I discovered the power of a targeted mailing list when my book shot to the top of Amazon’s best-seller list for business law books on the day it was published. A new book on cemetery and crematorium law was also an unlikely best seller. Hardly a mass market. But it had a couple of things going for it.
Until the book went into print in June 2021, nothing had been written on cemetery and crematorium law for almost 20 years. The industry standard had always been Davies Law of Burial and Cremation, but that hadn’t been published since 2002 and there is still no indication as to when the next edition will come out. In the meantime, something had to be written to fill the gap.
The second thing was that the marketing of this book had been specifically targeted to those in the cemetery and crematorium industries, who were most likely to need it. The book itself had been commissioned by the Institute of Cemetery and Crematorium Management, which represents this industry, and which meant that I had access to its mailing list.
Within minutes of the mail shots going out, the orders started coming in. More than 100 books were sold on the first day. Over the following months, sales of the book tapered off as the market became saturated. But it is still making sales.
At £39.00 for the paperback, the book was not cheap. But by law-book standards, it was not overpriced.
A 900-strong mailing list might seem miniscule compared with the 60,000 strong mailing lists boasted by some writers. If only! But I’m not complaining.
The book reached the people it was intended to reach. Although I only had access to the ICCM mailing list, there will of course also be other mailing lists for a book of this type. For example: funeral directors.
If you are thinking of putting together a mailing list, there are some things which you need to watch out for.
You can’t just throw together a list of email addresses without breaking data protection law. And the penalties for that can be severe. The essence of data protection is that you can only use somebody’s personal information if they have expressly given you permission to do so. And they can withdraw that consent at any time. One way of making sure that you don’t fall foul of data protection legislation is to use a compliant platform such Mailchimp. It won’t cost you anything.
Nor was it a problem for me, as the recipients of the mail shot were already signed up members of the institute and receiving bulletins on a daily basis. And judging by the volume of take-up, it was well received.
BRUCE AND HOLLY 