10 Email Templates for Book Bloggers

This week’s Bumblings Blog Tip: Email Templates.

If you’re anything like me, email is one of the most time-consuming tasks in your life. Especially for book bloggers. It’s how we communicate with authors, other bloggers, publicists, publishers, PR companies, tour hosts, giveaway winners…

And then there’s the other emails we need. Author and blogger newsletters, your Bloglovin’ digest, reminders from your editorial calendar tool, social media alerts, blog notifications, and the list goes on.

And since one of my personal mantras is “work smarter, not harder or more,” I’m always looking for ways to spend less time on tasks. That way, I can make room and time for other tasks that will grow my blog, without giving up my personal time.

So obviously, I’m always looking for ways to spend less time on email.

How Email Templates Help

One of the most time-consuming parts of email, aside from reading them, is typing and clicking around. That’s why I’m such a big fan of things like keyboard shortcuts.

And when so many of our emails are pretty much the same (“here’s my tour link,” “I’m interested in this ARC,” “hey, I just reviewed your book,”), it seems silly to write them out over and over again. Only bits of info, like the book title, the recipient’s name, and stuff like that, change from one email to another.

Email templates take care of the information that doesn’t change. Automatically insert (or copy/paste) a “fill-in-the-blank” email message, completing a majority of the email and adding prompts for the important information.

Here’s an example of one of the email templates I’ve been using a lot recently:

 

I started out with this blank version, and once a month I go in and update the stats in that bulleted list.

Email Templates Still Allow for Personalization

The main argument you’ll hear against email templates is that the emails are generic, impersonal, and robot-like. But that’s just because they’re getting emails from people that are doing it wrong. The people that don’t personalize templates at all.

The key to using email templates is adding queues. In the picture above, my queues are bolded, in all-caps, and in [brackets]. See them?

Those are where you add customization to your email. The recipient’s name, the book you’re talking about, the specific blog post link. You can even add queues for whole paragraphs.

Email Templates Remind You of Important Information

Email templates have a major benefit besides saving time. They’ll remind you what information to include in the email. We’ve all sent an email talking about a link, and forgot to include the link. You can’t say you’ve never done that.

If your queues are formatted so that they stand out enough, you’ll never forget to include important facts, links, and information.

10 Email Templates for Book Bloggers

So, you’re convinced and want to give email templates a whirl. Where do you start? I have at least 10 email templates saved in my Gmail Canned Responses. Some are super specific to me, but others I’m sure you’ll benefit from.

Here are my go-to templates:

• Sending a tour host a link to your blog post
• Sending someone your blog stats
• Notifying an author of your book review
• Requesting an ARC from an author or publicist
• Contacting a giveaway winner
• Denying a review request
• Asking to be removed from a mass mailing list
• Requesting to be added to an ARC/blog tour mailing list
• Requesting an author interview
• Declining a blog tour invitation

Save time on blog-related email with free copy-and-paste email templates for book bloggers!

How to Set Up Gmail’s Canned Responses

I use Gmail for my blog email, and I know a lot of you do, too. You can even get your @yourwebsite.com email forwarded to Gmail, a feature I love. They have a feature to automatically create, store, and use email templates, but it’s kind of hidden. It’s called Canned Responses, and it’s found in Google Labs.

Here’s how to set it up:

1. Enable Canned Responses

• From your inbox, click on the gear icon and select “Settings.”
• Click on the tab for “Labs.”
• Scroll down to “Canned Responses,” and toggle “Enable.”
• Save your changes.

2. Create Your Templates

 

•  In the “Compose” window, compose your template, including queues to add personalization.
• Click on the arrow in the bottom right to open the extra menu items.
• Hover over “Canned responses” to open up its submenu.

• The three sections are “Insert,” “Save,” and “Delete.” To create a new template containing everything in the body of your email, select “New canned response…” under the “Save Menu.”

3. Insert a Canned Response

Now it’s a few days later (or 30 seconds, and you just want to try) and it’s time to use a template.

• Fill out the recipient and subject fields in the “Compose Window.”
• Bring up the Canned Responses menu, and select the template you need from the “Insert” submenu.

4. Add Customization

• Go through the template and find all the queues.
• Replace the queue text with copy personalized for the recipient.

Do you use email templates? How do they save you time?

Save time on blog-related email with free copy-and-paste email templates for book bloggers!