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How To Build Your Email List Using Free Ebooks
Despite the importance that #social media plays in the success of a small #business, an email list is just as an important tool for effective communication with your customers or clients. The main challenge stems from growing your list in the first place!
A very easy and proven way to grow your list is by offering free ebooks as an incentive for people to sign up to your email list. Obviously, this is not a new concept, and it relies on permission #marketing, but as long as you are offering a quality ebook to your prospective customers, it can still be a very effective way to attract new customers or followers.
The main point of this is to create and give away an ebook that has real value to your niche readers, because if you offer them something sub-par, then you will end up damaging your credibility and reputation in people’s eyes. If you offer something of poor value, you will find that any sign-up you attract through your ebook will just as quickly unsubscribe when they discover the truth.
What if I cannot write an ebook?
Don’t worry if you don’t feel you are up to the task of writing your own ebook, or that you simply cannot afford the time to create one. There are plenty of options available to you to get your free ebook put together for free, or at a very reasonable cost by using a freelance writer.
You will still need a plan for your book though, and you will want to make a list of what content you desire. Whether you choose to write the book yourself or not, you must include whatever you have that is of value to your audience for it to be successful.
The quickest, easiest and cheapest way to create your own ebook is to re-use the material that you already have on your company blog. Think about it for a moment – if you have been running your blog for quite a while, you will already have plenty of valuable articles on there that you can re purpose, and as many articles are missed by regular readers, and older articles unread by new readers, not all of the information that you include will have been seen by everyone before.
If you are a little unsure about what to include, then try to focus on one of the main problems that your clients or customers face that you can provide a solution for, then base your book on that. Your book will appeal to people in your niche that are experiencing the same problem, and they will be happy to exchange their email address for a quick solution.
You may find that you are asked the same or similar questions over again on social media, so you will understand that a free book that answers these questions will more than likely go down a storm when you offer it to your followers through your social media platforms. This is a great way to entice your social media fans and followers into signing up for your email list.
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How large should my ebook be?
This is a question that often confuses some business owners. Many will think that you have to offer pages and pages for it to be considered valuable by a reader, but more often than not it is quality over quantity that really counts.
Think of it from a customer point of view – would you rather be given a ten-page ebook that is packed full of very useful information that really helps, or a magnum opus of a book with a hundred pages to wade through to glean the information that you need.
Writing your book, or putting it together from existing content is one thing, but how do you turn this into an actual ebook?
It is quite easy to turn pages of text into a PDF file from MS Word or even Google Docs that you can email out to people, and as long as you keep the size of the book under 10MB you readers shouldn’t experience any difficulty downloading and opening it. It is advisable to edit your book to make sure you use the same font and text size throughout, except for heading and sub-headings, to make it easier on the eye and simple to read. It is up to you whether you want to include some hi-res images in your book and give it a fancy cover, but at the end of the day it is the quality of the free information that is important.
Once your eBook is ready, you’ll be ready to set up your auto-responder.
Make sure your readers understand that they have to make it all the way through the double opt-in process before they are given their attachment or link to your free ebook. This is easy to do with most programmes such as MailChimp where you follow the guide for setting up your welcome emails and give instructions to complete the sign-up. Ensure you have got Google Analytics tied in so you can keep track of downloads and interactions.
Push your sign-up form
Make sure your free ebook sign up form is everywhere! Include it on your website home page, on your blog, create a post about your free ebook with the link to your sign up form and pin it to the top of your social media sites too. Include a link in your email signature so it is at the end of every email you send. Blog about your free ebook and encourage your blog readers to share your post with their peers so they can get their own free copy too.
Don’t forget to include your existing email subscribers. You don’t want them to miss out on your free ebook simply because they have already signed up previously, so send out a newsletter to them to announce your free ebook and give it to them as a special gift to thank them for their loyalty.
As time goes on, you may find that you can update your existing ebook with fresh material from your blog, then push the book all over again as an updated version of your original offering, or you could write a whole new ebook that focusses on providing a solution to a completely different issue or problem that your clients or customers are experiencing. In time you could have a whole series of ebooks to offer that could be bundled together and given away, or used as a prize for a contest, or even sold for a small charge either in print or made into a course.
There are so many uses for free ebooks, but they have proven to be a very effective way to entice people to sign up to your email list first and foremost. I you need any help and guidance about creating your free ebook, then why not book a free consultation with us today.
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