Write A Newsletter To Get Site Visitors To Return!
By Steve Nash
Posted Thursday, January 13, 2005
How many visitors to your site *ever* return?
Not as many as you would like, I bet! It is a lot easier and less time-consuming to promote your site to people who have *already* visited. So how do you do that? Well, you could:
- Ask people to bookmark your site;
- Get people to make your site their homepage (your site had better be good!);
- Make your site the next Yahoo! or Napster or Hotmail (ideal, but not too easy); or...
- Publish an ezine or newsletter!
Yes, publish a newsletter (and get people to subscribe)!
Writing a newsletter is the BEST WAY to stay in touch with site visitors and existing customers. At the *very least* you can remind them about your website on a regular basis. But, even better, you get a chance to develop trust between your visitors and yourself. And on the faceless Internet, trust is everything!
=> VISIT THIS WEBSITE
Visit Brian Alt's Email Publishing Digest (EPDigest). This easy- to-use site has it all when it comes to email publishing. It covers the important topics like list design, list management, list promotion. It discusses the pros and cons of text versus HTML newsletters (and shows you how to do both). And it covers community building, newsletter advertising, and even where to get (and offer) free content,
Brian, the author of several ebooks including The Insider Guide to Power Ezine Promotion, is a regular contributor to another great website (http://www.ezine-tips.com) , so he knows his stuff.
(http://www.epdigest.com)
=> OR VISIT THESE LINKS
(http://www.topica.com)
(http://groups.yahoo.com)
(http://www.domeus.co.uk)
(http://www.roving.com)
(http://www.listbuilder.com)
(http://www.sparklist.com)
=> THEN PROMOTE! PROMOTE! PROMOTE!
As with your website, you need to promote your newsletter, and get people to sign-up. By all means start with your friends and family, and then try these legitimate methods (please don't send unsolicited mail - SPAM wastes everyone's time!):
* You MUST promote your newsletter on your own site
- Put the newsletter sign-up form at the top left or top right of as many of your pages as possible. Offer an incentive to sign-up, sell the benefits of your newsletter (first notice of the next sale, for instance, or chance to win something)
- Use pop-up windows to encourage sign-ups. A little bit controversial, but pop-ups *do* increase subscriber sign- ups! Find a script here: (http://javascript.internet.com/)
* You CAN announce your newsletter to the world
- Join various newsletter announcement mailing lists, follow their announcement rules, and announce, announce, announce (There are loads of these lists at (http://www.topica.com) .)
- Visit the following websites
(http://www.ezinelocater.com) (http://www.marketers-edge.com/article-writers-strategy.htm)
(http://www.ezinesearch.com/search-it/ezine/) (http://ezinesplus.com)
(http://bestezines.com/submit/)
Okay, okay! Your newsletter may be too humble for all this promotion, but at the very least make it easy to sign-up on your website. Oh! One other way of promoting your newsletter:
* Make your newsletter a great read!
Add your personality; publish on the same date; stick to a similar format; re-read and re-read to remove mistakes; encourage feedback; have clear objectives and *meet them*; and enjoy yourself. But if nothing else, just keep it short!
=> EVEN DO IT YOURSELF!
Writing a newsletter is a bit difficult not to do yourself, I admit. What I mean is that there are many Perl/CGI scripts that allow you to run a newsletter, including subscribe and unsubscribe functions, from your own site. Probably the best free resource to do this would be Subscribe Me Lite by CGI Script Center. And you can always do a search at CGI Resources.
(http://www.cgiscriptcenter.com) - Subscribe Me Lite (http://www.cgi-resources.com)
=> READ MORE...
You can find out more about email publishing from the following excellent resources.
(http://www.ezine-universe.com) (http://www.ezineuniversity.com)
--
Writing a newsletter on a regular basis is a great way to keep people returning to your website. There are many tools and resources that show you how. And there are many sites that will publish your newsletter for free (you can even find free content, for goodness sake). Publish a newsletter and get to know your site visitors - and then let them get to know you!
About the Author
Steve Nash is editor of the popular monthly newsletter called Promote! Promote! Promote! To subscribe, simply visit (http://www.HowIPromoteMyWebsite.com) . To get more website promotion ideas take his free 7-day e-mail course, called Website Promotion That Works! Sign-up here! mailto:promotion_that_works@getresponse.com
