What’s Next After Your Newsletter?
Ok. You have a newsletter registration on your home page,
and people have started to sign up.
Great! Now, what do you do?
A. Sit back and watch who signs up.
B. Communicate with your new registrants right away.
C. Send valuable information to your list on a regular basis.
If you answered B and C… Ding, Ding Ding! You are right!
Newsletter Set Up is Just the Beginning.
The whole reason you have an online newsletter registration
is so that you can collect the contact information for potential
customers.
Once you get their names and e-mails, the real work begins…
- Send a thank you.
Immediately after people register for your newsletter, send them
a personalized, e-mail thank-you note. It should include a welcome
message, all the benefits they will be receiving and any kind of
free e-report, survey, white paper, etc. that you agreed to send
them if they registered.
- Schedule e-mail auto-responders.
What are they?
Well, after you send out your initial thank-you
and welcome e-mail, you need to communicate with your
list on a regular basis.
With e-mail auto-responders, you send e-mails to your
audience to remind them about your business. And these 5-10
e-mails are scheduled for automatic delivery over a matter of weeks.
However, you want to ensure these e-mail messages are personal
and provide value to the readers.
Perhaps, you can share a story about something that happened
to you recently, provide a business tip or talk about a current,
news story?
At the end of your e-mail, you remind your list about
a particular product or service that you are selling.
This way, you communicate with your list in a way that provides value,
reminds them you are around and allows them to get to know you
over time.
It is a fantastic way to build long-term, customer relationships.
- Are you blogging and using social media?
In addition to sending out the e-mail auto-responders mentioned above,
you also want to let your list know when you have a new blog entry,
article, sale, etc. And this is just a simple process of scheduling an
e-mail to go out whenever you have a new entry.
For these services, check out:
http://aweber.com/?324776
www.constantcontact.com
www.icontact.com
www.myemma.com
www.verticalresponse.com
This way, you can easily stay in touch with your list on a regular
basis and keep your products and services top-of-mind while
providing value.
- Monitor e-mail auto-responder results.
Once your newsletter-registration and e-mail auto-responder
process is in place, be sure to monitor it regularly.
By checking your e-mail service, you can see how many people
opened your e-mail, the most popular content and clicks,
the best subject lines and send times, undeliverables, spam notices,
and more.
This is valuable information you can use to get the best results
for your e-mail efforts. Plus, you can use this data to discover key
trends with your list members, conduct follow-up, stop issues before
they become big problems, and create new content to meet their
specific needs.
Take Advantage of This Process.
Having a newsletter registration allows you to create and
grow your own list of customers. But this is just the beginning.
Once you offer your newsletter, it’s important to provide
personalized information to your list on a regular basis via
an e-mail auto-responder series.
Now, you may think that your customers will turn away if you
send them too many e-mails. And sure, you will get some
unsubscribes. But you do not want these “uninterested” people
on your list anyway.
Just be sure to send valuable information your customers can
use. And note that there is an art to the content and timing of these
e-mails… so I strongly advise that you hire an experienced, SEO
copywriter to help you write and send them.
But it’s well worth the time, cost and effort. With good, e-mail
auto-responders, your list will actually look forward to
receiving your e-mails.
And this means you can build valuable,
long-term customer relationships that will catapult your business
above the competition and dramatically increase sales.
Do you need assistance setting up your newsletter process and
e-mail auto-responder series? Please write to me here or at
www.rembrandtwrites.com. Your site traffic will increase!
February 16th, 2011 at 7:13 am
What I don’t like about some autoresponders is that your mail will be sent to your recipient’s spam folder and this is why I only send out newsletter on a monthly basis and communicate with my subscribers via Twitter– lets me into what they’re up to. I will give your advice a try and see if it will work fine for me. Thanks for the tips!
February 16th, 2011 at 7:40 am
Thanks Aaron. To get off to the right start, conduct some research on the various, e-mail systems available, and see which one is best for your tracking and anti-spam needs. Let me know how it goes with your communications.
Melanie Rembrandt, rembrandtwrites.com
March 5th, 2011 at 9:29 am
Even though I promote using direct mail, I have a history of using e-mail based newsletters. Two to three days after I sent a note out I check my stats to see how may people opened and read it or just straight deleted it. One method I found OUTSTANDINGLY WELL was to not write at all - I recorded my letter as an MP3/Podcast. Either dictating a free reprint article or telling a story about common issues in the trenches of direct marketing. My open and ‘played’ rates were much, much higher. The reason was that reading is an active from of information consumption and listening is much more passive - it also allows you to do other things while you are processing the media, like drive a car or do the dishes. Just something to consider.
March 5th, 2011 at 2:22 pm
Hi Mark. Thanks for your comments. Yes! Audio and video are also great ways to market your services. By testing different methods, you can see what works best with your target market.
Melanie, rembrandtwrites.com
October 29th, 2011 at 2:39 am
i agree about the auto-responder part with aaron! i have never liked using them or receiving them(unless someone is on holiday)!
regular interaction with ur registrants is, however, important… and it would be better if it is personalised than sending auto-responded mails.
apart from that the points are great!
February 3rd, 2012 at 3:06 am
Choosing an email system that monitors metrics as well as a/b testing is very good until you dial your email campaign in. Once you identify an email that is appealing to your customer base and you get the conversion rates where you want them try to stick with that until your customers dictate otherwise. how will you know? your conversions may lower. When you find a clipping level below your comfort zone, redesign the email campaign and test again.
August 10th, 2012 at 6:18 pm
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Ladar Cleaning Service is a woman owned and operated Commercial cleaning services. The purpose of this is to help bring in some capital to buy cleaning equipment