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Leverage your email newsletters

Wednesday, March 17th, 2010

Written by Carl Da-Costa-Greaves

If you think about it, newsletters are the most convenient, oldest and economical modes of spreading your company information. If you haven’t converted to full digital versions as of yet; distributed through emails, blogs and RSS, then you should most definitely be considering this now as a worthwhile and cost effective way to promote your business. Most people are now online and some come to expect certain features such as blogs and regular news updates via feeds, so entering into this arena is basically giving your customers what they want. But rather than scratching around for content, why not convert your email newsletters to blog posts and news feeds? You can effectively reach the same customer base, and more, which will leverage the content of your original email newsletters.

How to get your email newsletter to become a blog?

Most people understand what a blog is and even subscribe to them, but when asked to write a regular post about their favourite topic, then out comes the writer’s block. But if we consider all of the existing news items that are published about your company as part of your regular newsletter, whether electronically or printed, this alone can be separated into individual pieces and thus provide a wealth of information. The way to enable this to work is through content management systems. These are available as part of a web package or can be hosted on your website as part of your existing design, in a matter of a few hours.
Your blog becomes your email newsletter

By introducing the content of your email newsletters though your blog or online news feed, with no extra effort, you can then streamline your email marketing and newsletter send out process and in turn give your customers a far better user experience. So if you’re committing valuable time to publishing a newsletter, either printed or email newsletters, then it stands to reason that you should leverage this and get as much of a return on your investment out of the process as possible.

A word of caution: just because you publish all of your content on line it doesn’t mean that people necessarily want to read it. Think about adding value to customers or prospects by providing useful, exclusive content or freebies, mixed in with your standard product and company updates.

Tags: content management systems, email marketing, email newsletter, news updates
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Spring clean your newsletters

Saturday, March 13th, 2010

By Carl Da-Costa-Greaves

Whether you’re creating your own email newsletters or writing for someone else, if you’re anything like me, you will always be looking for ways to improve, even going right back to the drawing board. With growing competition online and new technologies emerging every day, the last thing you want to do is get left behind by your competitors.

Why reinvent your email newsletters?

You‘ve been writing email newsletters for your business, publishing them and distributing them for years so why change now? A few reasons might be because: • Your users are reading the same newsletter, making the message monotonous as there’s not much more to read that they don’t already know about you. • In the age of the digital era there is so much more information that can be collated quite quickly, such as product profiles, feedback reviews, testimonials etc. If this type of information has got you the reputation you have today then you should share this pride with your readers so they know exactly where their suppliers brand stands in market. • Think big and think different. Why do the same things others are doing?
How to be different

Now you know why your newsletter may need changing, it’s time to work out how you can make it different. Writing good email newsletters requires absolute creativity that you need to put in from the start. Some areas to think about are: • Interest your readers by tapping them into the wider knowledge base of your industry. By doing this you are showing a willingness to educate outside of your own products, adding innovative generic industry information. • Change the design of your newsletter. Why stick to the same boring way of presenting your newsletter? Play with colours and design styles. Use other interesting newsletters that catch your eye for ideas, design patterns and choice of colours. • Add some reviews and testimonials about the products and services of your business. This will help your readers gain faith in your brand. • Keep your readers regularly updated; once a day is too much, once every 6 months and they will forget you. • Leave your readers in anticipation for the next publication. You can do this by dropping some hints about upcoming offers in your next editions. If you haven’t changed your email newsletter in the last 2 years then the chances are it’s going to look a bit outdated. Leverage the power of email marketing and try incorporating some of the ideas above the next time you publish.

Tags: creativity, email newsletters, Internet Marketing, spring clean
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Growing your email marketing lists

Tuesday, March 2nd, 2010

In previous posts we’ve discussed how to write winning email newsletters. However, If you’ve just started out in business or only recently started capturing email addresses through sign up forms etc then you probably don't have a big list to send your email marketing campaigns or email newsletters to. So what do you do?

Here are some inspirational ideas to grow your opt-in email marketing list:

• Place your email newsletter signup form on your home page. Or if this doesn’t fit with the look and feel of your design then have a visual cue, or noticeable link to take users directly to the signup form page.

• Link to your signup form from every page of your website (you might even add a link to your footer or side navigation).

• Place a link to your email signup form in your email signature (ask everyone in your company to do the same).

• Offer free giveaways to one lucky subscriber (it can be an exclusive promotional discount or a limited edition offer of some sort).

• Post free whitepapers or helpful articles on your site. They'll get downloaded and hopefully spread around the web if you offer them for free and with no registration. Inside your whitepaper you could place your add or promotion of your newsletter and the benefits of signing up (see above).

• Send out personal, one-to-one emails to all your clients who haven’t already opted-in and ask them to please sign up to your newsletter.

• In your "Contact Us" form on your website, add a checkbox to "signup to our newsletter"

Already Have a List of Customers?

What if you already have a customer list with email contact details of people that you've been doing business with for years? Just because they're your customers it doesn't necessarily mean that they want to start receiving your email newsletters. For example, if you run a small consultancy business with a about 25 clients who are very close to you. If you just assume they'd want your newsletter and you automatically subscribe them to your list without their permission, you're just going to irritate a lot of them (or worse, get yourself reported as a spammer). If you've got an online store you're probably sitting on a huge email list of customers who have purchased something from you in the past. But if they didn't check a box for email marketing, or if you haven't emailed them anything in years, you shouldn't start sending them emails out of the blue. So what can you do? If you have a list of customer email addresses and you want to start sending them email marketing, but you don't have their permission yet, ask them for permission by sending a "Re-Introduction Email." It can be extremely effective in re-energising dormant contacts and will certainly help you on your way to increasing your opt-in subscribers.

Tags: email marketing, email marketing campaigns, email newsletters
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Press releases and keyword optimisation

Sunday, February 28th, 2010

Keyword optimisation on your website has become standard procedure for most marketers. But are you optimising your press releases with your chosen keywords?

Here are a few reasons why you should:
• If you’re posting your press releases to your website (and you should be), it’s going to be the freshest content and Google likes fresh content.
• Generally, press releases and news articles rank very highly on Google. The more keyword rich your press releases are, the better you/they will rank in Google.
• Press releases aren’t just for the press. Make it easy for prospects, bloggers, customers and the media to find you wherever they’re searching.

Don’t know where to start to find the right keywords?
• Find out what keywords successful competitors are using.
• Read articles written by target journalists.
• Survey your PR and Marketing department personnel.
• Survey your Web site development team.
• Survey product development personnel and executive management.

Many press release distribution services have built in SEO features. Use them for a trial period and track results in order to get an idea of which of your keywords are the most popular. Also, be sure to avoid over used industry words like “flexible,” “scalable” and “market-leading”.

After you’ve written your press release and think you’ve optimised for all the necessary keywords, put it to the test. HubSpot have a free online Press Release Grader tool to rate your press release. “Press Release Grader rates a press release based on a checklist of criteria – from content and structure, to search optimisation and link analysis. The free tool is designed to optimise a press release so it can be found more easily.

Going through the above process will train you in a style where you will not only be considering how to get the news out there, but will make you think openly about what people will be searching for so that they can actually find your content. Building these search terms and keywords into your story will then leverage this valuable source of content.

Tags: press releases, web site development
Posted in Internet Marketing, knowledge | No Comments »

Writing email newsletters

Friday, February 26th, 2010

Written by: Carl Da-Costa-Greaves

Email newsletters are a great medium for imparting knowledge, news updates or to even just touch base with your customers. In today’s digital world you can engage with very little up front costs, making regular contact to keep you “front of mind”.

However, the key to a successful newsletter is learning how to write the winning piece. The first thing about your campaign is to keep in mind and plan a relevant theme or a subjective issue towards which the attention of the reader needs to be drawn. Once the theme or content is decided, you must plan the flow of information in such a way that the entire message comes across in a logical manner. Content should be meaningful and not too confusing that you leave the reader bewildered as to what message is trying to be conveyed. Even more so today as we’re bombarded with so much information that our time span on cluttered content is zero.

The next point that needs our attention is that we get to the facts quickly in the first part; possibly in a bullet pointed format. We do this to allow the reader an insight so they can rapidly decide if they wish to know more about the topic and further delve into facts, figures and other data, or move on. Incorporating images if you have them is a great way to graphically illustrate the content and is pleasing to the eye. Images also break up the page and can give a more inviting appeal to cold blocks of text. It also goes without saying that a good email newsletter is well researched and the writer, if handled through an agency, has a thorough understanding of the client requirements, a clear target is agreed and a thorough understanding is gained about the target readership.

The mark of any winning newsletter is one that keeps building on the interest of the readers. Hence you must make careful considerations as to what is exactly relevant and will add value from the first line right up until the end of the final paragraph. In fact a winning email newsletter would be considered one that leaves the reader craving for more content even after they have finished reading it completely.

Written by: Carl Da-Costa-Greaves

Email newsletters are a great medium for imparting knowledge, news updates or to even just touch base with your customers. In today’s digital world you can engage with very little upfront costs, making regular contact to keep you “front of mind”. However, the key to a successful newsletter is learning how to write the winning piece.

The first thing about your campaign is to keep in mind and plan a relevant theme or a subjective issue towards which the attention of the reader needs to be drawn. Once the theme or content is decided, you must plan the flow of information in such a way that the entire message comes across in a logical manner. Content should be meaningful and not too confusing that you leave the reader bewildered as to what message is trying to be conveyed. Even more so today as we’re bombarded with so much information that our time span on cluttered content is zero.

It also goes without saying that a winning email newsletter is well researched and the writer, if handled through an agency, has a thorough understanding of the client requirements, a clear target is agreed and a thorough understanding is gained about the target readership.

The mark of any winning newsletter is one that keeps building on the interest of the readers. Hence you must make careful considerations as to what is exactly relevant and will add value from the first line right up until the end of the final paragraph. In fact a good email newsletter would be considered one that leaves the reader craving for more content even after they have finished reading it completely.

Tags: email newsletter
Posted in Internet Marketing | 1 Comment »