Publishing an e-mail newsletter is one of the oldest forms of online marketing on the Internet. In fact this form of marketing has spawned an entire industry: overground and underground. It lost a bit of its shine for a few days with the advent of blogging and RSS publishing but of late it has again gained traction and many new electronic newsletter publishing companies have emerged and are doing great business.
Wondering how to publish a successful electronic newsletter in this era of rampant spamming? This is a totally different issue. Right now we are trying to explore how to make more people open your newsletter.
The greatest benefit of publishing an electronic newsletter is that you can continuously keep in touch with people who are interested in hearing from you. There are zillions of distractions on the Internet and you need to create a space in people’s subconscious. For this you constantly need to keep in touch with them. Sending unsolicited e-mails on a routinely bases is a strict no-no. When you publish a newsletter people subscribe to it on their own and if you have a double opt-in option for subscribing they have to confirm that they actually want to receive your newsletter. So by the time you start sending them e-mails they are already eager to hear from you. But even if they have subscribed, how to make sure that they open your newsletter?
Do you have the right newsletter subscribers?
First of all do you have the right subscribers? This is very important because if they don’t want to receive your newsletter in their inbox why would they open it? You must have subscribers that actually want to receive your electronic newsletter. How do you do that? Well, I’m not in the favor of offering free stuff in return of subscribing to your newsletter and neither I am a big fan of various partnership programs that offer a sudden jump in the subscription rate. Remember that it is not important how many subscribers you have. What’s important is how many of them actually open your newsletter, go through its content or visit your link that you have mentioned in the newsletter.
The best way of getting the right subscribers is by generating targeted traffic to your website and then prominently displaying your newsletter subscription option. People should subscribe to your newsletter because they are interested in your offers and tips and not because they want to download some free e-book or some silly software. I’m going to repeat again: don’t go for shortcuts in order to get more and more subscribers. Even if you have just 150 subscribers they are better than having 1500 subscribers if they are actually interested in your updates.
Do you use a compelling subject?
Most of us open newsletters or for that matter e-mails after reading the subject. Make your subject as relevant as possible in order to convince your subscribers into opening the e-mail. Offer something that they cannot resist. Remember that they subscribed to your newsletter for a purpose; ponder over your subject, does it cater to that purpose? Avoid creating esoteric subjects or text that has the tendency of putting people off.
Do you use a recognizable header (“from” text)?
Don’t change your “from” text again and again. Spend ample amount of time on defining your e-mail header because you’re going to use it for at least a couple of years and even after that you will change it only if there is a radical shift in your branding strategy. The moment your subscribers see your e-mail they should be able to recognize it. For instance, if you receive my newsletter you should be immediately able to know that it has come from “Amrit Hallan” who is an online content writer and copywriter.
Do you consistently provide good content in your newsletter?
Lousy material is not going to make them open your newsletter the second time even if they opened it for the first time, in fact they might just unsubscribe. They didn’t subscribe to your newsletter so that you can bombard them with affiliate program invites and get-rich-quick proposals. They want to read some useful information. They want content that is worth their time. If you consistently provide good content in your newsletter they will open it eagerly the next time they receive it.
These are very important issues if you’re really serious about making yourself recognizable through your newsletter. The response rate also depends upon what sort of presence you already enjoy on the Internet but even if you’re starting from scratch it is always a good policy to focus on quality rather than quantity.
