BrandingFire Blog

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So, the sesquicentennial (150th anniversary) of South Carolina’s secession (you know, that little event that started that whole War Between the States thing) is just 2 years away. The sesquicentennial of the Civil War is just under 3 years away.

If you’re involved with a historic organization, Civil War-related historic house, museum, Civil War author, etc and you’re thinking, “So what?” - YIKES!!! Now is when you should be planning out a heavy series of events, anniversary books, documentaries, tours or whatever. Don’t be like those retailers who wait till Halloween to start thinking about their Christmas promotions. Those guys lose out then wonder what went wrong. The time to plan your Christmas promotions is March or April… May at the latest.

Likewise, the time is now to plan for what I expect to be a major spike in War Between the States interest. Don’t find that the date is suddenly upon you and you don’t know why everyone else is getting attention and you’re being passed over.

Have you given this any thought at all? What are you doing to get ready? If you have ideas to share, drop me a line or share them in the comments section. That’s what it’s there for.

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It’s a well-known concept among hardcore marketers that economic downturns and recessions are the worst time to cut back on marketing. While it seems logical to cut back on all expenses during economic difficulties, the truth of the matter is financial downturns frequently offer your best opportunities to grab market share. Why? Because your competition is busy doing the logical thing and cutting back on their marketing.

It seems the state of Georgia and New York City are taking note of this marketing concept and making a move to draw in tourists. On July 10th, the Atlanta Journal-Constitution reported that Georgia is making more than $1 million in grants for state tourism development through their Georgia Tourism Foundation. The grants aren’t going specifically to history organizations, but they are in the mix including the Augusta Museum of History.

Likewise, I’ve commented recently that with gas prices skyrocketing, now would be a perfect time for historic sites to try to pull in local tourists. Especially since many of us tend to miss seeing local sites in favor of trips to other places. New York City is doing just that. They’re encouraging people in the area to “Go Local” and visit the many tourist sites within the five boroughs of NYC.

I hope somewhere along the way, we get to hear back how successful these endeavors are. Maybe they will inspire other communities and organizations to do the same.

Eric Wittenberg is an accomplished Civil War author, cavalry authority and fellow blogger, in addition to his day job as a lawyer. Eric has more than a dozen published books to his credit, including his newest One Continuous Fight:
The Retreat from Gettysburg and the Pursuit of Lee’s Army of Northern Virginia, July 4-14, 1863, and more than two dozen published articles. Eric is often called on as a speaker on the subject of cavalry and as a guide for tours.

A couple of months ago, Eric published a really good series on his blog titled “Things I Wish I Knew Then But Know Now.” The series discussed the lessons Eric has learned over his years as a published book author. The series inspired me to do an interview with Eric about marketing history books from the author’s point of view. (BrandingFire Note: I’ve never been a published author, but I have several years of experience on the distribution and publisher’s side of things.)

BrandingFire (BF): My friend, author Dan Miller, has told me several times that authors need to be prepared to do their own book marketing. He says that unless your name is John Grisham or Stephen King, publishers just aren’t going to invest the time and money needed to market a book properly. Do you find this to be true?

Eric Wittenberg(EW): Sadly, it’s absolutely true. The truth is that most Civil War books don’t sell sufficient copies to give publishers much of an incentive to invest a lot of money into major marketing campaigns. There are, of course, exceptions, as occasionally a Civil War book will hit the bestseller lists - Doris Kearns Goodwin’s Team of Rivals comes to mind immediately - and then the publishers will spend the necessary money.

BF: I know you’ve gone to the trouble of putting up your own websites to promote your books. Is this something you’ve always done?

EW: No, it’s something we started in 2006 with the release of Plenty of Blame to Go Around: Jeb Stuart’s Controversial Ride to Gettysburg.

BF: Do you build your own sites or do you hire out the job?

EW: I have no competence for that sort of thing, so it’s much better for me to hire a professional to do that work for me.

BF: When you put up a site to support a title, what is your goal for the site?

EW: Sell books and spread the word.

BF: How long do you leave a site up?

EW: Good question. I actually haven’t had to address that issue yet. Plenty of Blame continues to sell well two years later, and as long as it does, we intend to leave the site up.

BF: Have you tried any book marketing tactics that didn’t work? If so, will you share any?

EW: I have found that taking books to Civil War Roundtable meetings generally doesn’t work well. There are only a few I’ve encountered where people are hardcore book buyers, while most just don’t care.

BF: What other marketing tactics do you find to be successful?

EW: Honestly, there is no substitute for word of mouth marketing. Having someone say “this is a great book and you need to read it” is without question the best marketing tool that there is. I try to encourage that sort of thing as often as I can.

BF: How important do you think author signings are for promoting a book?

EW: I think that they’re critical. People like to collect signed first editions of books, and in-person signings are the best way to meet the public and sign for them. The location of the signing and the promotion work done by the sponsor is, of course, critical. If nobody knows about, it’s a waste of time, but if the promoter does a good job of getting the word out, a good book signing can be one of the very best ways to sell books that I know.

BF: You and I first became acquainted through your blog. How important are blogs in book promotion? Any advice to authors considering or involved in blogging?

EW: I have found that blogging is a great way to make and maintain contact with the readers of my books, and I have also found that it’s a great way to remind people of one’s work. If authors feel that they have something to say that’s not just shilling their books, then I would definitely encourage them to try blogging. In September, I will have been blogging for three full years, and I have a large contingent of regular readers. It never ceases to amaze me how many people invest their valuable time into reading what I have to say each day.

BF: How much do you consider the marketability of a subject before you write a book on it?

EW: Some of my projects are carefully calculated to try to select topics that I know will sell, but others are strictly pursuing things that interest me, nothing more, nothing less. As an example, this week, I decided to tackle a tactical treatment of the June 10, 1864 Battle of Brice’s Crossroads, and in part, I selected that topic because I know that books on Nathan Bedford Forrest sell well, and I’d like to make some money on the one of these projects.

BF: Do you have a set marketing budget before you start promoting a book?

EW: No. It all depends on the book and how well I think it might sell.

BF: My personal experience with publishing is that going through traditional mass market distribution channels is very difficult. The discounts distributors like Ingram, Wal-Mart, Barnes & Noble, etc. are steep and leave little room for profit. Has this been your experience?

EW: Not at all. To date, all of my work has been published by conventional, commercial publishing houses, and I wouldn’t even consider a publisher that didn’t use the traditional mass-market publishing channels as the primary means of getting books out there.

BF: What methods of distribution have you found more effective than the “mainstream” ones listed above?

EW: To be honest, none. Short of selling books on the Internet, I can’t think of another means of selling books that is more effective.

I’d like to thank Eric again for kindly contributing his time and experience. If you haven’t read his blog, The Rantings of a Civil War Historian, you should. You can also find Eric’s books at major bookstores, including Amazon.com. I should also mention that Eric and author J. D. Petruzzi are leading a tour at Ted Alexander’s Mother of All Gettysburg Seminars on July 23-27. If you want the chance to have Eric and J.D. give you a personal tour of some of JEB Stuart’s cavalry ride during the Gettysburg campaign, you should sign up ASAP. It’s filling up fast.

If you are into history and marketing historic sites, you really should check out Heidi Glatfelter’s blog Marketing Early America. Heidi has more than a decade of marketing experience working with non-profits and she’s really connecting that experience with her passion for history and pumping out some good information for anyone involved with history-related organizations.

I didn’t know Heidi until I ran across her blog a short while ago, but I’m happy to find someone out there who shares my passions for history and marketing and is trying to be a beacon to help guide these worthy groups.

Now, GO, READ, COMMENT!! Be heard!

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I wrote in an earlier post that when it comes to marketing, remember that it’s not about you, it’s about your audience. That was driven home for me again today. This evening I went to Best Buy to test out the new iPod Touch (a product which, by the way, really engages its audience). I really, really want one. Here’s the problem I encountered: half of the applications are web-based. In fact, testing the browser was a big part of what I wanted to check out. But Best Buy doesn’t have a wireless network so you can try them out. I sort of understand why they wouldn’t want an open network in the store, but trying out something like the Touch is a big part of the customer experience.

Likewise, my son and I were looking at the video game consoles. There was the XBox 360 which, as far as I could see, only showed demo movies of their games. Next to it was a Playstation 3, with a fun racing game with killer graphics. We had a blast playing that game. If I was seriously in the market for a gaming system, guess which one I would have walked out with?

This reminds me of the times I’ve taken my son to Toys R Us, where they have several cool toys on display… behind Plexiglas. That’s just cruel. It’s also one of the reasons I usually take my son to Main Street Toys here in town. They put the toys out where kids can reach them and play with them. That’s what their audience really wants!

So, are you engaging your audience or are you locking everything up behind glass?

I ran across a nice site called Cultural Heritage Tourism run by (again) The National Trust for Historic Preservation. On their site, they list the Five Principles for Successful and Sustainable Cultural Heritage Tourism. It’s worth a read. The third principle - Make Sites and Programs Come Alive - really hit a cord for me.

In order to explore the opportunities available using e-mail marketing, I did a short interview with Dave Delaney, New Media Manager for Emma, an e-mail marketing service. Dave talks a little about what e-mail marketing is and how it can be useful.

Q: What are the benefits of using e-mail marketing?

A: E-mail is the marketing medium that talks back to you. Most ESPs (that’s “e-mail service providers”) offer tracking and reporting that show you who opened your e-mail, what links they clicked, who forwarded the e-mail, and more. You can learn a lot more about your audience’s interests and behaviors that way through e-mail than through some of the more traditional marketing methods like direct mail. Also, e-mail is a relatively inexpensive way to stay in touch with your customers, members, donors, etc., and keep your brand in front of them.

Q: Are there certain types of businesses or organizations who benefit more from e-mail marketing?

A: Emma works with about 8,000 organizations, representing a variety of industries like large financial firms, small non-profits, creative & design agencies, universities, retail shops, and everything in between. They’re all using e-mail marketing and communications to stay in touch with their customers, promote events, advertise specials, promote their brand and expand their reach. Because most businesses put a pretty high value on those things, we think there’s a place for e-mail marketing in any organization’s marketing plan.

Q: Is e-mail marketing expensive?

A: It certainly doesn’t have to be. At Emma, for example, our monthly plans start at $30 and allow you to send up to 1,000 e-mails. That’s cheaper than a cell phone plan and possibly even cheaper than the box set of Poison’s Greatest Hits. Not that we’d, um, know that.

Q: How often should one send out e-mail newsletters? How long should they be?

A: This is a common question in the world of e-mail marketing. And although there’s not a silver bullet answer, there are some best practices that tend to work well. When you’re thinking about frequency, think about things from your recipients’ perspective. Send too often and you might annoy; send too infrequently and they might forget you. Work toward finding your ideal frequency.

When you’re considering length, remember that everybody’s time is valuable, including your readers’. Make your points quickly, near the top of your e-mail if possible, and if you have a lot of content to send, consider linking to a landing page on your website or to a downloadable PDF.

Q: Who puts them together and sends them out?

A: Emma is all self-service, so our customers sign into their accounts to add and manage their audience members, create and send their campaigns and check the response as it comes in. Of course, service and support come free of charge with every account, and we have a fabulous team of people to help along the way, some of whom are named Erin and Dean. But probably not Lonnie.

Q: Any other ideas you’d like to convey?

A: Sure. There’s a very important legal component to e-mail marketing, and it centers around the federal Can-Spam legislation that helps to regulate commercial e-mail. It requires that you include a physical address in your e-mail, provide a way for recipients to “opt out” of your mailings and honor those requests in a timely fashion. E-mail delivery is an industry unto itself, so consider using an e-mail service provider to handle the compliance and delivery for you, so you can focus on the content, design and strategy (and besides, that’s the fun part!).

About Dave Delaney:

Dave Delaney is the New Media Manager at Emma. He is a recent transplant to Nashville, Tennessee from Canada and has extensive marketing and new media experience. Dave and his wife Heather have two children and produce a podcast named Two Boobs and a Baby +, which offers a humorous look at parenting. To learn more about Dave, go to www.DaveMadeThis.com and you can find links to his podcast, his personal blog and his blog about new media.

About Emma:

Emma is one of the major companies providing Web-based service that makes it easy to create, send and track stylish email newsletters and campaigns. You can find out more about Emma at www.MyEmma.com.

Other E-mail Services:

There are some other good companies offering e-mail marketing services. In addition to Emma, I encourage you to check out the ones listed below and balance what they offer against your needs to make an informed decision.

Constant Contact

StreamSend

Benchmark E-mail

iContact

Final Notes:

I’m sometimes asked if it’s OK to make and send out your own e-mail newsletter without paying for a service. It is, but I don’t recommend it. I do have companies I work with who do this, but the time you spend creating, designing and building each newsletter is a burden. Most organizations don’t have a lot of free time to use doing this on a regular basis. It’s worth the small investment to work with a company such as Emma or Constant Contact and let them handle the technical part. Then you can spend more time creating remarkable content that might encourage customers to read your message and possibly share it with others. The added time needed to handle the technical aspects is one of the reasons some do-it-yourselfers give up on e-mail marketing. The service providers out there are so reasonably priced that it usually doesn’t make sense to do it all yourself.