E-Marketing Strategy: E-mail Marketing: An Old Workhorse That Still Pulls Its Weight
If you're asking folks to grant you access to their in-boxes, you should be perfectly clear in your promotions about what it is you'll be sending them. You must define the value they'll receive by signing up. Promoting your "Latest News Newsletter" is too vague and pretty boring—you'll have a hard time getting people to sign up. Instead, promote content that's more creative and exciting—the "Baking Tips Newsletter from Author Jelly Bean" or the "Deal of the Week E-mail" or the "Insider's Guide to Getting Published." Offer something of value, and people will have an easier time letting you into their day.
Crafting the E-mail
Each of the newsletter services I mentioned above have great point-and-click tools that will help you create an attractive newsletter. That's the easy part. The more difficult task is finding content to put into a regularly sent newsletter.
Before you begin crafting your e-mail, you should be clear about your goals. E-newsletters of old—like printed newsletters—were used primarily as content delivery devices. They were self-contained. The newsletter was read in full (or not) and discarded.
Your e-newsletter should, instead, be seen as a content-promotion device. You want your newsletter to drive traffic to your website. Remember, your website is your conversion tool. Your e-newsletter will not sell anything on its own.
Business owners and marketing teams already have their hands full producing content for books, their blog and various social media outlets. Adding a weekly, biweekly, or monthly newsletter can seem like the final stressful straw. So, instead of going to the trouble of creating more content, it's easier to use your newsletter as a "Best Of" list. Identify the best content you've produced in the last month from all of these outlets you already use—clip quick excerpts from each piece and plunk them into your newsletter. Add headlines, photos and links to where the reader can find the original content on your site.
