Creating an Ezine Newsletter
Have you ever thought about creating an Ezine newsletter for your site? Newsletters are a great way of driving traffic and keeping in touch your site’s visitors. They can also be used to notify customers, clients or members about special promotions, upcoming events or other subjects of interest.
Your newsletters may contain either a conglomeration of published posts or any other information available at your website. You could even create a newsletter that contains additional information available only to subscribers.
If your website traffic is not sufficient enough to support a newsletter yet you might consider purchasing an email mailing list.
If you choose this route you must be very selective. Publishers or services that have a large following and can target certain segments are good choices. Facebook and Twitter are good choices.
An opt-in box should be included at your blog or website. Offering your visitors the option of whether or not to continue receiving your Ezine newsletter helps to develop your own. This also helps to prevent mailings to those that would otherwise direct it to a spam folder.
Once you have a list of email addresses, you will need content that your readers will find valuable. You can write about anything relevant to the topic of your website, your club or business.
Ezine newsletter tips
1. How do you handle the distribution on the newsletter? Consider using sites such as ConstantContact.com and Icontact.com. Each of these companies provides customizable templates and they are inexpensive. More importantly, they provide reporting features which will help you manage your campaigns.
2. When designing your Ezine newsletter
look for a template that provides a clean professional look.
There is no need to get too fancy; your content should do your selling
for you.
a. You will have several decisions to make in terms of the design. For example do you need a calendar section, advice column, featured items column etc...? When deciding on your structure and layout always keep your readers in mind.
3. Your Ezine newsletter title should be thought provoking. It should be interesting and catchy. Spend some time on this. It is ok to be creative but get your message across.
4. As with all of your writings, whether it is for your website or you newsletter, maintain a personal yet informal tone. A tone that is informative and yet inviting.
5. Try to build your newsletter around a lead article. Your lead article should be the most detailed.
6. Provide information that is up to date and fresh. Your information should always be brief and yet concise, relevant and useful. Where more information/detail is required, provide links to your website.
a. Include links to your website with anchor text embedded. Your anchor text should contain primary keywords.
7. Ok, we are almost most done. One of the most important steps, testing. Send out your newsletter to a few people. Send it to yourself. Make sure all of its links work properly. Elicit family and friends for feedback before your mailing.
8. Last but not least, contact information. Don’t forget to provide your contact information in your newsletter. Encourage your readers to provide feedback. This is the best way to gauge how you are doing.
Once your Ezine newsletter is done, you simply send it to the readers on your list. As time goes by, if you provide valuable content, you can expect that list to grow and grow. In addition, you should see your website traffic grow.
