How to Get Email Newsletter SubscribersOK, I'm going to assume you either already have an email newsletter, or are thinking real hard about starting one right about now. This issue is for you. 1. What Am I Signing Up For? The #1 mistake I see with the vast majority of existing email newsletters is they don't offer the potential subscriber a sample of what he or she is signing up for. One of the most popular pages on my site is the "Current Issue" page. For obvious reasons, people don't hand over their email addresses as easily as they once did. 2. Don't Hide Your Subscription Field: So many websites I visit do not put their subscription field for their newsletter prominently on their website. It's tossed to the corner of the interface and shuffled into Contact Us, About Us, FAQs or whatever. Also, don't just put your newsletter subscription field on one page. Consider putting it on every single page of your site. After all, you don't know when someone will be ready to sign up and you shouldn't make the assumption that everyone who comes to your website hits the home page first. 3. Give Them Something They Didn't Know They Needed: When I started my Web Digest For Marketers email newsletter in April 1995, there was no great public outcry for such an editorial product. But once Internet marketing professionals saw it, they realized how they could use it or knew someone who would find it useful, and so it grew. Don't try to get away with warmed-over press releases and product updates. If you have people who are good at gathering useful news items in your category, that might be a way to go. But I find there's usually more than enough "best of everything else I've seen" 'zines out there. If you want your 'zine to be a "must-sub" newsletter, keep your content original and give it a voice that is not yet out there in your niche. Top Tip: In many b2b trade niches, trade journalists are available to create content for your firm on a per-piece or retainer basis. Investing in hiring a known name in your niche can pay off in dividends. Many trade journalists work on a freelance basis and wouldn't mind hearing from you about a retainer relationship or periodic delivery of so many thousands of words of content every week, fortnight or month. Make sure it's clearly spelled out who owns the content in such an arrangement.
4. Evergreen Archives: As they say, who reads yesterday's newspapers? Fashion the content for your newsletter to be have a long shelf life for search engine optimization purposes. Years ago, I used to charge $49 for access to the reviews that initially appeared in Web Digest For Marketers. Then I decided to open up the database for public and search engine spider consumption and "pow". Subscriptions rocketed because the Web Digest or Marketers site has become an authority hub site. So search engines crawl it often and feature it prominently in search results. Of course, the care and feeding of an evergreen content database is a commitment in time and resources. But in my experience, it pays beaucoup dividends in the end, when done right. Subscriber acquisition levels increased dramatically because of the increased traffic from search engines and other sites pointing in to this one-of-a-kind resource center for Internet marketing professionals. 5. Get New Subscribers Through a Co-Registration Partnership: Newsletter publishing insiders know about this one. When you have a newsletter with a robust circulation and subscriber acquisition program, you might think about other newsletters with whom you want to set up a co-registration partnership. Here's how it works: On your site, you offer your new subscribers the opportunity to subscribe to your partners' newsletters. They in turn do the same for you. Making sure that each partner gets as many new subscribers as they send is the challenge. Co-Reg Complete does a good job at solving this knotty puzzle. Be prepared to write 25 to 50 words of hardworking copy that convinces someone who doesn't know you from a hole in the wall why he or she should subscribe to your newsletter while on someone else's website. Your copy will be on your co-reg partners' sites, perhaps after a registration form has thanked a new subscriber for subscribing to a partner's newsletter. Remember, your copy is not only on someone else's website, but is quite likely competing with other partners, who also have written compelling copy to convince the prospect to subscribe to their newsletters. In short, it's a challenging environment for your copy. 6. Reinvent, Reinvent, Reinvent: Often, newsletters have a finite life cycle they run and then the whole thing is over. If you want your newsletter, email or otherwise, to survive a long time you've got to think and test new features constantly. (Read, you're not going to get away with the some ol' same ol' year in and year out.) Back in April 1995, the original concept for my Web Digest For Marketers email newsletter was to feature short reviews of the newest marketing sites to hit the Web. Back then, you could literally cover every new marketing site in a single issue. Today, of course, that's impossible. So we moved to doing only the best and brightest websites a few years later. A few years ago, we decided to devote each issue to a single aspect of Internet marketing such as SEO, Advanced Email Marketing, PPC, CRM and so forth. Both advertisers and readers alike loved the specificity. In addition, Web Digest For Marketers now also publishes useful tips and tactics that the reader can press into service immediately. I call this "go and do this now" editorial. And again, both readers and advertisers have embraced the new editorial direction. The point is, had I stayed with the original editorial concept this newsletter would probably not exist today.
7. What's Your "Loss-Leader"? Late friend and marketing legend Mac Ross convinced me to offer a premium for subscribing to my Web Digest For Marketers email newsletter. Among many other things, Mac had a keen sense of how to get people to subscribe to newsletters on subjects in which they were interested. That's why I created my "Essential Search Engine Marketing Resource Guide" as a bonus for those who subscribed to my complimentary newsletter. I took advantage of the acute interest in search engine marketing, since any Internet marketing professional worth his or her salt would have to have such a guide on their desktop. Bingo. Many thousands of people have subscribed and subsequently downloaded that PDF guide on SEM. 8. How To Get Other Sites to Point To You: You know the more in-bound links your site has, the better. You'll rank higher in search results, especially if those links from authority sites or hub sites. In addition to helping your search engine rankings, you are of course getting more traffic to your site directly from those links. The more traffic you get, the more subscribers you get. Sooooo, the million-dollar question is, what content can you offer that is so good that other websites will want point to your newsletter and send you their traffic? If you're serious about making a difference with your email newsletter you will need to make a specific commitment to time, resources, and oh yes, money. I say a good part of your site design should go into the gathering and/or producing of quality content. You may choose to run that content in your email newsletter first and then post it on your site, or vice versa. Take your editorial costs out of your marketing budget, and I think you'll find it's the best money you've ever spent. 9. Get Syndicated: Whether it's through an content network like Moreover.com or an RSS feed, you want to make sure your content is reused as often as possible. Now, I tightly control the copyright on my content because my core business is publishing. But your firm may have other agendas, such as product or service sales. Just make sure you get a link back to your site with the relevant value your site offers. 10. Remember the Power of the Press: I find many of the topics originally published in Web Digest For Marketers make good topics for press releases. I'll release three or four of some essential marketing insights through a press release, with the remaining seven or eight residing on the home page of Web Digest For Marketers. If someone reads a fragment of the press release in an RSS feed or Yahoo or Google News, there's a good chance he or she will come to the site for the rest of the insights and subscribe to the newsletter once he or she has sampled the content offered. This is a very cost-effective way to capture new subscribers. 11. The Power of Control F: Typically, two or three times as many non-subscribers read my email newsletter as those who are subscribed. This means that many subscribers are forwarding or passing along the newsletter to people who are not subscribers. Many of those people who are not subscribed like what they see, go to the site and sign themselves up. My biggest subscriber acquisition day each week is the day on which I publish the newsletter. If your content is good enough to be passed along, I recommend you address these prospects as I do in the opening comments of each newsletter. Introduce yourself and tell them the advantages of subscribing. Of course, you may also want to remind your existing subscribers to pass your newsletter along to those who will find it useful. This is the "Power of Control F" (the keyboard equivalent of the "forward" command).
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