Little Red Riding Hood Went Walking in the Ezine-Woods Alone

By Susan Dunn
Posted Friday, October 29, 2004

And she forgot to check under Grandmother's nightie. Don't let this happen to you!
Little Red Riding Hood went walking in the woods alone, and then … she forgot to look under grandmother’s nightie.

Are you doing this with your ezine?

Ezines are great for promoting your services and products, and they can also generate advertising dollars for you IF you look under grandmother’s nightie.

ADVERTISING IN YOUR EZINE

When someone inquires about running an ad in your ezine, they won’t just want to know how big your subscriber list is. They’ll also want to know:

1. What is your open rate?
2. What is your click-through rate?
3. What is your bounce rate?
4. How old is your list?
5.How was your list generated – opt-in, double opt-in, bought?
6. Who else has advertised in your ezine, and what kind of response did they get?

Any good ezine generator provides this information, and you need to check it for you own benefit, and before you talk to a potential advertiser.

KNOWLEDGE IS POWER

This is important information for you to know for yourself as well. Constant Contact, for instance, will give you your bounce, open and click-through rates “overall” and then for the last 3 months. You can see if you’re making progress or not. When I see mine start to lag, I suspect I’m boring my subscribers and make an extra effort to get fresh and new things going.

It also may indicate that you’re not giving enough information along with your pitches for services and products. All ezines market, but if you’re not consistently giving your subscribers something valuable, you’re going to lose them.

WHAT’S GOOD, WHAT’S NOT?

Are you expecting your ezine to have a 100% open rate or click-through rate? How do you know what's "good"? You need to know how you're doing in comparison to other ezines. Here are the statistics Constant Contact presents for the average ezine:

Bounced: 15.1% Opened: 48.3% Clicked-through: 4.1%

You can see right away that the general rate of click-through is very low. Marketing’s hard work! Hang in there.

A HAPPY ENDING TO THE FAIRYTALE

So, Little Red Riding Hood, before you head out into the forest of potential ezine advertisers, take a look under Grandmother’s nightie!

About the Author

Susan Dunn, The EQ Coach, GLOBAL EQ. Emotional intelligence coaching to enhance all areas of your life - career, relationships, midlife transition, resilience, self-esteem, parenting. EQ Alive! - excellent, accelerated, affordable EQ coach certification. Susan is the author of numerous ebooks, is widely published on the Internet, and a regular speaker for cruise lines. For marketing services go here.