mariare eZine, eNewsletters, online newsletters… whatever you want to call them… chances are you’ve either developed one or your on your way. Why? They are an extremely effective tool for keeping in contact with your online audience. As an internet marketer, I currently use 4 online newsletters to market to me audience.
The goal is to develop them into effective online marketing tools that build relationships with your target market. Period. Here are some tips to think about when your developing your online newsletter:
- Make sure you stick with a consistent theme. This goes for design and content. Choosing a consistent design theme, basically means branding your online newsletter with everything else you have online. People need to recognize you and your online “stuff” in order to build credibility and get those conversions higher. As well, consistency in themed content is important too. If you advertise your newsletter to hold one set of content, don’t publish another set, your likely to upset your audience. Also, on a side note, keep your theme consistent with the content and marketing your doing in other places online.
- Use graphics. Sounds simple, but you’d be surprised at how many people just deliver text every week, wondering why their conversions are lower than they should be. Graphics are simple, but a great way to break up the newsletter and make it more user friendly. As well, when your posting this same newsletter in your online archive, those graphics, optimized – can help you in your organic search engine rankings and traffic development. Not to mention, if optimized right, those same graphics can help you in the search engine’s indexing of images.
- Use an effective layout that helps with easy scanning. There is a lot of argument about the most effective layout for an online newsletter. Well, let me break it down for you using 10 years of online marketing experience:
- Big, bold titles – section headers – are absolutely necessary. Let them find exactly what they need or you lose them all together. Fact is, no one will read it all the way through, all the time. You’ve got to make it user friendly and dissectable.
- If your online newsletter has more than one major area of content, ie. more than one article, provide a short description and link to all sections to the online version. Here’s the issue here — online deliverability and user-friendly set-up. Most people will not sit through an entire newsletter in their email, email is a get-it-done-and-get-on-with-it software… get them to your site. Users will spend more time exploring your content in that area. Here’s an example of how we do it: On our big monthly newsletters we use short descriptions and links to an online newsletter archive that is actually housed in blog software for easy of indexing by search engines and it provides a nifty little, searchable archive for our readers.
- Never miss an opportunity to advertise your products and services. Online users expect to see this. Your missing a ton of opportunities for sales when your not including product and service information. How we do it is to always recommend a product or service that is related to the article and sections, relevance means higher conversions.
- Think Viral. Create easy ways for your online newsletter to be shared, etc. Examples? Include a “Not Subscribed? Subscribe here” link. Include “Share Article with Friend” link. These are just a few of the ways you can encourage sharing of your online newsletter – which ultimately encourages growth of your list numbers.
- Check Your Work Silly! This seems like a no-brainer to me. And certainly, you can not be perfect 100% of the time, but you’ve got to put the effort in to at least try. Errors, broken links, and such are never a good sign to readers. Remember, your building trust and credibility here.
That’s it. Just some quick notes to help you in developing the most effective online newsletter you can possibly do. Your list is very valuable, in terms of potential revenues, you need to guard it carefully and use it wisely.