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Copyright 2009-2015 Jim Boere
One thing I do like about sending email newsletters is that it
makes it so easy for people to reply to you. My experience has
been that one does get more response from readers of a
newsletter send by email, and that's a good thing!
People should always be able to easily contact you and ask
questions. Building a personal relationship with your
subscribers is crucial, and email is certainly a great tool for
doing that.
But an online newsletter does have some major advantages as
well, like the ability to use multi-media to get your message
across. And the fact that once you get people to visit your
website you can try to capitalize on that website traffic. By
recommending (affiliate) products, by having AdSense ad blocks
on your site, and so on.
A downside is that not everybody will take the trouble of
bookmarking your site and returning there each time you publish
your newsletter. Even when you send out notification emails...
People usually get dozens of emails a day to go through, and
convincing them to visit your site regularly is not as easy as
it may sound.
So the choice between an email or online newsletter can be a bit
of a tricky one... But did you know that with a few simple
tricks you can take full advantage of both options? Well, you
can!
I started out sending just an email version, but after a year or
so started seeing response rates go down. So I switched to an
online version, using screenshots and graphics and stuff. It
looked nice, it improved my website traffic stats and I was
quite happy with it. But it was a lot of work preparing
them...it really took a lot more time than 'simply' sending out
emails. Time I didn't really have with all the other things I
had going on as well. On top of that quite a few loyal
subscribers said they preferred the old email version.
What did I do? A bit of both.
I'll now have online 'specials' when I do want to use
multi-media to explain or teach something. But the basic
newsletter I send out by email. In the emails though I'll put
incentives for people to visit my site. For example by putting
only the first two paragraphs of an article in the newsletter
and have readers click a link to read the full article. That
article will then be on my website, of course.
Gives me a chance to put some AdSense ads on those pages too, or
a recommendation for related product that I'm selling /
promoting, and create some additional revenue that way.
My findings so far are that people seem to like this format.
More people get to read my information and it considerably
reduced the amount of time I 'have' to spend on it. Time I can
now spend on other projects.
I was recently approached by one of my own subscribers. He had
spend a lot of time and energy in creating an online newsletter
that he was publishing once a week. Understandably so, he didn't
really want to give it up. But being on my list and seeing that
I published my newsletter mostly by email made him doubt whether
he was making the right decision. My advise to him was this:
"As your online newsletter looks great as it is, it would be a
real shame to stop publishing it. So I wouldn't do that. But,
during the week send two or three short email messages to your
list with the objective to get people to read the online
newsletter."
Here's a few suggestions:
* Send an email containing 5 tips on a certain topic that you
know from experience has your readers interest. Include a link
to a page on your site where there's 5 or 10 more tips on that
topic.
* Put just two or three paragraphs of an article in the email,
have the full article on your website.
* Announce by email that you've got for example a blog & RSS
special just uploaded to your site, and make them click to it.
* Have directories on your site. For example, I have a page with
a list of article directories. Every now and then I'll refer to
the page in my newsletter, give people the link and recommend
they bookmark it so they can re-visit whenever they need the
information...
These are just a few examples of things you can do to get your
email readers to visit your website as well.
I found that an online newsletter offers several opportunities
that an email newsletter simply doesn't. You just need to be
creative and get people to visit it. Combining the both might
just be the answer for you too.
Hope I gave you some ideas.
About the author:
For more problem solving publications by Jim Boere go to
http://www.onlinebizpromotion.com -- To read his most recently
published eBook (revealing a new method for getting your site
ranked in Google and Yahoo!) visit
http://www.onlinebizpromotion.com/blog-and-ping-mastery/
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