First Scenario: A List of Loyal Followers

In the first scenario, you build a following. You have a web site, a blog, maybe a few social networking profiles, and people within your target audience begin to follow your posts and updates. Eventually, they become so interested in what you have to say that they sign up to receive your email newsletter so that they can stay in the loop on everything going on with you and your business.

Once a month or so, you send out your email newsletter. It has a couple of helpful articles that are relevant to your target audience, as well as information about a featured product or service that might interest your readers.

Month after month, your readership grows. Your newsletter is a welcomed extension of your efforts as an endless resource for your following.

Second Scenario: Free Download With Sign-Up

In the second scenario, you have a new product that’s about to launch. Let’s call it your “Yoga for Beginners” e-book. You go through the first few weeks of getting the word out about your new e-book, directing people back to your web site where they can download it by signing up to receive your newsletter. Since you’re doing a big promotional push for the launch, you’re introducing yourself to new audiences, but it seems to be going well, since your mailing list is growing steadily.

A few weeks go by, and you send out an email newsletter called “Stretches That Really Work” that includes a great affiliate product that you think might interest your readers. It’s very relevant to your subscribers, and you’ve tried the product and absolutely love it. The day after you send the campaign, though, you get several unsubscribes, so many that your email marketing company sends you a warning that they’re now monitoring your account. What went wrong?

A Clear Divide?

Are there, in fact, two “sides” to email marketing, two separate schools of thought? If there are and you set up camp on the “loyal following” side of the fence, is it ever safe to cross over without alienating your followers? If you decide to go the “free download with sign-up” route, is there a way to avoid coming across as spam, or getting so many unsubscribes that you get flagged by your email marketing company?

Are there distinct sides to email marketing, or is it possible to find a balance and “ride the fence?” Please share your thoughts.

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1. Provide something of value. Your readers subscribed for a reason. Now it’s your time to shine. Provide them with consistently high-quality content. Give them something that will actually help them in their lives or businesses.
2. Be interesting. Think before you post. Would you want to read this? Will it capture their attention and make them want to continue reading? Don’t be bland. Provide helpful information that your readers will actually look forward to receiving.
3. Be personal. You don’t have to disclose personal details about your life, but it’s helpful to have a more personal conversation. Pretend you’re putting this newsletter together for your friend. Think about a particular (preferably your ideal) client as you compose your articles. Act like you’re having a face-to-face conversation with him or her.
4. Take an interest. If you’re not in the mood to put together a newsletter, don’t do it, or at least step back and check your attitude before you begin. Remember that people actually subscribe to it and may even look forward to it. Remember that this will help your business and help you build better connections with your followers. Take an active interest in providing a high-quality newsletter with each and every issue.
5. Don’t be too “sales-y.” While you definitely want to take the opportunity to let them know about your products and services or any special promotions you’re running, you don’t want to go overboard.Keep a balance between content and promoting yourself. Think in terms of ratios, maybe 80 percent content to 20 percent promotion.
6. Be a resource. Provide links to other articles, videos and podcasts that are relevant to your audience. Devote an entire section to resources that might help them in their businesses.
7. Don’t make it too long. Try to limit your newsletters to no more than five or six articles. Otherwise, your readers will likely skip around and not read every section.
8. Provide a consistent format. Think about regular columns or sections you could provide in each issue of your newsletter. The more consistent you are with your format, the more likely that your subscribers will start to anticipate it and look for those sections, kind of like their favorite magazine columns or newsletter sections.
9. Try to get them to act. Be sure to provide some special discount or offer to your readers that encourages them to take action, whether that’s to refer a friend or make a purchase.
10. Ask for feedback. Every once in a while, ask readers how you’re doing. See if there’s any way you could improve the newsletter so that it’s more helpful to them. Remember that comments and replies are a good way of gauging the effectiveness of your message as well.
11. Be consistent. Stick to a regular schedule. I like to send my newsletters on the third Wednesday of each month. That way, I know there’s no chance the date will fall on a weekend (like if I did them on the 1st of each month, for instance), I provide myself a few weekdays’ cushion to get it done (and it’s not on a Friday, when I’m wanting to get out the door), and it’s easy for me and my readers to remember.

Newsletters can be an effective way to maintain and build relationships with your customers and prospects. You just have to be consistent in providing valuable content on a very regular basis. If you do, you’re guaranteed to get quality face time with people who want to hear your message and are already interested in doing business with you.

How do you ensure that you maintain a high-quality newsletter? What regular features do you include to keep readers interested?

Image from Flickr by by Jolante

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There have been times when I’ve pulled out all the marketing stops and still had my newsletter outperform every other medium. I think there are a few reasons for this.

1. The people who are receiving your newsletter really want to receive it. I follow a lot of people on Twitter, but I subscribe to very few newsletters. The ones I do subscribe to generally get read quite intensively. Why? Because I’m interested in the message of that particular person or company, and I probably enjoy the format of that particular newsletter (layout, content, regular sections, etc.). When I receive one of these few newsletters, it’s like receiving one of my favorite magazines, and I enjoy browsing it cover to cover in hopes of finding one new nugget of information that might help me in my life or business.
2. You get their undivided attention. When I read a newsletter, I generally have waited until I have time to focus on it, as I do with my favorite magazines. I don’t want to feel rushed or distracted, so I’ll save it in my email box until I have time to look over it. Even though I may not read every single article, the ones I do read get my undivided attention, which means I’m much more likely to take action on the article than when I’m browsing news and blog feeds.
3. It’s more personal. Getting a newsletter is a little like receiving a letter in the mail, and even though you know that a lot of other people receive it, there’s just something more personal and inviting about a newsletter over a blog entry, podcast, video or tweet. Maybe because it comes to your private email box, you can read it privately, and then send a somewhat private message back to the sender, should you decide to do so.
4. The pump has been primed. Anyone who subscribes to your newsletter is already interested in you, your company and its services. If they’ve been waiting on the fence for the right timing to act on your offer, you stand a good chance of capturing their business when they are ready to act.
5. It feels like an inside scoop. For whatever reason, newsletters seem a lot more exclusive than blogs and other media. Maybe it’s the personal and private thing again, but whatever it is, readers feel like they’re getting first-hand information directly from the horse’s mouth. That provides two opportunities. One, they’re likely to be watching for sweet deals and offers from you and your company. Two, if they do get “juicy inside information,” they’re way more likely to spread it around than if it were in a blog entry “for all the world to see.”
6. They can be forwarded (and perhaps are more likely to be). While a lot of people understand about sharing blog entries with others, forwarding an email is dead simple, so it’s much more likely that a newsletter will be forwarded onto someone if the reader thinks the recipient will benefit from it.

While I am a big advocate for blogging, I think newsletters are an equally powerful tool that can be used in a slightly different way to leverage your marketing efforts.

Do you have a newsletter? How has it helped you in promoting your business?

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For one of my new projects, I had to sign up for GetResponse, an email marketing service. Since I had to get a subscription anyway, I wondered if there was a way I could use the app to improve my freelance practice. Email newsletters are often used for product promotion, so why not use it to  market my services?

While it might seem to be too late for me to hop on the email marketing bandwagon, I see very few options that offer the same effectiveness for reaching my customers, particularly with my client base. Many of my clients aren’t tech savvy, which means they don’t have social-networking accounts, so I can’t contact them using Twitter, Facebook or LinkedIn. Also, I doubt that many of them return to my web site after we’ve started working together.

In order to maximize the effectiveness of my email marketing campaign, I had to plan what kind of messages I would send to my customers. Here’s what I came up with:

Provide general business information to clients. Educating our clients is always a good thing. It’s not enough to just give them our work output — I have to teach them how to use it well. But this often burdens me with hours of repetitive tech support. With the use of email marketing services, I can keep clients updated with the latest industry trends, as well as what they can do to adapt.

Promote new work. An email list can also be a good venue to tell others about the current work you’re doing. Did you just publish a new book? Are you launching another web app? It’s a good way to promote your new projects and show your clients how much you’re growing professionally. After all, the more skills you learn and the more experience you gain, the better you’ll be able to help their business.

Share feedback. If a client writes to you and tells you that your work increased their sales by 150 percent, wouldn’t you be proud of it? Just make sure that you have a client’s consent before featuring their comments on your newsletter.

You don’t have to share purely positive feedback, either. You can mention client complaints, but include the steps you took to fix the problem, and what your client had to say after. This brings some honesty into your testimonials, and should make them stand out from the usual testimonials that skeptical clients tend to gloss over.

Hand out exclusive offers. You can also use your mailing list to send out exclusive offers that will alert inactive clients to any new services or products you are offering. In my experience, it’s more effective to contact people who already know you and have worked with you before. They’ll always be more comfortable about rehiring you, compared with new prospects who have never heard of you.

During my first year as a freelancer, I ran into a “dry spell” for a couple of months. I had no new leads, and my current clients didn’t seem to need any work from me. While I didn’t subscribe to an email marketing service, I used my email contact list and sent out a message offering some of my services for a small discounted fee if they sent me successful referrals. I received several new, referred clients, and, thanks to the discount,  several existing clients were encouraged to rehire me for future projects.

Learn the interest level of your customers. While some of the tips above could be done just by sending emails with your regular email client, tracking your clients’ interest level is something you can only do with an email marketing service. You can check who opens your messages, clicks the links embedded in your emails (and which links they click on), or buys something through your site.

Like any other communication tool, mailing lists shouldn’t be abused or you risk losing your audience. As long as you’re providing value to your subscribers, your messages will always be welcome in their inboxes.

Do you use email newsletters or email marketing software to keep in touch with clients? If so, how has it affected your business?

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