How to promote your research via email

If you’re wondering whether you should include email in your promotional toolkit, here are some of the many reasons why you should take advantage of all it has to offer:

• Email allows you to easily keep in touch with people: Email is a great way to keep in touch with those who are already interested in your work and want to learn more about you and what projects you are working on.
• It’s a very simple tool: With email, all you essentially need to do is write in order to connect with your readers. While there is the option these days to include graphics and more in your emails, these additional features are not a requirement.
• It’s extremely cost-effective: Unlike social media and other online advertising, you usually don't have to spend any money and still effectively communicate with your audience.

Promotion of your book via email is not only simple, but provides you with multiple options as to how you want to structure your email. Some of the most common types of email content used in email marketing are:

• Newsletters: Keep readers up to date with the goings on in your career with a newsletter. In order to stay top-of-mind with your readers, a more regular email schedule is recommended.
• E-Mails with added value: This could include a reference to a special offer for one of your books or information about upcoming webinars or conferences. Sharing other information that is likely to interest your target audience is also a good way to keep in touch.
• Brand stories: These are stories about your “brand” and how it’s progressed or evolved. Many readers find the human element and story behind their favourite authors highly engaging.

Before you launch your campaign promoting your latest book, it’s important that you ensure you comply with any relevant privacy legislation. In 2019, the EU put its new General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) laws into effect. GDPR introduced new laws that offered much greater protection for an individual’s personal data, such as an email address or an individual’s browsing habits on a social network, and how it could be used. After the EU introduced GDPR, many other countries in Europe, Latin America, the Caribbean, Asia and Africa, took steps to introduce similar legislation.

The USA is unique in that it hasn't taken quite the same steps in regards to the protection of individuals’ personal information online, however some sectors in the US have adopted additional legislation to protect people’s personal data

Before you spend hours crafting messages for your campaign, here are the most important dos and don’ts.

Do

• Review and adhere to all laws and regulations around data protection and privacy.
• Set up the necessary tools to track your campaign so you can better understand reader engagement.
• Fix a name for your campaign so you can easily identify it later.
• Build an email template – most email marketing tools have pre-designed templates which you can adapt to suit your needs.
• Decide who your message is aimed at and plan your message accordingly.
• Ensure your email features a clear “call to action” and, if necessary, include an “offer ends” date to help drive conversions.

Don’t

• Don’t write overly long messages – the secret is to keep your writing punchy and compelling.
• Send your newsletters regularly, but not too often. Otherwise you run the risk of being considered spam.

As a publisher, we can assist by providing you with the necessary media for your promotion. This includes high-resolution images of your book covers, banner adverts, teaser material for the content for the book such as the cover image, table of contents and a sample chapter, links for special promotions, and sample copies of your book or a chapter.

All the best with your email campaign!