Start Spreading The News: Booksellers on Measuring Their Newsletters’ Reach

Newsletters remain a vital link between booksellers, customers, and members of the local community. Last week, five experienced booksellers discussed the basics of a bookstore newsletter –– building a readership, establishing a publication schedule, and developing content and tone. This week, they address selling or trading ad space, as well as what happens after the newsletter is sent –– how they measure its reach and receive customer feedback.

Advertising

Tempe, Arizona’s Changing Hands and Bookshop Santa Cruz, in Santa Cruz, California, regularly include advertisements in their newsletters.

Changing Hands borrowed the idea of building advertising space into its e-mails from Books & Books, which has several store locations in Florida, said Changing Hands Marketing Director Brandon Stout. Changing Hands primarily uses ads to barter with other local cultural organizations, including the Phoenix Opera, the Phoenix Symphony, and the area’s local NPR affiliate.

Many of the customers of the bookstore are likely to be interested in cultural events happening throughout the area, said Stout, and “what we’ve decided to do is monetize the fact that indie booksellers have amazing subscriber bases.

“We have built this rich list of people who are not just interested in books,” he said, “it’s a very powerful bartering tool.”

As part of the bartering agreement that Changing Hands has with the Arizona Republic, Phoenix’s widely circulated newspaper, the bookstore is able to place ads on their website that would otherwise be cost prohibitive. “The ad hits from them are astonishing,” said Stout.

Changing Hands does not sell many ads but they are able to use promotion opportunities as currency. When setting up advertising for an event at the bookstore, Stout will offer local organizations a free ad for a month, and, in turn, the bookstore will receive ads in their publications.

Changing Hands does not advertise a bartering option, and it does not offer the option to everyone. “We know our reach and our cultural impact. To barter with someone else, it has to be a mutually beneficial agreement.”

At Bookshop Santa Cruz, ad space for the store’s monthly magazine-style print newsletter is sold to local stores to offset production costs. The money earned from paid advertisements, as well as co-op funds from publishers, pays for the entire cost of printing the newsletter, said store owner Casey Coonerty Protti.

The bookstore has about 40 local businesses and nonprofits that regularly advertise in the newsletter.  Bookshop Santa Cruz does a handful of trades with local professionals or such organizations as the local daily newspaper, local theater, and music festivals, and the store’s copy editor trades her own editing services for ad space. This significantly helps with the store’s own marketing, said owner Coonerty Protti.

Hosting and Analytics

When Changing Hands switched from using Constant Contact to Mailchimp to host the store’s newsletter, it received positive feedback, said Stout. Customers said that the newsletters were better organized and generally more aesthetically pleasing, and Changing Hands benefited from the switch, too, he noted. The store was able to better measure their e-mails’ analytics through Mailchimp, and when a customer unsubscribed from the newsletter, Mailchimp asked customers to select a reason why they were opting out.

The most popular reason for unsubscribing given by customers was that they were following the store on Facebook. “And that was okay,” said Stout, “Because that means they’re still interested in following us.”

When it comes to deciding when is the best time to distribute Changing Hands’ newsletter, Stout often looks at its open rates, to see if there was a particular day or time that more people seemed to read it.

“As much as I’d like to say there’s a clear pattern, there’s really not,” he said. “What’s really important is maximizing the impact of subject line.”

Harvard Book Store, in Cambridge, Massachusetts, uses Constant Contact and makes some use of the host’s analytics, said Marketing Manager Rachel Cass. “We keep track of open rates, and click rates to see which books and events people are most interested in. We have also played with what day or time of day works best, but, over time, I have found that consistency is more important than a particular time of day.”

BookPeople, in Austin, Texas, also uses Constant Contact to send and track e-mails. Additionally, the store has its e-newsletters linked up with Google Analytics, which has given the store’s publicist, Julie Wernersbach, insight into when to send out each newsletter. However, she relies on making the subject line “as flashy as possible with big author names or exciting news,” she said.

At Hello Hello Books, in Rockland, Maine, owner Lacy Simons uses Mailchimp to distribute the store’s e-newsletter, and makes use of its analytics primarily to determine a time to send it so it doesn’t get ignored.

“I usually schedule them to go out on Friday or Saturday morning to inspire some action on the weekends,” she said.

Bookshop Santa Cruz measures the store’s print newsletters reach by the resulting in-store actions. “We see a lot of customers come into the store with their newsletter marked up, and they buy directly from our reviews,” said Coonerty Protti. “We also see a lot more traction for any new initiative if it got coverage in the newsletter. It helps us define our brand, show our innovation and connect directly with our best customers. Sales on books featured in our newsletter are extremely strong.”

Changing Hands’ Stout said he and colleagues have recently noticed a huge uptick in the number of customers reading the store’s newsletter on their mobile device. This has changed the store’s approach, and now, in addition to having a strong subject line, Stout tries to “frontload” the newsletter copy by making the first four words the bulk of the subject, since that is what appears on most smart phones.

“As those numbers continue to go up, we are asking ourselves, ‘how can we optimize e-mails for mobile devices?’ We have to be ready for that.”

Customer Feedback

When it comes to customer feedback, Changing Hands receives a lot from the “reply” button on every e-mail newsletter. It’s mostly positive feedback, said Stout, unless a customer does not like a particular author.

Harvard Book Store often hears from customers who have left the Boston area and remain connected through the bookstore’s newsletter. The store also gets a lot of questions about specific books and events covered in the newsletter, as well as the occasional friendly correction about a typo or other mistake. “We’re pretty fastidious in our copy editing, but our readers definitely keep us on our toes,” said Cass.

At BookPeople, there is one customer who sends the store a thank you e-mail every week after receiving the store’s e-newsletter. When taking e-mail addresses from customers at store events, staff members have heard a lot of positive feedback from people already on the list.

“People pick and choose how they’re going to get their information from us,” said Wernersbach. “Some follow on Twitter, some on Facebook, and some subscribe to the [newsletter] list. I’ve encountered plenty of people at events who decline being added to the list because they already follow us elsewhere. I don’t think we’ve had any negative reaction, though of course we’re careful not to inundate people with e-blasts.”

“Our customers love our newsletter,” said Bookshop Santa Cruz’s Coonerty Protti. “We also have lots of requests to continue to send our newsletter to customers once they move far away so that they can buy from us online. Local advertisers hear from customers that they read our newsletters. Doctor’s offices love to have our newsletter in their waiting room. It is a boon to the store.”