An eNewsletter
is a method for a company to appeal directly to their customers
and talk to them in a way they wouldn't be able to with just
normal advertising. Advertising is typically about promoting
something very specific, even if that just happens to be the
company in general. A newsletter is going to focus instead on
telling people what the company is doing, along with who is
running the company. In some forms a newsletter is most
certainly a form of marketing as well, because you're
encouraging people to take more interest in your company, which
will make them more loyal.
But the important distinction is that
newsletter printing is rarely going to be about directly
advertising. You aren't telling them to buy something and you
aren't just telling them that your company is good. Instead
you're providing them with the needed information to understand
who you are and what you stand for.
This by default will help people come to trust
your company, because they'll know exactly who you are.
There is no specific time when it's best to
start up your newsletter printing. If you haven't looked into
yet then I would suggest that now would be a good time to
consider it.
Any good newsletter is going to improve with
time based on the more people you get to subscribe to it. The
reason is because the best newsletters are going to request the
customers to take an active role as well. Ask them to send in
letters and opinion pieces telling about themselves and the
different things they like or would like to see improved about
your company.
Of course, the bigger your audience the more
people you have that will help make your newsletter that much
better.
One barrier that many people seem to have
against newsletter printing is the belief that it only works
well in a few specific industries. I think the real reason why
newsletters happen to pop up more in one industry over another
is because all it took was a single company to get things going.
The second a company starts up a successful
newsletter it shows their competition that these work, which
will encourage them to do the same. This is why waiting until
someone else does it in your industry will hurt you in the end.
If you're the first you're going to garner more attention, and
you'll start to be viewed as a stronger leader in your field.
No matter what industry you're in you can have
successful newsletters. It isn't about your industry but about
how you make your newsletter that counts. Be sure that you know
exactly what it is that makes newsletter printing work and you
can set yourself up to have a strong newsletter right from the
beginning.
ok, ok. So online newsletters have been
around for a long time - in fact every decent internet marketer
has been using newsletters for years. But I'm seeing a
growing trend in the number of bloggers integrating newsletters
into their blogs.
So why are newsletters going to be the next
big thing? Well they are already a big thing.
Newsletters offer a very direct way to reach potential
customers. In fact, I have found newsletters to be my
single most powerful sales tool. If you want to sell
anything at all online, consider a newsletter.
The good news is integrating a newsletter into
a blog is a piece of cake - its as easy as copy and paste.
Products such as Aweber are great, as they offer a hosted and
feature rich solution. But what's not so easy,
is capturing leads and converting these into sales.
Here are my tips:
Capturing Leads
A lead is someone who subscribes to your
newsletter. They have the potential to become a customer
and are obviously interested in your product or blog. The
easiest way to capture a lead is to offer an incentive.
For example - “subscribe to my newsletter and recieve a free
ebook”. This is simple, effective and can all be
automated.
Converting Leads
You will first need to
decide what the purpose of your newsletter is. Do you want
to simply keep referring leads back to your blog? Or maybe you
want to sell an info product. I like to do a bit of both.
Sending newsletter subscribers to my blog time and time again is
fairly simple - It just takes a “recent posts” section in the
newseller highlighting the best of my blog. Selling an
info product is a little harder and would take many more posts
to explain - what I will say however, don’t push a product too
hard. Combine content (such as recent posts) with sales
pitch for an effective mailing.
Do you have a newsletter?