Newsletters build loyalty

As you continue to broaden the circle of your internet friends, don’t forget the importance of offering a newsletter. Keep your newsletter interesting and entertaining, and be sure to talk about things that were not discussed on the regular blog. Use a newsletter to make friends and to build a solid base of regular visitors to your website.

Don’t send out your newsletter so often that you irritate people and defeat your purpose. They should look forward to receiving it because of its interesting content. For the same reason, don’t put too much advertising in your newsletter.

Make sure your newsletter is sent out regularly. Keep in touch, so that your blog readers are reminded of you. A newsletter is also a good place to run unique coupons and other special incentives that are not available to the general web population.

Along the same lines as a newsletter is the offering of an RSS feed. This also will help keep your regular readers in the loop and help keep them in your big happy blog family.

Newsletter signup

Before you start trying to sign people up to receive your newsletter, take some time to think it through and envision exactly what the newletter will contain. The best way is to create a sample issue and work out the problems as you develop it. Also you should begin paying closer attention to the newletters you already receive, making note of the things in them you find interesting or attractive. You can also get ideas for formatting by reading other newsletters.

When you are clear about how your newsletter will look, and what you intend to be saying, then it is time to begin advertising it on your website. Tell your visitors you have a newsletter. Create a form for them to sign up. Have an autoresponder script set up to acknowledge their signup. Some people go so far as to have them click on a verification link in the autoresponder email. This is to be doubly sure it was the real email address owner who did the signing up. Don’t hesitate to do this. Your goal is to have a nice clean list of real people who want to hear from you and who are interested in the subject you are talking about. If that list doesn’t grow as fast because of your screening procedures, then so be it.

This blog is probably not the place to get into the technical aspects of setting up a newsletter. You can readily learn the actual mechanics about doing newsletters on other specialized “how-to” websites. But do consider putting out a newsletter in an effort to create more of a personal bond with your visitor-customers. If you do it right, you won’t regret the effort it takes.

Keep in touch

Keep in touch
A newsletter is not just an email filled with advertisements and sales pitches. Emails like that are called spam. Instead, a newsletter needs to contain NEWS--news about things related to the subject of your blog or other website.

With the advent of the popularity of blogs, the need to publish a newletter of some kind would seem to be diminished. After all, the news items are already being published in your blog, right? While there is a lot of current news being talked about on your daily blog, there is still room for a newsletter. The real purpose behind a newsletter is to keep in touch with your friends who read your blog, and your customers who have made a purchase from you.

In light of this, be sure and include things in the newsletter which do not appear on your blog. If your website is a store that sells merchandise that you ship out yourself, then be sure and include a few private specials in the newsletter that are not known to the general public, as well as special coupons if you use coupons in your business.

Often, rather than try and fit all this into a short email (these things DO need to be short!) some newsletter authors send only the headlines and subtitiles, or basic info and coupons, in the email itself. They then include links that will take the reader to the actual fancy newsletter, which of course is really simply a dedicated page on your main website.

Not more frequently than monthly, please.

The biggest key in making this work is, as always, finding ways to make it interesting and useful to your commercial family. Don’t send your emails to people who aren’t interested in what you are doing. You will only waste your time. The goal is to have the best list, not the longest list.

I think it was Mark Twain who admonished us not to waste our time trying to teach pigs how to sing: “You’ll waste your time and annoy the pig.”

Your visitors are hardly pigs, of course--it’s only a quote.

POSTED BY RELAX MAX AT 10:36 AM


LABELS:

Newsletters and repeat business

Repeat business is so important, so precious, like a gift and a vote of confidence all rolled into one. Successful small businesses know this very well. It is their very lifeblood. If you own a business on the internet, it won’t take you long to come to realize that repeat customers and repeat visitors are like gold.

Repeat business is like an investment that deposits a dividend into your account each month. Far from being a sporadic thing, or a one-time deal, repeat business should become the very foundation of your business. It is the “base income” or “residual income” that you can depend on each month, to be supplemented by your new sales efforts. Only a fool, such as a car dealer in a large city, would depend upon one-time new business income alone, and forego almost entirely the gold mine of repeat business.

How do you get repeat visitors, repeat customers? You do it just like Mom and Pop at the neighborhood grocery store used to do. You treat people right. You get to know them as well as you can. You make them comfortable. You give them what they’re looking for. You make them part of the family. And most importantly, you treat them as respected people, even when they aren’t buying anything from you.

If you treat your visitors, customers, like a piece of meat--like car dealers do--you may end up making a one-time sale, but you’ll never see them again. When people think about their car-buying experiences, they cringe with disgust. Car dealers make you want to go home and take a shower. You feel dirty when you leave. Car dealers are the spammer equivilent of the retail world. But you knew that.

Yes, I haven’t forgotten--I’m still talking about newsletters. Honest I am.

Use newsletters to build loyalty

As you continue to broaden the circle of your internet friends, don’t forget the importance of offering a newsletter. Keep your newsletter interesting and entertaining, and be sure to talk about things that were not discussed on the regular blog. Use a newsletter to make friends and to build a solid base of regular visitors to your website.

Don’t send out your newsletter so often that you irritate people and defeat your purpose. They should look forward to receiving it because of its interesting content. For the same reason, don’t put too much advertising in your newsletter.

Make sure your newsletter is sent out regularly. Keep in touch, so that your blog readers are reminded of you. A newsletter is also a good place to run unique coupons and other special incentives that are not available to the general web population.

Along the same lines as a newsletter is the offering of an RSS feed. This also will help keep your regular readers in the loop and help keep them in your big happy blog family.

Newsletter signup

Before you start trying to sign people up to receive your newsletter, take some time to think it through and envision exactly what the newletter will contain. The best way is to create a sample issue and work out the problems as you develop it. Also you should begin paying closer attention to the newletters you already receive, making note of the things in them you find interesting or attractive. You can also get ideas for formatting by reading other newsletters.

When you are clear about how your newsletter will look, and what you intend to be saying, then it is time to begin advertising it on your website. Tell your visitors you have a newsletter. Create a form for them to sign up. Have an autoresponder script set up to acknowledge their signup. Some people go so far as to have them click on a verification link in the autoresponder email. This is to be doubly sure it was the real email address owner who did the signing up. Don’t hesitate to do this. Your goal is to have a nice clean list of real people who want to hear from you and who are interested in the subject you are talking about. If that list doesn’t grow as fast because of your screening procedures, then so be it.

This blog is probably not the place to get into the technical aspects of setting up a newsletter. You can readily learn the actual mechanics about doing newsletters on other specialized “how-to” websites. But do consider putting out a newsletter in an effort to create more of a personal bond with your visitor-customers. If you do it right, you won’t regret the effort it takes.

Keep in touch

A newsletter is not just an email filled with advertisements and sales pitches. Emails like that are called spam. Instead, a newsletter needs to contain NEWS--news about things related to the subject of your blog or other website.

With the advent of the popularity of blogs, the need to publish a newletter of some kind would seem to be diminished. After all, the news items are already being published in your blog, right? While there is a lot of current news being talked about on your daily blog, there is still room for a newsletter. The real purpose behind a newsletter is to keep in touch with your friends who read your blog, and your customers who have made a purchase from you.

In light of this, be sure and include things in the newsletter which do not appear on your blog. If your website is a store that sells merchandise that you ship out yourself, then be sure and include a few private specials in the newsletter that are not known to the general public, as well as special coupons if you use coupons in your business.

Often, rather than try and fit all this into a short email (these things DO need to be short!) some newsletter authors send only the headlines and subtitiles, or basic info and coupons, in the email itself. They then include links that will take the reader to the actual fancy newsletter, which of course is really simply a dedicated page on your main website.

Not more frequently than monthly, please.

The biggest key in making this work is, as always, finding ways to make it interesting and useful to your commercial family. Don’t send your emails to people who aren’t interested in what you are doing. You will only waste your time. The goal is to have the best list, not the longest list.

I think it was Mark Twain who admonished us not to waste our time trying to teach pigs how to sing: “You’ll waste your time and annoy the pig.”

Your visitors are hardly pigs, of course--it’s only a quote.

Newsletters and repeat business

Repeat business is so important, so precious, like a gift and a vote of confidence all rolled into one. Successful small businesses know this very well. It is their very lifeblood. If you own a business on the internet, it won’t take you long to come to realize that repeat customers and repeat visitors are like gold.

Repeat business is like an investment that deposits a dividend into your account each month. Far from being a sporadic thing, or a one-time deal, repeat business should become the very foundation of your business. It is the “base income” or “residual income” that you can depend on each month, to be supplemented by your new sales efforts. Only a fool, such as a car dealer in a large city, would depend upon one-time new business income alone, and forego almost entirely the gold mine of repeat business.

How do you get repeat visitors, repeat customers? You do it just like Mom and Pop at the neighborhood grocery store used to do. You treat people right. You get to know them as well as you can. You make them comfortable. You give them what they’re looking for. You make them part of the family. And most importantly, you treat them as respected people, even when they aren’t buying anything from you.

If you treat your visitors, customers, like a piece of meat--like car dealers do--you may end up making a one-time sale, but you’ll never see them again. When people think about their car-buying experiences, they cringe with disgust. Car dealers make you want to go home and take a shower. You feel dirty when you leave. Car dealers are the spammer equivilent of the retail world. But you knew that.

Yes, I haven’t forgotten--I’m still talking about newsletters. Honest I am.

Email marketing

Email marketing. Cringe.

Don’t you hate spammers? Me too. What lowlifes. I can’t think of enough bad words to call them. They waste our time, fill up our mailboxes with trash, hijack our email addresses, cause us to spend money on antispam software that never really works. Arrrgh! I hate them!

I hope you will never be so totally rude as to impose yourself on another human being by sending out spam. If you are reading this blog, I just KNOW you have more class than that.

The point of this post is to remind you that you don’t have to be a spammer in order to use email marketing. You just have to work hard to win people’s confidence and slowly build up a legitimate list of people who really want to hear from you.

Not spam. Newsletters. Stay tuned.