A Newsletter Marketing Primer

Category Email Marketing, General | 14 comments »

Newsletter marketing can be one of the best ways to sell a product or market your company. It can be difficult to start and maintain, but the benefits of a good subscriber list can be a great gain.

So why are newsletters great? Simple. Instead of soliciting random consumers, you’re reaching out and talking to those already interested in your product (they signed up after all). Not only that, but instead of forcing them to come to you, you’re able to go to them.

Building the List

The hardest part of creating a profitable newsletter is building the initial following. There are a few strategies that can be mixed and matched, and I’ll go over a few here.

The first is to simply drive traffic to a landing page. List the value someone would gain from your newsletter and offer them a form to sign up from. This is the simplest of methods, and is a great starting point.

You can take the above method one step further and offer a gift to the potential subcribers. The gift could be anything from a free listing on your site or a free ebook to download. This strategy may increase the number of subscribers you have but may also drop your open-rate for emails, as people were never really interested in your emails and just wanted the free ebook or listing.

A third strategy, one that takes more effort, requires making friends with other list owners. You can ask them to send out an email inviting them to sign up for your newsletter, as you do the same for them. You can also add onto this by linking to their newsletter landing page on your thank you page. This technique works well because the people already subscribed to one newsletter are more likely to sign up for another.

Newsletter Profit

By the time you begin really building your list, you should already have some good content. An autoresponder is a great way for sending pre-created chains of emails, or you can use a broadcast system to send one email at a time to the entire list.

Generally the rule of thumb to use when pushing affiliate products on a newsletter is to not suggest a product before your 7th email. You need the initial 6 emails to build trust with your subscribers.

If you’re trying to push your own product, the emails can be slightly different. The first email should remind consumers to check out your product. The second could try to sell your product again, reminding consumers how useful it is. Finally, the third email should try to sell it at a discount. You’re better off making a sale at discount, than no sale at all. At this point, if the consumers hasn’t bought your product they most likely won’t. Instead, you can now start recommending related products to these subscribers via an affiliate link.

Another method to make money from your newsletter is to simply sell advertising space in each email. This works well because its a generally consistent email and you don’t have to worry about how many people clicked through to the product and converted. Sell the advertising like you would any other ad on your blog or website.

Hopefully, you got a basic understanding of how to create a newsletter and how it can help sell affiliate products or your own. Subscriber lists are a great way to keep in touch with your consumers, so never let the conversation die. Try to send out a relevant and valuable email at least once a month, reminding your consumers the value of your emails.

Do you have any good experience with email marketing? How does it relate to social media marketing? Have an advanced tip you’d like to share? Let us know, and leave a comment!

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Want a couple thousand names to sell to?

Category General | Comments Off

Well don’t rent them, not when you can easily create your own list of hungry buyers.

As I wrote previously, you can have the best product or service in the world, but if you don’t have a house list, one that’s eager to receive your emails-you’ve got no one to sell to.

Conversely, if you don’t have a product or service to sell, you can still sell other people’s products and services-if you’ve got a house list.

Now you can always rent a list, of course. But then you’ve got to introduce yourself, prove yourself, sell yourself. In short, you have to work a lot harder to sell these people-because they don’t know you, don’t trust you and don’t care about you.

But if they know you, have experience with you, through multiple contacts and sales-you can get right down to the business of selling your, or someone else’s, product.

Admittedly, there are times when you might need to rent a list. For example, when you want to mount a quick strike campaign to a new niche market (but never rent a compiled list-only rent a subscription list, one with attractive Recency, Frequency and Amount stats.)

So how do you build your own house list-a list of customers and prospects willing to consider your offer?

Lots of ways. And to get you started, here’s my short list of list-building ideas:

• Write, publish and promote a subscription-based, free or not, ezine (an online newsletter).

• Write, publish and promote a subscription-based, free or not, newsletter (an offline ezine).

• Write a blog and offer to notify readers of new posts if they provide their email address.

• Collect names and addresses at the point of sale-to notify buyers of upgrades, special announcements, etc.

• Conduct a seminar and collect names and addresses for a free, or not, CD/DVD recording of the seminar, bonus report, etc.

• Conduct a Webinar or Teleseminar (see above).

• Write a special report or white-paper, deliver it through a squeeze page (after name and email address are provided).

• Write articles, and place your email address and sign-up link in the resource box at the bottom, in order to receive comments and subscribers to your advertised ezine.

• Participate in trade shows and offer a chance to win a free-gift to those attendees who drop their business card in the fish bowl.

• Joint Venture (JV), with a complementary business-provide or contribute your “something” to a joint marketing endeavor-in order to access their list of names (you’ll therefore be introduced to the target market by someone they already know and trust.)

• Co-Registration (Co-Reg), hitch a ride with an offer on someone else’s marketing platform (e.g., on an order or thank you page)-it’s an implied endorsement by that marketer to his sphere of influence.

Remember though, these names and addresses that you collect are the key to your business’s continuing success-so treat them with all due respect and reverence.

Always promise, and keep your promise, not to abuse their privacy. Fully disclose, clearly, that you will be contacting them for various reasons, promotional and informational, in the near future.

And then ask them to confirm (and whenever possible, to double opt-in) their desire to receive communication from you.

You’ll then be on your way to marketing heaven.

–Barry

www.WritingWithPersonality.com

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