In the last episode of Kidlit Marketing Made Easy(er), we looked at best practices of creating an opt-in for your author newsletter. We now know why it’s important to be very clear about what people can expect from you in your newsletter and how often they can expect it from you.
But is that enough to help visitors to your website decide to sign up for your newsletter?
It could be, but sometimes they might need a little extra something to capture their attention and build their trust in you. What could that secret sauce be? The freebie, of course! You may be more familiar with the terms incentive, lead magnet, sign-up gift or the delicious cookie and carrot, but at the end of the day, they’re all the same thing. But what is a freebie exactly?
What’s a freebie?
In simple terms, a freebie is a bonus that subscribers get from you when they sign up to your author newsletter. There are three important reasons why it’s a good idea to offer a freebie with your opt-in:
- Freebies build trust and value
- Freebies help you target your ideal reader
- Freebies boost sign-ups
Freebies build trust and value
When you offer potential subscribers a value-packed freebie in exchange for their email address, you begin building trust by showing them that you care about what they’re interested in. Remember that way back in episode #1 of this podcast called What is Book Marketing Anyway?, we saw that marketing is all about creating connections and making friends with people based on mutual interests. While your newsletter’s content is meant to create that connection by offering value, a freebie is a gift to a potential subscriber to thank them for signing up and cements the relationship you want to have with them. It shows that you’re not only about taking, but also about giving.
Freebies help you target your ideal reader
As a serious author of kidlit, you’re not looking for just anyone to sign up to your newsletter – you want the right people to be on your list. In children’s literature, there are categories of readers. While you might be delighted to have a new subscriber, they won’t be getting any value from your newsletter if you write picture books and they’re interested in middle-grade. So, a freebie helps you find the people who are genuinely interested in what you have to offer by making it very clear what you are offering. Basically, a freebie gives them a taste of what’s to come and makes sure you’re attracting the right people to your author newsletter.
You may be wondering if it’s important that you have just the right people on your list, and the answer to that question is a resounding YES for two reasons: First, depending on the email service provider you’re using, you may be paying per subscriber. Why pay for someone who never opens your emails because they’re not interested in your category of kidlit? Second, an uninterested subscriber could spam you instead of unsubscribing or simply never open your emails. This will affect your deliverability to those subscribers who are interested in your newsletter. So, what you’re aiming for is to a have a small, but engaged, list of the right people, not a huge list full of people who don’t care about you and what you write, and a freebie can help with that goal.
Freebies boost sign-ups
While we saw in the last episode of Kidlit Marketing Made Easy(er) that creating a clear and informative opt-in goes a long way to helping visitors to your website decide if they want to sign up to your newsletter, a freebie can seal the deal and convert visitors to subscribers. Conversion is the number of people that sign up for your newsletter in relation to how many visitors you get to your website, and statistics show that a well-crafted freebie can boost your conversion rate by a whopping 50% to 200%! So, while you don’t have to offer a freebie as incentive for people to sign up to your newsletter, they do help people make that step if they’re hesitating.
What types of freebies can I create for my author newsletter?
You may be wondering what goes into a freebie? The good news is that you don’t need to spend hours or money creating one. The two most important ingredients for a great freebie are value and entertainment. Your freebie doesn’t need to have both of these elements but it does need to have at least one.
Here are some examples of truly useful and valuable freebies you can offer potential subscribers as an author of kidlit:
- your book’s first chapter
- a bonus chapter that doesn’t appear in your book but narrates a scene that happened off-page and was only hinted at in your book
- colouring pages, riddles or puzzles linked to your book and its characters
- printable bookmarks or posters
- an important scene in your book told from a different character’s point of view
- worksheets or quizzes with answers if your book is nonfiction
- a guide linked to the theme of your book, for example: a simple guide on how to train dogs if your books is about a dog
- back matter that didn’t make it into the book
- a short lesson on how to draw something if you’re an author illustrator
- a recipe to make food that features in your book
- a simple exercise in being mindful or managing anxiety if your book deals with social emotional learning topics like these
- an exclusive video, podcast episode or MP3 recording of a workshop, exercise, activity or lesson linked to the theme of your book
I could go on and on; there are as many ideas as there are humans on this planet capable of thinking of them! I’ll put links in the show notes on my website under the podcast tab to my opt-ins which offer freebies if you’d like to have a look at what I offer and what they look like*.
Some important tips about freebies
- While freebies are great for helping new visitors decide if they want to hear from you whenever you send out a newsletter, don’t forget your current subscribers! Whenever you create a freebie, make sure to give it to the people who already love hearing from you. They deserve it too.
- Don’t go overboard with creating your freebie. Keep it short and easy to read. Anything longer than one or two pages is overkill, both for you and for your subscribers. A freebie is a taste of what you have to offer, it’s not the whole cake.
- Freebies don’t need to be fancy. As long as they’re easy to consume in whatever form you’re offering them, they’ll be valuable. Checklists, PDFs and worksheets are easy to create on Canva or in Word, don’t cost you a cent and deliver content to your subscribers in a way they can benefit from them without having to download complex apps and print out hundreds of pages. Keep it simple!
That’s it for today’s episode of Kidlit Marketing Made Easy(er). I hope I’ve sparked some ideas for your freebie. Remember that you don’t have to create one but they do provide visitors to your website with a reason to sign up to your author newsletter and lay the groundwork for a trusting connection between you and the people who want to hear from you.
In the next episode, we’ll be diving into how you can grow your author newsletter and get more subscribers. Until then, have a great summer!
Links
- Kidlit Marketing Made Easy(er)
- Show notes to the podcast episodes on my website
- Creating an Opt-In for Your Author Newsletter
- What is Book Marketing Anyway?
- 24 Content Ideas for Your Author Newsletter*
- Ask a Child to Be Your Beta Reader: Free Feedback Form*
- Free Guide: Book Marketing for Kidlit Authors*
- 44 Children’s and Teen Magazines Looking for Writers*
- Free Starter Kit for Beginner Rhymers of Children’s Poetry*
*links to my freebies
