Effective Newsletters.

We already know the importance of having a list, and a couple of ways to accomplish this mission.
We know the power of creating sizzling Squeeze pages, having an opt-in form on our blogs, creating a double opt-in email system for a targeted list. Now I narrow down the best practice of creating a useful newsletter which will:

• increase your list
• make your members engaged and happy and
  
• they will stay with you, even though in each e-mail, they have a mechanism to unsubscribe if from some reason they are disappointed with what they get in return
  

Let’s start with the design of your “Thank You Page”.

Aweber has a default “thank you page” but I advise you to create one on your own which:

• Politely you remind the prospect customers that they must confirm their subscription with a very simple statement like “Congratulations! You’re almost finished…  In just a minute, you’ll receive an email asking you to confirm your email address…You MUST CONFIRM your email to receive your FREE…”
• Remind to whitelist your email address
• Give prospects step by step instructions how to confirm their email addresses
• Optional, you remind people the benefits of subscribing to your newsletter, good practice to reaffirming your promise
  

It looks professional and entices more actions… isn’t this what we want?

Note: I like to tell you upfront that the method I propose is going to work for beginners and medium marketers as their main purpose is to increase the list. The method for the top marketers is different simple because they already have a big, sometime very big, list and their first purpose is not the list, even though they will welcome some increase of the list.

So what a beginner or medium marketer must do:

• Give value content and don’t imitate the hype of other established marketers
• The content must be free and over deliver the upfront promises, this will build trust
• If in some newsletters you want to sell a DP, don’t abuse the “call for action”, one in the body of e-mail and maybe one in the PS of email, and don’t include more then one product to sell per newsletter issue
• To correctly build the relationship with your list, be objective, tell your success stories and your failings as well
• Make a distinct difference between the desire of branding yourself, and the necessity of a strong relationship, because people read you to learn, find ideas which worked, not to count your Ferraris or your Mansions
• When you tell about your earnings, tell about your expenses as well, subtract them and tell the real profit
• Make a distinction between the need of short term sales against building long term income
• Firesales are very good and profitable but don’t even try them when you are a beginner, wait until you are an establish marketer
• In the newsletter don’t talk at your subscribers, and instead try talking to them, engage in conversation, entice readership. This looks hard at the beginning, but with a little experience you will develop your own style of direct speaking with your readers. This is the single way you will develop a community feeling and camaraderie spirit

In a nut shell, don’t emulate your newsletter after other newsletters, try to be yourself, have your own style, avoid ghost writer for newsletters (can use them for products), it is great to be a little different, the readers will notice immediately.

From all the techniques, “secrets”, advices…  which flood the Internet, I have chosen 3 brilliant  ideas from Lee McIntyre’s techniques, and I have applied then with great success.

Note: Working exclusively with WordPress, I adapted those techniques to a Blog logic and requirements to make it as simple and friendly  possible, and they gave me a lot of satisfaction.

Each Newsletter must be published in 2 formats: an HTML and PDF version.

You will use autoresponder to announce each issue of your newsletter, and the email will contain the URL for the HTML format.
Having PDF format it is for your long range success. You will attract and keep people with you because many like to have the PDF format to download and read later.  Do you agree that rarely you come back and read old e-mails?  If you have all Newsletters stored in PDF format it will be easy to come back and read them when you need them, when you forget something, or when you have time.
PDF will help the future subscribers. If somebody join after you already start your newsletter for one full year, that person want to read previous posts as well. You accomplish this with the next bullet.

Your first issue of your New Newsletter is different then the other monthly newsletters.

It is not publish as a first issue, it is more an archive of all posts already created.  In the first e-mail send to a new subscriber you will remind that there are other issues which nay be of his interest and you put a URL to the first issue.  It is a little extra work for you as all the time when you add a new newsletter you must go and add the URL’s of the previous letter to the first one.

End each email to my subscribers with a couple of lines generated by aweber, which will remind them that they are part of my list for a reason…

So what is left for you is to show you those techniques in action. Watch for the next post which will be the newsletter of the challenge, and you will be able to identify all those elements.

In summary: there are many other elements you can consider to add to your newsletter but this is what I already verify that have the potential of giving you long range success, professionalism, and satisfaction.

Until next time be informed.