Wednesday, February 25, 2009

How Email Marketing and Guest Blogging Worked for Me

Yesterday was such a crazy, crazy day. I've got only a few days left before the March authors need to be out in the cyberworld and instead I was playing around with email marketing. I figured it's good to learn these things, you know?

What happened was I was a guest blogger at Denyse Bridger's Fantasy Pages. Denyse said she and Heather were going to be promoting it in groups, so I decided I'd try to bring in some hits from my email contact list. I didn't get very far because I have so many contacts, but what I did get through resulted in several things happening. I was able to contact past clients who was able to come over and give their input on their experiences, but I also reconnected with an old friend who started out as a publicist for a very high ranking publishing firm we'll just call Judy.

Judy had left the old publishing firm months ago and we lost contact. Her email address she was using was picked up by the head of this old publishing firm and who I had to deal with instead of Judy as far as getting payment and signing up new authors. It wasn't the same. Not that he wasn't cordial; he just wasn't Judy.

I must have had another email address for Judy that I didn't know about but she was one in which I sent promo to about this talk over at Denyse Bridger's Fantasy Pages.

What resulted in that was our friendship was reunited. I had no idea what happened to her, but was delighted to learn she was now working for a new publisher and not only was she signing up for a tour for her and her sister, she was going to see what she could do about getting this new publisher signed on with us. But, here's even greater news...I saw a book on the publisher's website and asked if she could check to see if I could review it. This is the book. It's like O.M.G.
Yes, it's being sent to me!

While all this in itself is enough to keep me on Cloud 9 forever, I also sold a tour and have others requesting applications.

Now, if I can do this at just one stop and the authors on tour have approximately 20 stops, what will happen for them?

We all learn and this was a major breakthrough. I wore the author's shoes yesterday and it was really fun and eye-opening. I'm going to be doing more guest spots and interviews in the upcoming weeks to see if I can't find the secret to selling books, but it's all about the exposure.

Well, gotta run, I now have a lot of catch up to do!

4 comments:

  1. Good reminder. Sometimes you need to be a guest and not a host. I'm so busy I often lose sight of that or decide to wait until later.
    Congrats on your good fortune.

    Morgan Mandel
    http://morganmandel.blogspot.com

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  2. Sounds like you have been busy! Glad to hear things are going well with you and I hope this really helps promote things for you. Best of Luck!

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  3. WOW!! I am so excited and thrilled for you! I am just bouncing with happiness, lol! That is so great to reconnect with an old friend! It sounds as though you should have grabbed a lotto ticket yesterday, lol!!

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  4. Interesting. You never know what a blog post can bring, can't you? :-)

    Mayra

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