I’ve been using Instafreebie and MailerLite for over six months now and I can say, with all certainty, that these have been instrumental in growing a strong, healthy mailing list.
Both are excellent tools that any author building a list (and what self-respecting author wouldn’t be) should have in their marketing tool box.
No Mailing List is Not an Option
It has been said often but can never be overstated: To be a successful indie author, one must wear many hats: one of those being, the often loathed, business hat. A mailing list is your business’s life blood. Lifeblood is important.
It’s all about having control. Control is the main reason many authors chose the indie path. You can control your cover, your pricing, your marketing strategy, your content and the list goes on. So why not control who you sell to and how you sell to them? All the other areas where an indie author has control are peripheral when compared to control over one’s audience. Think about it. If one of the platforms you use to sell books suddenly decides to change something one day or decides to close your account due to a breach of terms of service (even if it was an honest mistake as Derek Murphy at Creativindie almost learned the hard way) the carpet could be swiped out from under you and your audience completely taken away.
Whereas, if you can contact your audience directly, you don’t have to rely solely on various sales platforms. This is where Instafreebie and MailerLite come in.
Instafreebie and MailerLite
Given that Instafreebie offers a one month free trial and MailerLite are free to use for the first 1000 users, there’s no reason not to try them at least. I’m confident you’ll be as impressed as I was, and continue to be with every new added feature.
For example, Instafreebie recently announced MailerLite integration. There were already many reasons to use both services, but this new feature was the icing on the cake. And who doesn’t like icing or cakes for that matter.
That I have dedicated a sizeable chunk of my book, Mailing List On Fire*, to Instafreebie-MailerLite integration says a lot in itself.
You may ask yourself why. Surely, it’s only integration. What’s the big deal? Well, let me tell you what the big deal is, my friend.
Time
This integration means you don’t have to manually copy your submission data time and again. This used to mean logging into your Instafreebie control panel, exporting a .csv file, logging into your MailerLite control panel, importing the .csv file and making sure everything was above board. That might not seem like a lot but say this took you five minutes and you did it twice a day. That’s seventy minutes a week. It still doesn’t sound like a lot? Put it this way. That’s more than a day a year. This is precious time that could be spent doing something else productive like writing.
Money
Indie authors place a lot of value on their time. And rightly so. Between writing, editing, design, management, business and countless other demands, it’s a wonder we can squeeze in any amount of marketing. For this reason, I used to pay for a third-party tool to automate data transfer between the two services. This was costly but Instafreebie-MailerLite integration now negates that cost.
Discount
It goes without saying that indie authors also value their hard-earned cash. With book covers, editing, blurbs and ads being only some of the things we need to pay for, every dollar helps.
So, when it was announced that those using both services would receive a 30% discount on whatever MailerLite plan they were on… Well, it was a no-brainer. For more details on the discount, go here.
Instafreebie and MailerLite Vision
Instafreebie has always demonstrated a commitment to helping authors. Their aim is to accelerate great stories and big ideas. MailerLite is also driven by a passion for supporting authors. It is clear that both companies have closely aligned missions, which can only benefit the indie author community.
You can see this in the way both services are designed. They are innovative and user friendly. Gathering submissions through Instrafreebie and contacting those submissions via MailerLite campaigns is a breeze.
You can learn more about Instafreebie-MailerLite over at InstaFreebie.
*Mailing List On Fire will be released this Summer.