By Jasmine Grant, September 12, 2023.
Key Takeaway: There are sets of engagement and communication tactics all authors can use to build better customer relationships with their paid subscribers and increase the length of time they remain in your subscription.
What would happen if you walked into your favorite restaurant, and no one acknowledged you?
The waitstaff completely ignored you.
So, you sat yourself, no menu arrived, no drinks. Nothing. You’ve been here before and had excellent customer service. You can’t figure out what’s going on. Calling, tapping your spoon, addressing the person, none of it works.
Did everyone forget how to speak? Have you become invisible?
Then someone approaches your table, and you think finally. Only they walk by and leave a bill on the table. You owe it just for being in the restaurant. Do you pay the fee, or do you leave grumbling and upset about how you were treated?
Sure, this is an over-dramatized depiction of how subscribers feel when they are ghosted by authors.
But is it really?
Unfortunately, this happens to subscribers a lot. They pay a monthly fee to connect with an artist’s exclusive group. Everything’s fine for a while, then the artist stops all forms of communication leaving subscribers confused, feeling unwanted, and used.
Here are 5 Communication Touchpoints to build healthy relationships with your readers and keep them coming back to your subscription month after month:
1. Welcome your readers into your subscription and give them a taste of what they can expect inside.
This usually comes in the form of a custom welcome email that is sent the moment your readers pay for their membership tier. In other articles, we have detailed what makes a great subscriber welcome email and how you can effectively onboard readers into your subscription.
2. Let your subscribers know when you’ve got things going on that’ll keep you from posting chapters or content on your normal schedule.
Share when you have a looming deadline, and you need to finish, so you won’t be posting. Everyone understands a deadline. Make a post about it. Let them know what’s going on. If they get your book, a post can only build the excitement.
You don’t have to share details of your life if you don’t want to. Life is busy, people understand.
Having to take some time doesn’t make you weak in your fans’ eyes. None of us are superheroes and life happens.
The key is letting your fans know when they can expect changes to your normal schedule so they don’t feel left in the dark.
3. Underpromise and Overdeliver.
We all know this is important… the hard part is actually underpromising when we feel like we need to constantly be providing and doing more.
How do you know what is a sustainable promise for you? How do you create a “menu” for your subscription that you enjoy delivering, that your fans want, and that is possible with the resource constraints (time, money, and energy) that you have?
The first step is to take time before you set up what you’re going to offer to take a deep breath. Think about the time commitment it takes to honor what you have laid out. If you see it on paper and think. “How am I going to do this?” You probably need to rethink your tiers. Under promise, over deliver.
4. Ask your fans for feedback on what you can do to improve their experience in your subscription.
Polls, surveys, and other ways you can give your fans input on the experience in your membership allow you to evolve your offering in ways that serve your readers’ needs and give your readers power in your community.
Maybe you can have paid subscribers vote on names for characters and places in your story or conduct a quarterly survey or poll asking your readers what they like most about your membership.
5. Respond to comments, messages, and other communication from all fans.
You don’t have to respond to every message — especially if someone is being rude. However, if a reader has a question about your subscription, sharing their love for your work, or is chatting about something related to your books, giving them a response (even if it’s just a simple “thank you”) can mean the world to them.
The Big Picture…
Communication is key when nurturing your subscribers.
For any author subscription, no matter your genre or what you are offering, these 5 communication touch points are key steps in the subscriber journey.
Now, we are all human, and just like our favorite restaurants, artists, and businesses make mistakes… we can too. That’s okay!
We all have things come up that sidetrack us from what we wish we were doing.
A simple post explaining why you’re not able to keep to what you promised in your tiers will go a long way in the subscriber’s eyes.
But a word of caution: when you make a post explaining a change or lapse in chapter posting, make sure to do what you said you would do. Don’t promise to come back on Tuesday and not do it.
People are paying you for what you promised. Plain and simple.
Communicating with your subscribers, you’ll find it goes a long way in helping you build a more profitable membership and giving your readers an even better experience.
About the Author: Jasmine Grant
I’m sometimes nice, sometimes naughty, with an incredible imagination and a wicked sense of humor. Also, perhaps, a mild potato chip addiction. I adore writing the older, plus-size, hilarious kick-ass ladies who know how to rock their man’s world while keeping their secrets safe. I write Fantasy, Sci-Fi, and Paranormal Romance. Jasmine’s Subscription.