How to Build an Email List of 500 Subscribers in a Month
By: Shaunta Grimes
Tags: Writing, Creativity, Productivity, Business, Email Marketing

I’ve made a decision.

2021 is going to be the year I finally, finally, go all in on trying to make self-publishing a thing in my life.

My plan is simple. I’m going to publish romance novels. They’re my first love. I found my traditional publishing niche in children’s literature, but I started out to be a romance writer.

I decided to go with a pen name for a couple of reasons.

Reason one: see children’s literature. I don’t want to write both middle grade books and smut with the same name.

Reason two: I’m a teacher at heart and I want to be able to teach the things I’m learning to other people. That means starting from scratch and doing things that can be recreated. I don’t want to mess up my experiments by using my own already-established audience.

So, I have a pen name. And a month ago, I created a brand new email list. You know — with zero subscribers.

Photo: Author

So, there’s a screenshot of my Convertkit subscriber chart.

Here’s what I did in the last month to build my email list.

Offer a Little More

What you can see is that I started the account on November 4, so exactly a month ago. It’s hard to see but I had three sporadic followers between November 4 and November 16.

Those are actually some of my favorites, because they represent people who read one of my stories and really liked it.

I put a link to an expanded epilogue at the back of my first published short read. And three people out of the ten or so who actually bought the book downloaded it and made it onto my list.

That’s 30 percent, ya’ll. Yay! It’s a good indication that my landing page at the back of my books will do okay, when I have more readers entering my funnel.

What to do:

When you put work out into the world, always have a way of capturing readers who enjoyed it.

For fiction, a little more story is a great idea. An expanded epilogue, like I did, is one idea. You can also write a short story that answers a question or tells the story of a popular secondary character.

Another idea is to just have a generic free story that you offer readers who might have enjoyed what they just read. This is a good idea, for when you don’t have time to write a new story.

Ask Your Friends

There’s a little blip at November 16. That represents me posting a little note on my personal Facebook wall that said simple this:

Who do I know who reads romance books?

About fifteen people either liked my post or left a comment. I PM’d each of them and told them that I have a new pen name and I’m publishing romance — it’s a secret, but would they be interested in joining my email list?

If they said yes (they all did), I asked for their email address and then added them to my list manually.

What to do:

Just what I did. Ask a pointed question, designed to find out who you know who is interested in what you’re up to.

I wanted to make sure I only added romance readers to my list, because I’m trying to preserve my Amazon also boughts (I don’t want Amazon’s algorithm to get mixed up about what people who buy my book are also interested in.)

Rather than just posting a landing page link to Facebook (although, why not try that, too?) You can ask a question that is designed to bring your friends who really might be interested in what you’re doing out of the woodwork.

Then reach out to each of them personally. Get their email address and add them yourself.

This is a nice first step to building your list, because it’s pretty much guaranteed to work. And I promise, going from zero to a few subscribers is a good boost.

Think About Where You Might Already Have Some Subscribers

You’ll notice a big old spike in my subscribers on November 24. That was about 280 subscribers.

After pretty much a whole week of not adding anyone and feeling sorry for myself, I started to think about where I might already have some emails I can add to my list.

I remembered that three years ago, I’d added a short story to a site called Prolific Works. It was a romance story, so I knew that the people who downloaded it were romance readers.

They were people who found it because they were looking for a romance story to read.

So — full disclosure. Adding people who two or three years ago downloaded a story from a different pen name isn’t ever going to lead to a super healthy, engaged email list.

Because those people likely don’t remember joining any list and for sure not my pen name’s list. But I added them anyway, then sent an email out letting them know what I’d done, linking them to my book on Amazon, and inviting them to unsubscribe if they didn’t want to be on my list.

Fifty took me up on that. And only about 10 percent even opened my email.

Here’s what I’m planning to do about it: This week, I’m going to tag all those folks in Convertkit. I’ll email them and ask them to click a link if they WANT to stay, then remove everyone else at the end of a week. It’ll shrink my list, but leave me with something healthier.

I anticipate that the vast majority of this group of subscribers will be removed.

BUT, I’m not sorry I did this. Because having an email list of 250 or so really lit a fire under my butt. I wanted more, so I started thinking about how to get more.

Another place I might have found subscribers, but I won’t because I’m trying to preserve my experiment, is in my Ninja Writers list. I could write a blog post designed to figure out which of my followers read romance books, then send the link in an email, and finally send the people who click that link a landing page to join my new list.

What to do:

Think about where you might already have subscribers you can seed your list with.

It might seem on first glance that you’re doomed if you don’t have something like this. Trust me, I’m only including this because you might have some subscribers laying around and I don’t want you to forget about them. But all isn’t lost if you don’t.

Of all my new subscribers, these are the least effective and I expect to remove the vast majority of them in the next week or two.

Host a Giveaway

Starting on December 1 in my chart, you’ll see a steady influx of subscribers. Those are folks who joined my list via a giveaway I’m currently hosting.

I spent some time thinking about what I could offer that would be valuable to readers of my genre, but wouldn’t be so generic that I’d wind up with a bunch of subscribers who only wanted to win my prize, but otherwise would never engage with me.

So, something like a Kindle or a gift card to Amazon wouldn’t work.

I realized that people who read my genre are voracious readers and they tend to read on e-readers and are almost always Kindle Unlimited subscribers. Because they read so much that buying hard copies of all their books would be too expensive.

So I decided to choose five popular titles and offer paperback copies in my giveaway. I called it a Book Boyfriend giveaway and added in . . . um . . . another kind of boyfriend.

Screenshot: author

I’m five days into a seven day giveaway and I’ve added more than 300 subscribers to my list.

Screenshot: author

When I sent another email to my list, my open rate increased to 23 percent. That’s pretty much industry standard and includes those subscribers who will eventually be removed from my list.

I put some money into this method. For me, it was important to get my email list off the ground and I was willing (and able) to invest in it.

I bought King Sumo for a onetime $49 payment. And I’ll buy those books and the, uh, other thing, which I anticipate will cost about $100. And then I bought some Facebook ads.

I’ve spent $50 a day on ads. In all, I’ll spend $350 on advertising my giveaway.

So a total of $500.

I love King Sumo, because it rewards people for sharing your giveaway with more entries. It also gives more entries for things like following social media. As a result of my giveaway, besides adding more than 300 email subscribers so far, I’ve built my Instagram and Facebook followers by about the same amount.

I didn’t set up Twitter until three days in, but it’s built up some as well.

Obviously, I could have built my list faster with a bigger ad spend. And I could have spent much less and still built some list. You can run a Facebook ad for as little as $1 a day.

You can also find free places to advertise your giveaway. I’ve added mine to Facebook groups dedicated to my genre, when it’s allowed. I have NOT shared it with my friends because I’m really trying to keep my pen name secret.

What to do:

Come up with a prize that will appeal to exactly the folks you want on your list, and host a giveaway.

Be really thoughtful about your prize. You want it to be something valuable — to the people you want to attract.

You’ll want to have your social media accounts set up for this, too. Because if you use King Sumo, you can use your giveaway to build those as well. Set them up and get a little content up in them.

I spent about two weeks starting up my Facebook and Instagram accounts. I wish I’d set up my Twitter account as well. I honestly didn’t think I was going to do Twitter at all, but changed my mind three days in.

Put aside some money to pay for Facebook ads for this one, if you can. Even if it’s just $20. It’ll make a difference. And share your giveaway link everywhere you can think to.

Offer a Reader Magnet

A reader magnet is just what it sounds like: a free read that draws readers to you.

I used a site called Story Origin to host my reader magnet. I did that around the same time I started my giveaway. Story Origin is in beta — and it has been for a long, long time — so it’s totally free right now.

In the last four days I’ve added 25 people to my email list via my reader magnet.

Screenshot: Author

I used a novella that I wrote a long time ago as my reader magnet. At some point I may remove it and put it up for sale, but for now I’m happy to give it away.

Story Origin is a site for all kinds of writers. You can put a reader magnet up there no matter your genre — including non-fiction.

In addition, you can join newsletter swaps and other people’s giveaways or sales.

What to do:

Head over to Story Origin and join. Create a reader magnet and get it up on the site. Once you have some people on your email list, start looking for newsletter swaps and giveaways you can join.

You can add your reader magnet to Prolific Works, too, by the way. It took me about three years to give away 280 copies, but it’s not nothing!

Wrap-Up

I started from scratch with a pen name and a brand new Convertkit account on November 4, 2020. I’m writing this post on December 4, 2020, one month later.

I used a free account at Convertkit — which allows me up to 2000 followers before I have to start paying. I can’t do automated emails with a free account, but for my purposes (building an email list for my fiction that I’m just barely starting to publish), that’s okay.

I can send a single automated incentive email with my opt-in attached, even with a free account.

I spent $100 on the items to offer as a prize in a giveaway and spent another $350 in ads and paid $49 for King Sumo, to host the giveaway. A total of $499.

I currently have 561 email subscribers, one month after starting to build that list. I’ll come back in another month for another update, where I’ll also be able to let you know whether the list made a difference when I launch a new book.