A newsletter is easily one of the most important parts of an online business, as it is the most efficient and powerful way of increasing exposure and sales. However, there are marketers who find success only in the beginning, before finding out that their subscriber list has eventually decayed and stopped being beneficial to their business. What they don’t know is that there are 3 things that could creep up on your operations and slowly kill your newsletter if left unchecked. These 3 things consist of:
Lack of Opportunity to Grow the List From Within the Newsletter
List decay is a sad but unavoidable part of any newsletter. You can’t keep every single one of your subscribers indefinitely – over time some of them will lose interest, some will move on to a competitor, or some will pass away.
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One of the great mysteries in online marketing and advertising is the fact that an overwhelming majority of consumers no longer trust ads, yet businesses still rely too much on conventional ads that consumers will either refuse to believe or just outright block for being too annoying. Marketers still do find some semblance of success with traditional online ads, but this only works through sheer volume, and requires amounts of resources that is practically unavailable to small businesses with limited advertising budgets. Thankfully, there is one area where ads still work: E-Newsletters.
Why Traditional Ads No Longer Work, and Why Ads on E-Newsletters Still Do
Contrary to what two-bit marketers would have you believe, consumers these days are better informed and less likely to see any advertisement as anything but a blatant attempt to part them with their money. Information, comparison, and alternatives are all a mouseclick away these days, so it’s extremely difficult to get people to respond positively to an ad, especially if the product it is advertising is mediocre or sub-par.
Click here if you are an advertiser and wants access to consumers who are already searching for your product or brand. (more…)
The Internet has already proven itself as the most powerful venue for advertising in the modern age, with reach that cannot be matched by traditional media and a cost of entry that is scalable enough that even small businesses can afford to run advertising campaigns that span the globe. However, most businesses these days fail to realize its full potential because they still treat the Internet like print or broadcast media, not knowing that there are better alternatives online.
Some marketers DO understand that the Internet is an entirely different beast, and has taken their campaigns to newsletters, which is why newsletter ads have been growing at a steady pace these past few years. There are a number of reasons why newsletters are outpacing the growth of other forms of advertising on the Internet, such as:
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Newsletters Are Simple and Highly Efficient
Marketing sometimes mirrors the principles of survival of the fittest, in which the most efficient – and most likely to survive – species are the ones that are simplest. In this line of thinking, newsletters are very powerful because it’s a simple enough concept. It’s basically a magazine that’s been stripped down to its bare necessities: a single article with a single ad, mailed directly to consumers on a regular basis. (more…)
Newsletter advertising has a lot of advantages compared to traditional channels for promotion and marketing, but one of the most beneficial is the availability of testing and measuring tools. Said tools provide the means to gauge the performance of advertisements and let email newsletter publishers present pertinent data to advertisers.
Keys to Accurate Testing
The secret to accurate testing of newsletter advertising metrics is to isolate the factors that are being tested, and to prevent outside factors from changing it. It’s not a new thing, by any means, as the principle of testing requires all variables to be kept constant. When it comes to newsletter advertising, it means that you should show ads to the same audience on a consistent schedule and on the same position on the page. This will limit the influence of other factors on the reader’s response to the ad being tested.
The A/B Split Run Test
The A/B split run test basically requires you to run two different ads each to half of an audience. Print magazines do this by creating slightly different versions of the same issue, with the difference being the ads in a particular location within the issue. It makes it easy to gauge an ad’s effectiveness because the audience, timing, and position of the advertisements being shown are the same.
In the past, A/B split run tests cannot be done on advertisements in email newsletters, with marketers only relying on tracking clickthrough rates for different newsletters published at the same time. The results of this type of test is useful, but less accurate because the different newsletters have different audiences, ad placement policies, and publication dates.
What makes the traditional means of testing for newsletter advertising metrics even more difficult is that it’s hard to discern the correlation between Clickthrough Rates and demographic data. The general demographic data from many range of newsletters available is very broad and make analysis next to impossible.
Newer Testing Tools for Newsletter Advertising Metrics
These days, the importance (and profitability) of email newsletter advertising has been proven, resulting in many publishers coming out with sophisticated tracking and testing tools, finally allowing the use of A/B split run tests and greatly improving the accuracy and relevance of data.
In email newsletters, the A/B split run test is done by having the email ad server insert two different versions of the same ad in each half of a specific run. Each ad is assigned a unique URL, which makes it easy to determine the CTR for each ad. Additionally, the URL can include each reader’s unique profile code, so that each click can also log exactly which reader responded to the ad, making it possible to tabulate demographic and even user-specific data like preference, gender, age or whatever other data you’ve managed to collect during their sign up.
Other Testing Methods
The A/B Split Run Test, while an effective means of testing newsletter advertising metrics, is by no means the only useful testing method. Other variations on the testing can be implemented in order to maximize results. These include approaches such as analyzation of CTRs based on demographic data, comparison of results based on ad positions within the email, the rise and fall over time of response rates when the ad is inserted multiple times, etc. It is important to remember that the process of developing ads online is subject only to the knowledge and creativity of the marketers, and it is usually up to market researchers and their testing methods to gauge market reactions.
Selling ads through newsletters can be very profitable. However, it is a completely different process from traditional ad selling, particularly if you’re basing it within the context of print publications. If you want to succeed, you need to acknowledge the differences and follow a few keys to success, such as:
Offer Data on Performance
Many e-mail marketers shy away from presenting numbers because they compare their numbers with expectations derived from traditional print advertising. A 25 percent open rate with an 8 percent overall CTR with 0.30 average banner CTR might not look very impressive and the numbers may seem “low,” but those numbers are actually decent if you are familiar with the industry benchmarks.
It is also worth noting that the numbers presented on newsletter advertising are much more accurate compared to print advertising due to the availability of tracking tools. Add the fact that newsletters have a significantly wider reach and larger audience and you’ll see that the supposedly “low” numbers are actually above average when compared to other advertising channels.
So, do not be afraid to present actual data. Spend a little bit of time on educating potential advertisers on what the numbers really mean and you’ll find that they’ll end up trusting your data more.
Consider the Size of Ads You Offer
When it comes to banner advertising, size does matter. Larger ads usually generate better numbers compared to smaller formats. However, an email newsletter more often than not has a limited amount of real estate available. This means you have to test and offer large size ads that won’t ruin the newsletter itself, or offer smaller sized formats that are cheaper. Make sure you standardize everything: pick the largest possible size and then slice it into smaller formats that you can offer piecemeal (this way, advertisers have the option of choosing the size that fits their budget.)
Avoid Separating Advertising from Editorial
In the publishing world, editorial is kept completely separate from advertising. They need to avoid making readers think that the editorial is influenced by advertisers. However, things are different when it comes to email newsletters. You don’t want to overwhelm readers with ads, but placing advertisements alongside editorial content will help them be seen by more people. The rule of thumb is just to ensure that readers are made aware of which ones are editorial content and which ones are advertisements - this can be done by including the word “advertising” or “sponsor” as a watermark or small caption. Banner ads don’t really need this, but text ads need them in order to avoid making them look like text content. You don’t want to come off as deceptively trying to get people to click on ads.
The above tips are just the proverbial tip of the iceberg – selling through newsletter advertising is a big, lucrative industry and there are other things that you can learn through experience.
Contrary to what social media evangelists believe, e-mail messages still account for significantly more traffic than social networks. After all, everybody who has a social network account most likely has an active email account because it’s a requirement for registration.
However, email being a much more powerful medium of communication is only one part of the equation. Email marketers are not guaranteed success because there are a number of mistakes that novices and veterans alike tend to commit. These include:
Emails Are Too Long
One thing about people who read emails is that they are scanners primarily. They don’t devote too much time to a single email and want to read every new item in their inbox, that means they don’t have time to digest bulky paragraphs and lengthy walls of text. According to statistics, users only read around 20% of digital content, so if you want to tell them something, make the emails short, concise, and scannable.
Failure to Use First Names
Do you notice how calling a person’s name in a crowded room, even when everybody’s busy, is a 100% foolproof way of getting his attention? It’s because people are hardwired to hear their name above anything else. Think of an email inbox as the metaphorical crowded room. Using a person’s first name is a good way of getting his attention and making your newsletter stand out above other mails.
Avoiding Pop Ups
Common thinking and pop culture has already thought everyone that pop ups are annoying and therefore bad. Using a pop up on your site will make people leave and never return, etc. etc. Therefore, marketers assume that the same holds true for newsletters. However, studies have proven that pop ups actually lead to a significant increase in email subscriptions, and only minimal increase in bounce rates. At the very least, you should at least give pop ups a try and see if it works wonders. The important thing that you have to remember about pop ups is that they make it easier to bring information to people who would convert, while people who get annoyed by pop ups are the kind of entitled cynics who wouldn’t convert anyway.
No Call to Action
This is one of the costliest mistakes a newsletter can have: forgetting the CTA. Newsletters should be very clear in what you want the user to do. Make sure you have a clear and easy to understand Call to Action so that the readers will always know what it is you want them to do. A newsletter without a CTA is worse than useless – it’s a waste of resources and a waste of opportunity.
Last But Not the Least, Using a Generic Account to Send Emails
It’s common knowledge that people LOVE receiving email from other people and abhor receiving mail from random companies. So why are you sending emails using “From” fields that make your mail look like it came from a faceless generic company? Avoid using the usual admin, marketing, ceo, or any other generic name in the front field. Simply using your first name and “from [company]” will sometimes work wonders in your favor.
Everybody has a website these days, and an overwhelmingly large majority of them want massive traffic either for exposure or for profit. However, not every website has a newsletter. In fact, the number of websites with a newsletter is in the minority. Most people will not see anything wrong with this, but webmasters who already have a successful mailing list will understand why everyone with a website should have a newsletter.
For starters, an email newsletter will help foster a working relationship between a website and its visitors, which could retain value far beyond the actual visits to the website. An email newsletter can serve as a means to keep visitors informed and in touch with you, which works well as a channel of communication if your website is a business. Think of it as another avenue for customer support. There are other benefits to email newsletters within the context of a website, such as:
Admailr will help you monetize your email and, through its partnership with Emercury, will help you make better emails that are convert subscribers to customers. Click here and sign up for a free account. (more…)
Industry veterans have always stressed that a newsletter should have the highest quality content, which is true. But sometimes they forget to mention that simply having quality content isn’t enough – it needs to be original. People assume that just because newsletters aren’t reliant on search engines that they can get away with plagiarizing content from other people. It’s true that Google algorithm changes and penalties are not a concern if you’re just scraping content for use on newsletters, but it’s not completely risk-free for your business.
For starters, just because you’re not on Google’s radar doesn’t mean you’re not going to get caught by the owner of the content you’ve stolen. Newsletters get shared all the time and there’s also the possibility that the author of the content you’ve scraped is your subscriber. Do not think that there’s nothing he can do against you in such a case. Remember that reputation is very, very important in the business. Yours could suffer a great deal if word gets out that you’ve been stealing content.
On the other hand, writing original content for your newsletter provides benefits outside of keeping your proverbial nose clean. First, it hones your skill in writing. Nothing bad ever comes out of improving in any skill. Next, people remember original and high quality content. Produce enough of them and people will start seeing you as an authority on your niche. Being considered as an authority in your niche is priceless and will do wonders for your business.
Avoiding Problems with Unoriginal Content: Curating, Not Scraping
It’s understandable if you don’t always have time to craft original content. After all, high quality original content – the kind that you need for an effective newsletter – isn’t always something that you can create at speeds that would be consistent enough for a regular newsletter. It’s perfectly fine to get content from somewhere else, but in order to avoid problems, you need to learn the difference between curating and scraping.
Scraping is when you simply swipe content from other sources and use it for your own. This is bad and should be avoided. The benefits at best are short term. Curating, on the other hand, differs because instead of just sending out copies of someone else’s content, you get the original author’s consent, you provide a short introduction or description of the content, and you properly cite and credit your sources.
Write a New Article Based on the Source, Don’t Reword
One of the more common mistakes among content creators these days is the notion that it isn’t plagiarism if you reword the article enough to pass side-by-side text comparison. It’s true that if done well enough, it will not be seen as plagiarism at first glance. But people who read both the original and your reworded copy will instantly recognize your article as a rip-off. You want to avoid this.
The real trick – or proper approach – is to digest the original article completely so that you can gain full understanding of the topic, and maybe read a little bit so that you can add something else to the original content. Then write a new article based on the stock knowledge that you have gained. If you ever need to restate an idea from the original article verbatim, cite the source and credit the author.
Conclusion
The truth is that using original content in your newsletter is important because it prevents you from missing the forest for the trees. Using plagiarized content isn’t just dangerous because there’s a chance that you can get caught – it’s dangerous because it encourages laziness and stunts your growth. And when it comes to any business, failure to progress or grow is a surefire way to fail.
It’s true that the quality of content is paramount if you want your blog to succeed, but don’t fall prey to tunnel vision. Quality content is important, but it’s not the only factor to a successful business blog. Don’t forget about other things that are not directly related to content, but still play a big role in maximizing the potential of your blog, such as getting more leads and subscribers. Here are some tips on how you can turn your blog subscribers into email leads:
Use a Welcome Email for All New Subscribers
Try to avoid shoving down offers and marketing pitches to your new subscribers, unless you want them to go directly for the unsubscribe link (or the mark as spam button) – instead, welcome them with something that reminds them why they are receiving an email and what they can expect; from the schedule to what they will be able to read. Additionally, while it may seem counter to the purpose – include an option to unsubscribe. This actually has two important purposes. One is that it gives your subscribers the ability to opt out if they don’t want to receive your mails (you’re not going to get anything out of reluctant recipients, anyway) and second is that it’s required by the CAN SPAM Act.
A newsletter is the best way to maintain customer relationship. It is also an extra revenue source. Sign up and learn how Admailr and Emercury can help you monetize your newsletter. (more…)
It’s a common saying over the Internet: Content is King! You read it from Google’s Matt Cutts, from various article marketers and SEO experts, and even from random bloggers floating around on free services. Most of the time, they are pertaining to web content, but the amazing thing is that it applies even to newsletters. One of the most important parts of a newsletter is valuable content. But how can you tell if your newsletter content is valuable? There are a number of ways:
1. If People Are Sharing It - People have this innate need to share things that they like to their friends and loved ones, especially nowadays as social media has made the act of sharing content a point of pride. Newsletters with really good content are particularly conducive to sharing, because it has this air of exclusivity to it – readers feel like they’re the only one with access to the newsletter because they access it through their personal mail reader. So once they find something that really grabbed their attention, they feel compelled to show it to everyone else. You do need to make it easier for them, though – so make sure your newsletters have “Share This” links or CTAs.
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A good newsletter can level the playing field between small businesses and large companies, especially with the current state of the economy as no single company can afford to target everyone. A really good newsletter that is targeted can help a small business compete regardless of budget. However, the keyword here is “good newsletter.” How exactly do you know that your newsletter will perform well?
In order to have an effective newsletter, you need to have the following foundations:
A Good Grasp of Your Current Customer Base
If your newsletter is to be opened and read, it should be written specifically for your customers based on who they are and why they should buy from you. Don’t paint with a broad brush, as no large company, much less a small one, has the ability to sell to everyone. Find common characteristics and interests among your customer base and write your newsletter based on that. You can even push this further by writing for the customers that are bringing in the most businesses. (more…)
