This ebook launch strategy is divided into two halves: pre-launch and launch day.
The idea is to warm up a list of contacts around a week before the launch day, so you can get a better reaction when it comes to the 'ask'.
Here's how to collate, contact and get results from your list before the ebook is even out.
Your mentioned contacts are going to be your biggest advocates. They have something to gain from promoting your ebook, so they're likely to go for it without much resistance!
Create a spreadsheet of all of your mentions and either:
Here's what your spreadsheet might look like:
Buzzsumo's influencer search is a quick way of finding the Twitter profiles of influencers in your niche. Just search for your keyword, create a new outreach list and add everyone who looks like they'd be a good fit -- this is easy to tell by their Twitter bio, usually.
Add them to the spreadsheet, but makes sure tag to them differently so you can easily segment them in your CRM. Again, you're going to have to manually find the emails. I'd highly suggest a VA for this, because it can take AGES.
Your hook for these two different segments will vary - for mentioned contacts, they're going to care mostly about the fact that they're spotlighted in your book, so that's the main aim of the email.
Here's a template I used for this launch:
Hey [Name],
Benjamin again from the Process Street blog. I’m getting in touch to let you know [Company] is mentioned in our new ebook about business process automation.
It’s not strictly out yet — there’s nowhere you can get it on the internet, but I thought you’d get a lot out of it so I’m giving you a private link and hoping you’ll offer your feedback. 🙂
[link to your PDF]
If you like it, do you mind if I send you the official page when it’s out next week?
Cheers!
Note: I said 'Benjamin again' because the mentioned contacts have all been emailed before. The ebook is a collation of 5 blog posts, and I sent one email to each the week before telling them they'd been mentioned. This helps open rates because they know who I am already.
The idea here is to give the influencers a free copy, and ask them what they think. If they like, they'll hopefully share the landing page when it's out. Here's my template for this case:
Hey [name],
I’m Benjamin from the Process Street blog. I’m getting in touch to get feedback from you an ebook about business process automation we’ve been working hard on.
It’s not strictly out yet — there’s nowhere you can get it on the internet, but I thought you’d get a lot out of it so I’m giving you a private link and hoping you’ll offer your feedback. 🙂
[link to your PDF]
If you like it, do you mind if I send you the official page when it’s out next week?
Cheers!
Once it's in spreadsheet form, it's really easy to import contacts into your CRM of choice. Our CRM of choice is Close.io, and we mapped the 'tag' column to the 'note' field for each lead.
By searching for the tag, you should be able to pull up the separate lists of mentioned contacts and influencers.
Format your templates with the proper tags (replace [first name] with {{contact.first_name}} or whatever it is in your case), then hit 'bulk email'.
When you send your email and ask 'Would you like me to send you the final page when it's out?', you're bound to get a number of people saying yes.
To keep track of this, tag them in your CRM with something like #send[keyword]ebook.
Make sure you make it unique, because in the future you don't want to get confused when you inevitably launch another ebook!
After a week, anyone who was planning on asking you for the final landing page has already done so. You'll be left with a big list of people who haven't replied, or strictly said that they want the book. Here's what to do:
The ones who asked for your landing page are your warmest contacts. You'll find them tagged with the note you gave them in step 8.
Here's the template I used for this segment:
Hey [first name],
Thanks so much for the interest in our ebook, The Ultimate Guide to Business Process Automation with Zapier.
Here’s a link to the landing page for the final copy, where you can direct people to get the PDF, ePub, or a .zip of both files: https://www.process.st/business-process-automation-guide/
And click here for a quick ‘click to tweet’ link if you fancy sharing it.
Have a fantastic day!
Everyone who didn't open your outreach email gets another one sending them the final page.
Here's mine:
Hey {{contact.first_name}},
You might have missed this, but I feel like it’d be interesting for you so I thought I’d send you the official announcement.
A few hours ago we launched our first ebook, “The Ultimate Guide to Business Process Automation with Zapier”.
You can check out the book here.
I feel like it’d be useful for you for a couple of reasons.
1. It’s always good to educate your audience about Zapier, since it’s such an amazing productivity tool.
2. If you or your audience aren’t optmizing for business process automation yet, this will be really useful.
We’d love it if you could share it. (Here’s a link to tweet if you want to save some time).
Cheers!
Note: to bring up this segment, you're going to want to filter your leads like this:
Very similar to 'you might have missed this', but this one is aimed at the leads who opened or replied to your original outreach but didn't say they wanted the final link.
Here's what I used:
Hey {{contact.first_name}},
I didn't hear back from you earlier this week, but thought I'd send you the official announcement. 🙂
A few hours ago we launched our first ebook, "The Ultimate Guide to Business Process Automation with Zapier".
You can check out the book here.
I feel like it'd be useful for you for a couple of reasons.
1. It's always good to educate your audience about Zapier, since it's such an amazing productivity tool.
2. If you or your audience aren't optmizing for business process automation yet, this will be really useful.
We'd love it if you could share it. (Here's a link to tweet if you want to save some time).
Cheers!
Note: to bring up this segment, you're going to want to filter your leads like this:
Like I said in the past two steps, you're now catching everyone who didn't say they didn't want the landing page.
Since you've probably got a huge list of contacts for your launch, it's not reasonable to assume you've tagged all of them. It's best to build search queries.
Your other two segments will be:
Here's what I put into Close.io to get each group:
Didn't open:
(email_template:[cold-email-template] OR email_template:[influencer-email-template] OR email_template:[mentioned-email-template]) (last_email_opened:no) (NOT note:#sendzapierebook) (NOT emailed:today)
Opened, didn't ask:
(email_template:[cold-email-template] OR email_template:[influencer-email-template] OR email_template:[mentioned-email-template]) (last_email_opened:yes) (NOT note:#sendzapierebook) (NOT emailed:today)
On launch day, Product Hunt accounted for over half of our total traffic to the landing page. Submissions are self-explanatory, but here are a few tips:
Depending on how relevant it is, you'll want to check out these other social bookmarking sites:
Since these folks are already on your list, you don't need to bother them with getting them to put their email in to get the book. Just give them a direct download link along with a Click to Tweet, to hope that they
There you have it. This is the exact strategy we used here at Process Street to launch our first ebook: The Complete Guide to Business Process Automation with Zapier. It's a guide to automating the stuff you hate doing at work.
This strategy got us 1,000 downloads and 746 subscribers over the initial launch period alone, and we're still getting the boost of subscribers as the days roll on.
Best of luck with it!
