Marketing With Ezines
In this report we are going to discuss how to successfully profit from your very own ezine. In case you don't already know, an ezine is an electronic magazine or an online magazine. Ok, so let's start off by talking about some of the main reasons why you should publish your own ezine.
Why Ezines?Did you know that on the Internet, it is very possible to make a very nice income by sharing your knowledge and thoughts with others? One way of doing this is by starting your own ezine, also known as an electronic or email newsletter.
As an ezine publisher, you can you achieve the same benefits and perks that a conventional print newsletter publisher enjoys and you can do it all without high printing and postage costs. With your own ezine you can easily and conveniently spread your marketing influence and expertise to your entire subscriber base at one time.
Another nice thing about running an ezine is that you can virtually automate the entire process of sending out your issues by using an autoresponder. Leaving you more time to focus on content creation, marketing and building your list of subscribers.
Now let's talk about what you need to start your new ezine.Starting your own ezine can be a lot easier than you think. This is because all you really need to get started publishing is the ability to provide good content for your reader, an autoresponder service preferably with a broadcast feature, and a basic website or blog to attract and collect subscribers.
When it comes to providing content, you can compile weeks of content in advance and slowly dispense it to your subscribers. For example, you can compile a list of 52 short tips and send them once a week. Or you could create 12 short articles and send them out once a month. This would give you a years worth of content all ready to go. Then all you have to do is add to your autoresponder and set it to go out at regular intervals.
As for content creation there are several other methods you can use instead of writing it all yourself. Like hiring a ghost writer to create your content, using articles with reprint rights or (my favorite) private label articles, which allow you to modify the content to suit your needs as well as claim authorship of it.
As I mentioned earlier, you will also want to find a good auto responder service that has a broadcast feature. This will make it easy for you to collect and manage your list of subscribers as well as send your ezine issues to them. There are many different web- based services that you can choose from. Two of the most popular are GetResponse.com and Aweber.com. They will make sending out your ezine issues fast and easy. There is also software and scripts that you can purchase and use from your own server, but I would only recommend this for advanced users.
As for having a website or blog, you may be surprised to find out that this is actually an optional component. There are many ezine publishers that run their newsletters without either of them. But having your own website or blog can offer you tremendous advantages, such as the ability to bring in and capture more subscribers, help create an online presence for your ezine, plus get it indexed in the search engines for additional free traffic.
With these basic tools you can get started publishing your own successful ezine right away.
Types & Formats Of EzinesLet's start with your ezine format. There are basically three different types of formats that you can use when publishing your ezine that work well.
The first and most commonly used format is to put the entire ezine in an email and send it. This is the way I have done it the entire time I have published my ezine. I start with a short introduction, add an article, along with a product recommendation or sponsor ad. Paste it all in to one email and send it out to all of my subscribers at one time using the broadcast feature in my autoresponder service.
The next option is to create a PDF file. This is also a popular option. You simple create your issue and turn it into a downloadable PDF file and then send an email to your list with a short note and a link where they can download the file. This has the added benefit of allowing people being able to save your issues to their computer for future reference.
This format also has an added viral benefit. You can put at the bottom (or top if you really want to stress it) of your ezine that they can share the PDF file to their friends or make it downloadable on their web site or blog. This can help introduce your ezine to people who are not yet subscribed to it. And of course, if your content is good and they like your ezine, they can go subscribe!
A PDF file format is certainly a decent option if you like the ideas above, and you can create PDF file for free with something like:
http://www.pdf995.comYou can also create HTML pages. The last option we are going to discuss today is creating an HTML page within your website with the content of your ezine issue on it. This way you can send out a short email to your subscribers and give them the link to the latest issue.
This has the same benefit as the PDF file where people can refer their friends, or link to it from their own web site or blog which can generate more subscribers for you. And it has an additional benefit of allowing you to format in your ezine visually and fill it with more interactive content like pictures, flash animations or even video.
Scheduling Your EzineI suggest you send out your ezine about once or twice per month at the least with once per week being the most. Remember, you want to keep in contact with your subscribers, but you don't want to overwhelm or annoy them.
If you plan on advertising to your subscribers try alternating between content and ads. I don't suggest sending out multiple ads a week, unless you are launching a new product.
Emailing your list more then once per week is normally too much. The only way this works is if your ezine is actually built around a daily schedule. For instance, “Joke-A-Day” ezines are popular because they send a new joke or funny picture everyday and subscribers actually look forward to it!
Being consistent with how often you publish your ezine is important to your success. Once you've got it perfected and you see positive results such as increased sales of your products or affiliate products and an increase in membership, you will look forward to sending out each new issue.
Building Trust With Your ReadersThe relationship you build with your list is where the real gold is. Sure, just having a list is better than nothing, but the people making money hand over fist with their list are the people who have built a relationship of trust with their readers.
How do you do this? By getting personal, but not too personal!
For instance, let's say you have a list of mountain bikers because you sell cycling products. Tell them about experiences on the trail, funny, stupid, or educational. Stuff they can relate to because they are cyclists and have probably done things very similar.
Try to relate to them as best you can. People want to know that there are others out there just like them. When they find out that you are just another person out in the world with the same experiences they are having, it becomes a lot easier for them to trust you.
It's all about getting each subscriber into your life. This should be a huge focus of your list. If you want to have an incredibly responsive list, then do these three things, in this order:
1) Build a relationship with them.
2) Educate them with quality content.
3) Promote good quality products to them.
The foundation of any successful ezine is that you need people to trust you. Getting the trust of your readers doesn't have to be hard especially if you have a legitimate reason to contact them.
Trust should be based upon your expertise. Remember people rely on other people who know what they are talking about. If you can show your readers that you know what you are talking about by providing them with helpful hints and guidelines that pertain to what you are selling they will come to trust you quickly.
You also want to keep in mind that people will trust someone they know and when that someone recommends you to them then you’re a shoo-in, so it's important to keep your readers happy and be consistent in the service you provide. If you do your readers will recommend you to their friends, who will go to your site, where you will have the opportunity to entice them to join your list.
Another tip you can use to get your reader to trust you quickly is to provide them an escape hatch. Show them that you are not there to trap them or hold them hostage. Keep a clean list that allows them to easily unsubscribe anytime they want. Elaborate that fact on under your subscription form. Guarantee them that they can unsubscribe at any time and that you will never sell or share their email address with another company. This will put them at ease and make them more likely to subscribe.
Remember that trust is gold when it comes to ezine marketing, so when you gain the trust of your readers do your best not to lose it!
Building Your List Of SubscribersBuilding a list of readers can be as simple as setting up a simple web page (a squeeze page) where people can subscribe to your list and then sending traffic to that page.
Here is a system that I use and it works very well:
- First, setup a squeeze page with your ezine information on it.
- When somebody subscribes set it up so they are redirected to either your own product, or an affiliate product you are promoting.
- Then generate traffic to your squeeze page with free advertising methods or pay-per-click ads from Google, Yahoo, MSN, or any other PPC site you choose.
It really is that easy to get set up. Now let's talk about some other things that you can do to get even more subscribers.
You can and should incorporate a viral list builder in your marketing campaign to help you build your list automatically. There are a few ways to do this. One of them is free ebooks. Even though free ebooks seem to have taken a back seat to other techniques these days, they are still very powerful if they are done right, especially in markets outside of Internet marketing area.
Create a free ebook with valuable content and include your subscription information in the footer of each page, then encourage people to pass it on to their friends. To make this method even more powerful, here is another idea. Create a product or short report and sell it at a low cost to other businesses in your niche along with the resell rights.
Set it up so that when people open your ebook, they will be encouraged to register with you by filling in their name and email. Kindly explain to them that this way, they will get free updates and other special news from you. This way when whoever bought the rights to your book sells it all of their customers will become your customer and join your list.
Another viral idea is run contests or giveaways. Create a free giveaway where you give away things (reports, ebooks, etc..) of value to your niche market. Bring in other businesses like yours (your competitors) to also give away things for free. With this method everybody involved promotes it to their list and on their site. The people who go to the giveaway site and have to register before they download any of the free gifts and will be added to your list.
There are many other methods that you can use to build list like adding a link to your squeeze page anywhere you can. In directories, discussion forums, on blogs, etc.
You can also use the articles that you write for your ezine as promotional tools. Then submit them to big article directories like Ezinearticles.com or GoArticles.com with a link to your squeeze page in the resource box.
You may also want to create HTML pages out of those articles and submit them to the search engines as well.
Of course we have only scratched the surface of list building in this issue, so do your research and use these ideas and you'll definitely get your list building off to a good start!
Providing Good Content For Your ReadersCreating content for your ezine can be a challenge regardless of the topic you are publishing on. There are different types of content you can provide to your readers and it can be generally divided into four categories, factual content, short tips, mini stories and case studies.
There are also several options available for acquiring the content other than writing it all yourself.
Let's start off with a fairly easy way that you can get completely original content that you don't have to create. You can do this by organizing an interview with an expert or leader on the topic of your ezine. After the interview all you have to is compile it in to the proper format and send it to your subscribers.
Very often, this can be done for free and since the interviewee is writing out most of the content, there is nothing else for you to do besides ask some questions and give the interviewing something valuable in exchange (like free publicity).
Now if you have money to spare, you can hire a ghostwriter to write your content for you without taking any credit. This is a fairly straight forward process. All you have to do is give the writer a brief description of what you want in your article and they will do the research and writing while you take the credit. There are several professional marketplaces where you can find a qualified ghostwriter. Two of the most popular being Elance.com and Rentacoder.com.
Another way that you can get content is by using private label or public domain content. If you are not familiar with the term "public domain", "public domain" simply means anything that is NOT protected under US copyright law. This includes ALL works published before 1923 and, under certain conditions, works published up to 1978. And in this case, we are referring “works” to written materials such as reports, articles and books.
Then there is private label content. This generally refers to articles, e-books and manuals that are written by others and purchased by you. With this content you can modify and use in any way that you see fit. Private label content is becoming increasingly popular because of its versatility. You can publish the material under your own name as well as use it to create your ezine issues, new products and to fill your website with high-quality information with a few simple clicks of your mouse.
Republishing public domain or private label information can help save you a lot of time and effort when it comes to creating new content for your ezine, but there are some things you should consider before decide use it.
First let's talk about what you should never do when it comes to using public domain or private label content in your ezine. I am going to start with a little warning. "Nothing good can come from using bad content", so don't even consider using substandard or over used information in your ezine issues.
Think about it from your readers point of view. One of the biggest reasons they joined your list is to receive information that will help them in some way or another. They want answers to their questions, not rehashed, worthless information. Before you publish ask yourself this question "If I were looking for information on this specific topic, would I be happy with this?
Keep this in mind when you start looking for content. If you waste a readers' time, annoy them, or confuse them with bad content, they are not going to buy from you, so be careful what you publish.
Don't get me wrong. I love public domain and private label content. I use it all the time, but I highly recommend that you take the time to modify the content in some way before you publish it. Remember your information has to be good to keep the attention of your readers and make your ezine successful.
I know what your thinking "But I'm not a writer!" Well, then become a “rewriter”.
Take the basic public domain or private label content, and rewrite it, make it better, inject your personality in to it. You don't have to come up with anything new, just make it unique. Just keep in mind that you can only do that with content that is already decent. If it's bad, trash it and move on. It is too time consuming to try and turn bad content into good. It is much easier to start fresh.
Private label and public domain content can be very helpful when it comes to publishing your ezine. It can provide you with research that would normally take you many hours to perform, just use it wisely and it will work out well for you.
If you don't like writing, here's another option for you:
Instant Niche EmailsGetting Your Ezine Opened!You may not realize this, but just because you're publishing an ezine doesn't mean that everybody on your list is going to open up your email and read it.
You will still have to use some basic marketing methods to get your message opened and read, and it's important that you entice as many people on your list as possible to open up your email and read the whole thing every time you send out a new issue!
Did you know that the first line in your email can make or break the whole thing? Most publishers don't realize the importance of this and they miss out on a lot of opportunities.
The first line in your email is just like a headline on a sales letter. If it stinks, then it doesn't really matter how well the rest of the email is written because the people on your list will not be reading it. That is why it is very important that you start off your email with your best (attention getting) headline.
One of the easiest and best ways to grab the attention of your reader and to keep them reading your email is to ask them a question. This gets them involved them in the email.
When you first learned to talk, you were basically trained to answer a question when you were asked one. It is, more or less, hard- wired into your brain to come up with an answer as soon as you are asked a question. So when you start off an email with a question, it immediately gets your reader involved in your email.
What kind of questions do you asks? "Yes!" questions. What I mean is, questions where the reader would enthusiastically respond with a "YES!".
Here are a few examples:
- Wouldn't it be great to lose weight without dieting?
- Would you like to join the rare few making a fortune online?
- Do you want to be debt free fast?
You don't have to ask a "Yes" question to get this to work. I mention them because they are one of the easier styles of questions that have proven to be very effective when it comes to engaging readers.
I've had whole email ads be nothing but a bunch of questions and then a call to action to get them to click on my link, and have been very successful with them.
If you don't use a question, then a powerful teaser style headline will work as well. To do this, all you have to do is take the main benefit of the article you are using or the product that you are promoting in your ezine and turn it into a question. Let’s say your ezine is about golf and you new issue is on how to improve your golf swing quickly.
Then the question could be:
“Are you ready to learn how to improve your golf swing today ?”
…and then you lead them to the article, etc.
Did you know that statistics show that 90% or more of your readers will not make it past the first sentence of your email. Even if you have successfully gotten them to open up your message, it's still possible to lose their attention if your first paragraph doesn't give them a taste of what they want.
Your goal is to get them to read the first sentence, which leads to the second and so on. Don't waste that space by telling them why you sent the message, how to opt-out, apologize for sending it and definitely don't state "this message is not spam"!
Every sentence should contribute toward moving your reader towards your objective what ever that objective is. If your subject gets their attention, the first paragraph should lead them into the rest of you message. You should always keep one thing in mind; your reader only cares about one thing - what's in it for them.
Provide them with something of value and they will keep reading and hopefully take you up on your offer. If you ask questions and become a resource to your readers you will see your open rates increase along with better response rates as well. Just keep their interests in mind at all times and you will yield much better results overall!
Things You Should Avoid!When you decide to send your subscribers an email there are many things to consider that will help you avoid unwanted complications. While there are so many ways you can entice people subscribe to your list, there are also some things you must do to keep them from wanting to unsubscribe from list as well.
As an ezine publisher you must be aware of the many laws and rules in place to help protect the privacy of the Internet users from spamming and unwanted email. You have to know and abide by them to avoid getting yourself in trouble. To find out more about the rules and regulations you will want to visit:
http://www.ftc.gov/bcp/edu/pubs/business/ecommerce/bus61.shtmWith that said it is your job to follow the rules and avoid losing subscribers after you have worked so hard to get them.
The first thing you should do is keep your list clean and manageable. Make sure that removal requests are promptly handled and deleted from your database. If you are using a good autoresponder service they will have tools and filters that will do this job for you automatically. This will make maintaining your list much easier.
It is very important that you provide an unsubscribe link on your site and especially in your emails. When someone on your list requests to be unsubscribe, always take that request seriously. If you don’t take them off your list and keep sending them emails, you will be sending them spam and you don't want to do that.
When you are reported as a spammer, you and your business can get into a lot of trouble. You can be reported to the authorities and blacklisted by many Internet service providers. You will lose a lot of business and subscribers.
You will also want to take notice of your unsuccessful sends. These are the emails that bounce. Bounced emails, also known as undeliverable messages, are those messages that, for whatever reason, were not successfully received by the intended recipient.
Bounced email can occur simply because the server was busy at that time sent your message, but it can still be delivered in another time. There are also bounces because the inbox of the recipient is full at that time. Then there are those bounced messages that are simply undeliverable. The reason for this is that it may be an invalid email address, a misspelled email address, or an email address that was abandoned.
Which ever the case may be if you receive notice that an email address on your list has bounced several time you will want to remove them, so that you can keep accurate records as to how many people are actually receiving your issues.
What eve you do don't provide pornographic or shocking and disturbing content in your ezine. It is hard to decipher the age of the recipient and many complaints may stem from inappropriate content. Controversial issues should also be avoided.
Always keep your readers in mind when you create the content for your ezine and remember the simple tips in this issue, so that you can be sure build a good, lasting relationship with them.
$$$ Making Money With Your Ezine! $$$Your email list can be a very crucial part of your business. Even for a small business an opt-in email list can make a world of difference and make a nice income as well.
An opt-in list allows you the opportunity to market your business and products to people who have already shown an interest in what you have to offer. With your list you can keep your readers up to date about products and services that are currently available on your site as well as letting them know about new ones coming out.
But other than marketing your products and your services, an opt- in list can also be used to earn extra profit. Today we are going to discuss several ways to make money with your mailing list.
- Place advertisements. There are many businesses who will be willing to pay to put their banners and ads in an ezine with many subscribers. Selling or renting out lists is not a good idea so rather than doing that, many companies would just rather place ads with lists that have a huge subscriber base. Your ezine could be placed with many ads and each one spells money.
- Make deals with other companies by asking for a small percentage of sales done through your list. With every sale done by customers that have come from your list and have gone there because of your newsletter, the other company will pay you a small percentage of your sales. The more people who buys from them, the more earnings you get.
- Sell e-books or a collection of your articles from your archive. Manuals and how-to articles are in great demand. Many people will be willing to shell out money to gain knowledge about a certain topic and subject. With your existing list trusting your expertise in that area, an e-book could be offered and sold or used as an incentive.
- Create a network out of your list. Get people to invite more people to view your site and subscribe to your list. The larger your list is, the more people will be able to click on your links and affiliate links as well as make your advertisement rates higher.
- Subscribers are willing to pay for information if they know that it can be trusted and relied upon. Use your list to get more and more people to subscribe to you as well as browse your site. Lastly, you can use your list to earn money by making them your partners. Your list will be the bloodline of your growth and increase.
- Do ad swaps with other ezine publishers. This is most effective when done with similarly niched ezines. For a listing of ezines, see the
Directory Of Ezines.
So, as you can see there are many ways that you can make money with your ezine. Follow the tips above, use your imagination and you will see your profits increase too.
Testing Your Emails To See What WorksThe big picture, which is missed by many ezine publishers, about email is that apart from being cheap and quick, it gives you the ability to find out what works and what doesn't in your marketing campaigns.
It's inexpensive and allows you to offer more information to the subscriber than direct mail and the turnaround time is decreased from weeks to hours. Yet, very few marketers invest the time and effort to test drive their ezine issues and emails to see what is working and what is not.
Some may question whether taking the time to test is really worth it, but let me ask you this question. If you knew that moving the order button on your sales page from the bottom of the page to the top of the page, where it is more visible, would increase your click through rate by fifty percent would you do it? Of course you would! With such results, the effort is worth it and the only way to find out if making a small change will increase or decrease your results is by testing.
The only way to know which offers and topics will work for your audience is by testing. Testing can be carried out on preferences, emotional triggers, reaction towards subject lines, do your readers like short or long formats? Do they like text or prefer HTML issues? Valuable information about your audience can be learned by performing variable tests.
Your emails should be tested in different types of email applications like Yahoo, Gmail or Outlook as well. By viewing your copy in different applications you can see changes that can be to help increase your overall response rate.
Testing should be controlled. Sometimes marketers get so overwhelmed that they test their entire email at one time. But if two completely different versions of the same email are sent out to different groups, there will end up with no clue to what actually worked and what didn't. Therefore for proper testing it is necessary to pick a single element to test at a time and then observe the response of the audience to that particular variable before testing another variable.
Testing statistics say that you need at least thirty to fifty responses are required before you can form a good decision. When you begin testing you will receive a small percentage of your responses to be confusing, but nearly ninety percent of them will be accurate.
Testing doesn't mean just taking a look at the results. It means that we should take the results and learn from them. If something is wrong with the content or format of your email content, a correction should be made and a new test preformed. This is how you will determine what works for your audience and what doesn't
Did you know that by testing and tracking your efforts, you will gain an advantage over 99% of your competitors. When you take the time to learn how to test your results you will boost your bottom line and be much more likely to be financially successful.
Make The Subscription Process Easy For Your ReadersThere is a lot of competition when it comes to catching the attention of new subscriber in the email world. In order for your reader to distinguish your ezine from the rest of the clutter, communication must be made clear and easy for them. People are attracted to things that are easy to do and shy away from things that are difficult to do. It's basic human nature!
The very first step in making things easier for your potential subscribers is to have a simple email address, link or opt-in form in your promotional material. It also helps to include a send-to- friend link in every message as well. It is also important to note that the subscriber must be able to take action in spite of the images being blocked by certain mail readers like Outlook.
Keep the steps that your potential subscribers have to perform limited to as few as possible. According to resent a survey, marketers who had cut down the subscription process steps from 9 to 3 received an increase of 300% in their subscription rates.
Opt-in forms should collect enough personal information in order for you to personalize your ezine issues. However, too much required personal information may also be a deterrent for reluctant readers. The mandatory fields on the opt-in forms should be marked with asterisk, while all other fields should be visibly marked as "optional".
To ensure that your email stands out from all the other email that your reader receives, you must make it recognizable at a quick glance and the subject line must be eye-catching. Try to create your emails in text as well as HTML and include a link to the web version in your email. You may also want to offer a a printer friendly version for your readers who prefer not to read from their computer.
To avoid seeming unprofessional and frustrating your readers be sure to test all of your links before you send out your email. Do your best to anticipate the expectations of your readers and provide them with the information they are looking for.
Some marketers choose to forgo including the "Unsubscribe" option in their issues, but that is a big mistake and it will cost you the trust of your readers, so don't do it. As a matter of fact, the option to opt-out or unsubscribe should be every bit as accessible as is the option to opt-in. This will put your subscriber at ease because they know the option is available.
As I have said many times before "keep your readers wants and needs in mind what you create your content". This will keep them loyal and happy!
How To Engage Your Ezine ReadersLet's face it, in this email saturated period when peoples in boxes are flooded with commercial email and spam many subscribers become immune to the emails that they receive. Especially ones that contain subject lines a like ‘SALE’ or ‘Buy me’.
To avoid getting lost in the crowd the information in your ezine must include great content, expert advice, how to's and tips for increasing their success. You should also include numerous ways for your readers to interact with you. This will help make your readers want to spend more time reading your issues and eventually lead them to invest in the products and services that you recommend. Which is the main goal of most ezine publishers.
One of your main objectives as a publisher should be to get your readers involved in what you have to say. Reader engagement can be increased by using certain creative strategies. A good ezine should have a perfect blend of interactive content and entertainment value to help keep the reader interested.
Do your best to add at least some value to every email you send. As I mentioned above, value can be added by giving "how to" information along with updates, order confirmations, company news, sale and discount offers. As we have talked about before "keep your readers wants and needs in mind when you create every issue you send" this will allow you to build a strong relationship with them.
Customer feedback is a very important part of your overall success. You can use it to track and improve your results. Make sure that it is easy for your customers and readers to contact you by providing them with a support link, contact email address, telephone number or postal address in every issue you send as well as on any webpages that you may have.
To get more feedback you can conduct short surveys asking your readers what they think about your, ezine issues, products and services. Don't be afraid to ask for comments and suggestions on how you can improve your business. Keep track of the survey results and suggestions, so that you can get an idea of where and how you can make improvements.
You may even want to publish some of the results you receive to encourage others to take the survey and leave their comments as well. It's also a good idea to keep track of noteworthy questions and start a ‘Frequently Asked Questions’ section for your customers and subscribers. This will help cut down on support requests and allow visitors to see how you interact with your readers.
If you have trouble getting your readers and customers to participate in your surveys then try making it more interesting for them by offering them a free gift or reward if they answer your questions.
Storytelling is another thing that you can easily incorporate into your emails that will help get your reader involved in what you have to say. Almost everyone is curious to know what's happening behind the scenes. You can share bits of company history, fun facts, special events, personnel changes. Anything that will help you make a personal connection with your readers. This will keep them engaged in your ezine issues.
Blogs are another wonderful thing. Start a blog and link it to your ezine. A blog dedicated to your subscribers and customers makes it easy for them to share their thoughts with you and helps make it easier for you to receive feedback and comments. If a post generates good comments you can publish them for others to see.
Don't leave out your personality when you create your ezine issues. Think of it this way, if your ezine was a live person, would it be, male or female, fun and entertaining or serious and to the point? Once you have injected your own personality into your content you will see a stronger connection with your reader start to grow.
One more thing that you can do is include a personal note from the editor (you) in every message. This can help strengthen the relationship you have with your readers and create a bond of trust that will serve your business well.
How To Keep Your Ezine Out Of The Spam Filter!You may not realize this, but a lot depends on what you are putting in the subject line when you send out your ezine issues. It can literally make or break the delivery of your email!
As we discussed in the last issue people are fed up with and immune to getting emails like “download this software for free” or “upgrade for free” or “RE: some software”. It has become even more difficult for your reader to identify which emails are from a legitimate business like yours. And when your readers can’t tell your email from the others that they receive they simply think it's more spam and trash it.
So what can you do to prevent this from happening to your ezine issues?
Believe it or not the best defense against mistaken identity is your subject line. This means that you have to think hard and get really creative to get the attention of your readers and keep your email from being tossed out with the spam. Your subject has to be eye catching, brief, informative and identify you quickly to the recipients, so that they know it came from a trusted source. This is no easy task!
One of the best things that you can do is to be aware of the enemy (spammers) around you. Keep in mind that spammers usually use key events to send their spam emails. They plan around product launches, national disasters, holidays and news events to trick and entice recipients to open their emails.
The launch of Microsoft’s Vista operating system could be taken as an ideal example. Every spammer on the planet tried to take advantage of its release and spam unsuspecting recipients with vista promotions. Chances are you received one or more of these messages yourself.
The fall out from this is that real marketers get thrown in with the unscrupulous ones and become suspect in the mind of the consumers as well. If a real marketer tries to endorse the same product through legitimate means the recipients thinking that the email came from the spammers would simply delete it or worse, report it as spam which causes nothing but trouble for the legitimate marketer.
What causes this?Well it doesn't happen because of incorrect email filtering. It happens because the recipients are not able to differentiate between the legitimate email and the spam. The legitimate marketer in this case has unknowingly lost both his excellent reputation and good subscribers. This is why it is extremely important that you spend time choosing a good subject line, so that your readers will know it's from you and not trash it like a piece of junk mail.
To avoid falling into this trap it is important that you keep an eye on your inbox as well as on the reports provided by anti-virus and anti-spam companies. Did you know that they keep track of and report virus and spam outbreaks related to some specific events?
The good thing about these reports is that they also contain spam emails and subject lines, which will help you uncover the keywords and phrases that spammers like to use, so that you can avoid using them in your own emails.
Another thing that you can do is to include your business name or ezine title somewhere in subject line. This will help your reader identify your email and assure them that it has come from a reliable source.
The key thing to keep in mind when creating your subject line is that you want your subscriber to be able to quickly recognize that the email has come from you, so that they will open it instead of trashing it!
Topic: Marketing With Ezines (Read 8031 times)