Promoting Your Newsletter

Newsletters seem so simple, yet they are a tremendously powerful marketing tool for your business. Nobody wants spam, but businesses have been surprised by the amazing number of people who sign up for newsletters that cover their interests. Those numbers can mean many things - traffic, ad revenue and more customers. But in order to attract those customers, you've got to have two things - a great newsletter and a way to let your audience know about it. That's why promotion is key if your newsletter is to succeed. We spoke to Chris Knight, CEO of e-mail distribution service SparkNET Interactive to get the skinny on running a successful newsletter. E- mail newsletter lists can be worth a lot, he says, if you can get the word out.

E-mail Promotions

The first place to start when promoting your new list, Knight says, is with e-mail list promotion. He suggests new newsletter creators start by posting to lists that announce newly-formed listservs, such as Scout's New List, New-List.com and AAnnounce, which have thousands of subscribers. "It's free and you can send your announcement to a targeted list of people who want to receive new list announcements," Knight says. "After you've promoted your e-mail list via the announcement services, list your list in the list directories. There are general list directories and then there are specific ones. For example, if you're in the music industry, you would list your list in the list directories like EzineSeek.com and then you would list it in specific directories just for music mailing lists."

Make It Easy To Join

A vast amount of list traffic comes from a website, Knight says. Make it easy for people who like your page to like your list, too. "Fifty percent of your traffic or more usually will come from your web page, it really depends on how much you promote your web page," Knight says. "You don't want to miss those subscribers who just needed to know a little bit more about your list before they sign up." Putting a subscribe script on your web page is a cinch - and it could prove very valuable.

Formulate a USP

Be the first to start a list for something, Knight advises, and learn how to exploit that position by creating a USP, a Unique Selling Proposition. That USP should let potential subscribers to your list know exactly what they'll get. "It's a one sentence mission statement, very punchy sentence, non- verbose, with action-oriented words that describe specifically what they're going to get from that mailing list," Knight says. "That lets them know why someone should sign-up, and it'll be why they continue receiving it and it should show why the heck you're doing it."

Use That Ad Space

Don't allow any ad space to run free, Knight advises. If you can't sell the ad, at least do an ad swap. "You want to make sure 100% of your ad inventory is maxed out," Knight says. "Either with a fee-based ad that you sold to someone or an ad swap with someone else one for one. It's one of their ads for one of your ads so that you're getting new exposure to new list members who might want to subscribe to your list."

Spend the Time to Promote

Promotion isn't easy, and it takes time. Knight advises newsletter creators to spend far more time on promotion than on any other task. "Spend 50% of your time in development of the design and the format and the consistency and then 50% of your time promoting it," Knight posits. "When you create it, create your content all in one day or in one hour or in one segment of your month, not throughout your whole month so that you can spend the rest of your month promoting it. It's really important to spend the same amount of time you do creating it and promoting it if you want to really grow it." A successful newsletter doesn't happen overnight, but with hard work you can make it happen. Chris Knight did. "This may sound kind of funny, but I wanted to be a rock star. God just didn't give me the talent to sing or play an instrument," Knight says. "So instead I want to impact a quarter million people a day and here we are right now. We're impacting 100 million a day for our clients and our name's going along with that. So if you want to find a way to impact your audience or your prospects or your clients, e-mail's the lowest cost, highest return model or method out there. Start today."