Crafting quality emails during your ARC campaign is a critical step in order to boost your overall conversion of your ARC Sign up Funnel. There is a misconception though that the email requires images custom background color, unique fonts etc to convert the recipient into an ARC reader. This misconception in fact drives down deliverability of your emails and will send you straight into the spam folder. We'll cover some techniques in this post about drafting a quality email that will land in the reader's inbox.
Subject Lines
The art of subject line writing is straight forward if you follow the rules below.
- Don't misrepresent the email. If you're sending somebody a book just tell them plainly in the subject.
Avoid using ALL CAPS andor excessive punctuation like "YOUR ARC IS HERE!!!".
- The content of the subject should match the content of the email. If you're sending someone an ARC, don't try to market other things to them at the same time.
- Try to keep your subject between 40-60 character so the full subject is visible on mobile.
The Body
The body tends to be the most confusing aspect of quality email writing. Authors tend to want to over style the email. This means adding background colors, different colored fonts, multiple images, using excessive bold or italic. This level of customization is a clear signal to spam filters that says "Hey, a human did not write this!". This style, while "cute", will hurt your overall conversion rate. Keep customizations minimal.
If you do choose to add some styling to your email follow these guidelines.
- Do not add hidden text — white on a white background, or font-size: 0.
- Avoid link shorteners like tinyurl.com
- Keep content short and to the point
- If you want to send marketing content to the reader, use a separate email.
Including attachments is problematic. Many email systems limit the size of attachments in emails. The number usually lands around 20-25 MB. If you have a large book with many images in it, you won't be able to deliver the content this way. Using a system like Cabins Press that delivers a download link for readers is the preferable way to deliver books. It's just one less variable that could either block your email from sending or get it labeled as spam.
Closing Thoughts
Once you have your email or email campaign set up, test it out! Don't assume everything is going to be perfect the first go around. Send it to a few of your own email accounts just to see how it's going to look on your phone and on a desktop.