once they've read your book and then they join the email list because that's like the next step of getting to know the author a lot more. And then they can see, oh, you've got all these other books and you're talking to them and they're connecting more and you're creating that fandom in that way. And then some other people can more so find you know it might be on social media and then they're like oh, I want to join this because I get a free book when I join your newsletter or whatever the lead magnet if you create lead magnets might be. There's a few different ways to get into that funnel and sort of nurture them. There isn't there.

Holly Darling: 27:11

Yeah, yeah, and I like to serve them a bit differently depending on how they're coming in and so how you know, how you know warm or cold or in between they are.

Holly Darling: 27:23

So like they're coming from back manner, you can assume they're kind of warm, you know, and they want to get whatever's, whatever else you have, or what's next if they're joining, or they want that bonus content. If they're coming from a social media ad or a promotional piece where you are not familiar to them, you want to talk to them a little bit differently and introduce them to kind of I would say like give them your best foot forward, you know, and do it that way. If they're coming from directly from your website same kind of thing you can kind of really serve them wherever they're at in your funnel as far as their knowledge of who you are. And you can get pretty creative, even, you know, putting QR codes on your business cards or in the back matter of hard copies of your book If you're out at events selling books. That way, you know, you kind of can get them to kind of come in and this way you can connect how they got there with why they're there. That's what I was going to ask.

Jenna Lee: 28:20

So like getting nerdy a bit, but like back end stuff, if you've got them coming in in all different ways, is it all different forms? And then tags segments connect to that. You know it's a different form that creates that tags them in a different way. Is that right?

Holly Darling: 28:36

Yeah, that's how I do it and it depends on your email service provider too. Like I use ConvertKit as well. But you can have multiple points of entry, but you'll want one. That is makes it fairly easy to kind of tag how they you know where their point of entry is into your funnel. But, like, if it's back matter and they're getting bonus content, you want to tag that and then you can set a rule. You know, if they've read bonus content before, you know, just give them the bonus content and out they go. Or if they haven't read any bonus content before, serve them this. I have lots of little spider arms like coming out.

Jenna Lee: 29:13

I was just imagining that in my head.

Holly Darling: 29:16

I know it's totally overwhelming and I apologize to anybody who's like I don't even have a welcome sequence. But imagine like the language you could use, like if, if somebody joins your list from you know a show that you're at and you're like they're seeing you know 50 authors in one day and they can't remember, but they signed up for your list and they get onto your list through a QR code, say that you have at your table or or a specific link in your back matter, and then your first email to them is like didn't you love? You know that, whatever show, they're all drawing a blank in my mind Comic Con, san Francisco, you know, and, and they're like it is where I met this person. And suddenly there's that trust beef and really the whole rest of the thing is identical to any other kind of cold welcome sequence they have, but you've changed these small pieces to the welcome email that start to build that trust, which is huge, right?

Holly Darling: 30:16

So it's all about trust. And did they trust your name when it appears in their inbox, or did they not recognize it? And that's like the kiss it off that you don't want to happen. So you can really, if you are patient and take the time to build these kind of first layers of welcome and then you can funnel them into everything else. That's the same, and there are fail safes to make sure that if they have seen all that stuff, it's the same. They don't see it, and there are ways to set that up that are different with each email service provider, but it makes for a really great user experience, which is ultimately the key for them to sticking around and buying everything else that you have.

Jenna Lee: 30:54

I love that I've got so much work to do from this home. So good, so good. I want to talk about some effective strategies when it comes to reengaging in active subscribers and keeping them interested in your content. I did this recently. I had a lot of inactive subscribers and I did a whole sequence and putting them. I don't think there's ever not a time to clean up your list and actually reengage them. So any tips around that?

Holly Darling: 31:28

Yeah. So my biggest tip is I don't stress out too much about those people. So I do have a strategy to re-engage them and I have it automated. So it's something I've set up and then after so many months of inactivity they get plunked into a segment group, whatever you want to, whatever you're working with, so that it starts to kind of talk to them again.

Holly Darling: 31:57

But it's hard to. It's not that they don't. Typically, it's not that they don't want to hear from you. It's that you're fighting against the technical issues that take a long time to get in place. So if somebody goes dormant, it's usually not because they don't want to hear from you. It's because your email was delivered to their spam box or even their promotions tab and they're getting 25 emails a day in there and it just gets pushed down and you're off their radar. So getting that your email back into an inbox or even a promotions tab for a Gmail user and out of a spam folder or worse, you know, non-deliverable to deliverable is a big effort. So sending one email in a re-engagement sequence is not going to be that effective, because the email services are looking for 30 days of consistent data, so they have a rolling 30 days. If you send one email in a 30-day period or even in a six-month period, imagine that that is just like a drop in the bucket. You know it's not giving them enough data because the majority of those people aren't seeing it.

Holly Darling: 33:07

So I usually say if you're going to do a re-engagement sequence which you should, before you clear people off your list, set it up as an automation so you don't have to think about it and just you can set it up once to duplicate. You can just run everybody through the same sequence. You don't have to be creative in here, but the goal is to get a click. In my opinion you can get an open, but those are less effective at keeping them around. What you want is a click because it sends a stronger signal. So say to the Gmail that looks hotmailed that this person truly does actually want to see these. If they open it and do nothing, it's a weak signal and you could have them kind of dropping out the radar again. But if you send them one email, then you wait a couple of weeks, send them another email, wait a couple of weeks, send them another email and have it set up that if they do click they get out like they're out of that sequence. But if they don't do anything, it's going to keep trying and perhaps on the third attempt you might have some success. But if by the third attempt you have no success, be brave, be courageous and just remove them from your list, because the amount of energy and time it's going to take you to get them out of there and I recognize there are a certain percentage of people on your list that say they open everything and they don't want to be removed.

Holly Darling: 34:31

But my response as well if you open everything, you as the email marketer need to have a better call to action to get them to click. And yet they may go to Amazon and buy everything from you. But then your calls to action shouldn't always be purchases. They should be fun, surveys, entertaining. Whatever your genre is, you should have something other than just buy, buy, buy. And this is what builds value and trust but also gets them to click because they feel safe.

Holly Darling: 34:59

They're like oh, I don't ask me to buy anything, I'm going to give them my opinion and I usually do fun things that are very controversial. I say controversial in a very late-hearted manner. In the romance world, controversial is like I like friends to lovers better than enemies to lovers. And so or I've done, I've got a hero with long hair versus short hair and everyone's like ew, gross. And just trying to get them to have fun with the list as opposed to sell to them in a re-engagement sequence. Selling to them is the gift of death.

Holly Darling: 35:30

So set it up for longer than one email how to have something fun and interesting. If you had to murder somebody, would it be with a knifer? Would you set them on fire? I don't know. I don't know what you want to do, but I mean, it's something that is kind of like oh, I would love to give my opinion on that. And it's a simple one-click this or that, not a lot of choice and very strategic. And then you can move them out, but definitely give it some thought. And then, once you've set it up, once you can have them automatically running into that and you don't have to ever really look at it ever again.

Holly Darling: 36:04

And then running in and then it sorts people and then, as they do whatever you want them to do, it sorts them either back into your list or out of your list, and they don't even have to make that choice anymore. You can give them the unsubscribe option. But I say, just unsubscribe them for them and if they really want to be back on your list, they will find their way back on. Yeah, yeah. And the percentage of people.

Holly Darling: 36:29

I get a lot of people saying well, I have people who email me and complain. So I usually challenge them to say how many people have emailed you to complain. Is it one, is it two, is it five? Do you have a list of 20,000 people? You know, it's like if those, if 15,000 of those 20,000 are buying from you and these five people are not, but they're mad, you took them off your list, then you have some work to do on your marketing and just say, oh, I'll re-add you. You know that's no big deal, but list hygiene is more important than ever, especially with the new sending requirements. You want that really, really really low spam rate. One out of every thousand sends can have a spam marking and no more. So you need to get the people off your list who are like who the heck is this? I'm marking it a spam. You know it's like I've never seen that before. You need them off your list, you know, before they go ahead and mark you as spam and then your entire list is compromised.

Jenna Lee: 37:21

Sorry.

Holly Darling: 37:22

That was a big rant about re-engagement and list health. No, it's important.

Jenna Lee: 37:25

I think it's really important and like the whole automation thing, like that's such, like once you've set it up, once, like, yeah, that automation is key. And like, yeah, just so much better than like manual process. We don't have time for that, so automate everything that I love that.

Jenna Lee: 37:43

Now I'm going to end with, like, some emerging trends for 2024 when it comes to, like, email marketing. What, what do you see? That's sort of changing. I know we've talked about a big change at the minute but, like, is there anything that you sort of see coming in 2024 that we should be doing or adding into our emails? If talking about, like subject lines, what's going to be catchy and we've taught, yeah, we talk about content in emails but yeah, any last tips around to go with that?

Holly Darling: 38:13

Things that are going to be really important in 2024, some of them are unusual and some of them are very common sense. So the unusual ones would be things like accessibility. So as, especially, people that write books for an audience that are, say, 50 and over, you know the people that write emails with, like, say, a red background and like gold's letter, all these multiple colors inside of your email. And MailerLite has this really annoying default font color, which is gray, which is really hard to read. And as more countries come online with accessibility laws like I'm in Canada and we have an accessibility law everything that is digitally marketed needs to be able to be read by a reader. So some people have tools that screen and read their stuff and if it can't pick up some colors, or if you're reading an email outside on your phone and you can't see it, you're going to bounce right. You're like I'm out of here, I can't read this. So think about, specifically, the MailerLite drives me nuts, because if you change the default color to black, then you're solving 90% of that problem. But think about accessibility and then kind of going along with that is kind of deliverability, which means pay attention to your spam rates. Pay attention to the rates, the hard bounce, soft bounce, spam rates, unsubscribe I don't get too bothered with, but if it's super high all the time then you do have a problem. But if it's anywhere below 10%, consistently, it's fine. But spam rate soft and hard bounce are ones that are really indicative of the quality of the people that are on your list. So for deliverability, you also want to make sure that you're not always sending large images, lots of tons and tons of links and not a lot of text, and so really the biggest trend that I see for 2024 is not being lazy with your email marketing. So here's the cover, here's the link, here's the blurb I'm out of here. That just doesn't work and it won't work for many, many nuanced and layered reasons.

Holly Darling: 40:28

But people have busy inboxes and they're looking to connect with brands and whether that's author brands or clothing brands or whatever, they really want to connect with you and they can't, if you're just kind of slapping that on, but on the technical side of things, the Googles and the Yahoo's are not going to accept those kinds of emails anymore. They're like these have a lot of flashing lights and moving pictures, let's spam folders, spam folder, spam folder more than you've ever seen before, and a lot of people are already seeing that and saying what in the heck? Everything I have is going to spam because those filtration systems and Apple is set to get even harder, so they're holding a lot more emails, kind of I call it at the border. It's taking a long time for Apple to decide where to send your emails and they're really looking at how many links are here. Where are these links going to?

Holly Darling: 41:24

What senders are on your list? Have you purchased the list? Please don't purchase the list. The quality of your list is going to determine the success of your email marketing from this point forward.

Jenna Lee: 41:37

I love that and I think, yeah, making and I'm going to that's my main takeaway now making email marketing like top of my list in terms of like social media. If I look at marketing from that perspective, that's going to be my top of list for this year. And, yeah, actually, look at, you know, setting things up, what we talked about today, and, yeah, having a red, red, hot crack at it and, yeah, I think I think that's definitely going to pay off, more so than putting all my intention into social media, although I will, but I think email marketing is going to be top of my list for sure.

Holly Darling: 42:15

Yeah, I think having a strategy that Mary is the two of them but gives a lot more intention behind email marketing that people have in the past is really going to be important. But at the same time, I apologize for my dog. There's a tiny child delivering the newspaper At the same time. If you do that, your emails are going to start to earn you a ton of money. Right, and that's not a bad thing.

Jenna Lee: 42:44

Let's like leave it with that, like that's a good ending point, I think. Good quote to end with. Now, if people are interested, where can they find? I know you've got a lot of courses on email marketing. You've got you know stuff on your website. How can people find out more and maybe talk about one of your courses and programs where it's like the best place to start?

Holly Darling: 43:04

Sure, thanks, yeah, so I have a website, hollydarlenehqcom. You can find all of my courses and free content there, some of my kind of. If you're in MailerLite, I have a pretty comprehensive MailerLite program that runs how to use new and how to use classics. So both of those and they have some updates on the new Google requirements and more updates coming. I have how to use ConvertKit, which is my favorite email marketing service. But then I have this thing called Learn With Me Lessons. So if you have a smaller budget and a smaller time, which is most of us, there are just kind of many lessons Also deliverability, storytelling, cold sequences, warm sequences, that kind of stuff and segmentation. We didn't get into it, but that's like a whole conversation on its own, is its own little mini course too, and it will be. It can be very complicated and overwhelming, but it's kind of fun.

Jenna Lee: 43:57

We'll have. I'll have you back to talk about that on another episode.

Holly Darling: 44:01

Yeah.

Jenna Lee: 44:02

It would be cool yeah.

Holly Darling: 44:03

I'd love to yeah, or you can just join me in my. I have a private Facebook group that's for authors only, and it's the same thing. I'm a colleague at HQ. As a search tool, you'll find me on Instagram, tech Talk, my website and Facebook, and we'd love to have you.

Jenna Lee: 44:17

Yeah, amazing. Well, thank you so much for coming on. I love this chat. I've got so much homework. I know everyone that's listening will be writing lots of notes and have lots to do from this. So, yeah, I really appreciate you coming on and talking to us about email marketing.

Holly Darling: 44:31

Yeah, thanks. I talk a lot about it but I get super weirdly excited, so thank you for that.

Jenna Lee: 44:37

I love that. All right, we'll see you in the next chapter. Thanks for listening to the Daring Author podcast. If you love this episode, don't forget to subscribe and leave us a review, and if you are ready to grow your author business with the support of the Daring Press book in your free discovery pool today, before places fill up, and we'll see you in the next Daring episode.