Running a Chirp deal is a great way to increase revenue from your audiobooks, drive a high volume of sales, accumulate more reviews, and find new listeners. Audiobooks selected as Chirp featured deals are included in daily emails to our listeners as well as prominent carousels and other merchandising positions on our website for the duration of their discount period, which means they get both a concentrated boost on the day of the feature as well as increased on-site visibility over the following weeks.
While a featured deal alone is a powerful tool, one of the top questions that we receive from partners whose books are selected for these promotions is what they can do to maximize their impact. Read on for five tips that will help you make the most of your Chirp deal!
Tip #1: Grow your Chirp followers to take advantage of deal alerts
Did you know that readers can now follow their favorite authors on Chirp? Every author with books available for purchase on Chirp now has a dedicated page where readers can browse the titles they have available and opt in to follow them. When that author’s books go on sale, we automatically send an alert to all of their followers letting them know that there’s a deal available! These deal alerts are one of the most effective drivers of sales on Chirp, with an average purchase rate 30 times higher than the daily featured deals email.
To take advantage of author deal alerts, grow your following ahead of your Chirp promotion so as many readers as possible get a dedicated email about your feature. You can encourage your social media followers or newsletter subscribers to follow you so they never miss a deal, or add a “Follow me on Chirp” button to your website.
We also send readers alerts for non-featured deals (discounts that are set up independently by partners and not included in the daily deals email) from the authors they follow, deals for books they’ve added to their wishlists, and new audiobooks from authors they follow, so there are a lot of great reasons to grow your Chirp followers outside of just maximizing the effects of a featured deal!
Tip #2: Set up related deals to increase total sales and revenue
Chirp featured deals are an effective tool for driving a high volume of sales of the discounted book, but these features can also be used as a vehicle for increasing sales of related books. Partners who set up discounts on related books (such as books in the same series or by the same author) tend to see a bigger increase in revenue during their deals compared to those who don’t set up follow-on discounts. In fact, partners who set up three or more related deals see an average of 50 percent more revenue from their Chirp books during their promotion than they would have generated from the featured deal alone.
Related deals are highlighted across the Chirp website, such as when users add a book to their cart or check out, so those deals will also get increased visibility on-site for the duration of the featured promotion.
To maximize the effects of your related deals, make sure that your follow-on discounts are set up for the same time that your deal will be live — 35 percent of follow-on sales on Chirp happen on the same day that a listener purchases a featured deal. Since the highest volume of sales typically happens on the day a book is included in our daily email, you should make sure your related books are discounted by that mailing date. You can learn more about driving follow-on sales on Chirp here.
Tip #3: Run BookBub Ads campaigns to sustain momentum
If you want to increase the number of Chirp users exposed to your feature (and any related deals you may have set up!), you can set up BookBub Ads campaigns to continue promoting your discounted book. There’s a dedicated space for a BookBub Ad at the bottom of every Chirp email, where ads targeting Chirp members are eligible to appear. Many of the carousels on the Chirp website are populated based on sales volume, so driving incremental sales through ad campaigns can increase the chance of your book appearing in carousels on genre pages or the Chirp homepage, which further increases visibility for your deal.
Chirp users (unsurprisingly!) love a good deal, so highlighting a deal price — or several, if you’re discounting more than one book! — is a great strategy for driving ad clicks and sales. Other things you might call out in your ad creative include the length of your book, information about the narration, or the end date of your discount to create a sense of urgency.
You can see more examples of effective BookBub Ads for audiobooks here. For tips on everything from ad image design to targeting to bid strategy, check out our Ultimate Guide to BookBub Ads.
Tip #4: Promote the deal to existing fans on other platforms
Don’t forget to promote your deal to your own audience, too! Including a shout-out about your Chirp deal in your newsletter and on social media channels you already use to communicate with readers can help make sure that your core audience is aware of your deal, especially if they’re not using Chirp yet. And if your posts are shareable, your readers can do some of the work of spreading the word about your deal for you!
Individual posts and newsletters are great for the beginning of your deal, but because Chirp deals typically last four weeks, you can also use longer-term social strategies. Try updating your cover images on Facebook or Twitter, pinning an announcement to the top of your TikTok or Twitter feeds, or saving a highlight with news about your deal on Instagram so that your fans can keep seeing your deal content all month long.
Tip #5: Time your deal strategically
You can run a Chirp deal at any time to boost sales and revenue from your audio backlist, but strategically timing your deal around other promotions or releases that you already have lined up can help ensure each of the tactics you’re investing time and money in can pack a bigger punch.
For example: if you’re already planning an ebook price promotion on a book, coordinating an audiobook deal at the same time means you can set up ad campaigns or newsletter promotions with links for both editions and promote to readers with either format preference.
If you have a new release in a series coming up, the timing of your Chirp deal can be leveraged to boost visibility of the new book in a couple different ways. Running a deal before your new book releases means that any new followers you gain during your promotion will automatically receive a new release alert when the new book becomes available on Chirp. On the other hand, if you run your promotion after the new book is already live, listeners who click on your deal can see your new release alongside it in “from the same author” carousels.
Note: If you have specific deal timing in mind, just make a note in the comments section of your Chirp submission! While we can’t make any guarantees, we’ll always do our best to accommodate your preferences. For the best chance of getting your preferred date, submit for a Chirp deal two months in advance of when you’d ideally like your feature to run.
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