7 Tips to More Traffic from your E-Newsletter By Abbie Drew Dec 1, 2007

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A recent Marketing Sherpa survey of online marketers
again ranked marketing to your in house email list as the
best marketing tactic. Emailing to your in house list ranks
better than search engine marketing (both organic and
paid), better than online advertising (banners), better than
PR and better than direct marketing.

A key to developing a profitable, responsive in house list
is to regularly publish a good email newsletter. An email
newsletter not only keeps your subscribers actively reading
your messages it also is a terrific traffic building tool.

As an e-newsletter publisher myself, I am always on the
look out for strategies to make DEMC E-Magazine better.
I have found 7 easy to implement tactics that I am putting
in place to improve our lists performance and you can use
them too.


1) Add Video

As noted in the previous issue of DEMC, video is hot.
(http://www.demc.com/artman/publish/article_221.shtml )

According to Pew Internet & American Life Project "fifty-
seven percent of online adults have used the internet to
watch or download video, and 19% do so on a typical day."

Provide links to videos in your e-newsletter and/or in your
articles. The best videos will contain original content. Keep
in mind short, catchy videos are more effective and are
more likely to be passed on to friends, family and
associates.

If you're low on videos, think about asking your readers
to contribute their videos. Provide a feedback form for
readers to submit links to their videos and pick out the
best of the best to share with others.

2) Encourage Reader Interaction

Get your readers involved with your publication. Sharing
readers' video submissions is one great new tactic to use.
But also encourage reader comments on your articles and
share that feedback with other readers. Post the comments
not only in your e-newsletter but on your site as well.

Reader surveys are another proven method for getting your
readers to interact. Use a tool like survey monkey
(http://www.surveymonkey.com/) to easily create a survey
and then share the results in your e-newsletter. Survey
results are almost always interesting and they're very
popular with readers.

3) Test out Your Email Hyperlinks

Marketing Sherpa recently conducted a test on the most
effective wording for a hyperlink in their e-newsletter.
What words would work the best to get readers to click
a link and go to their site?

The results:

"Click to continue" generated the most traffic to their site.

"Read [insert any adverb]" is a complete dud.

Take advantage of their testing results in your next
e-newsletter and see if it pulls in more traffic for you!
And more importantly learn from their example, test the
wording on the links in your e-newsletter. Find out what
wording works best for you.

4) Archive your e-newsletter

An e-newsletter archive or archive of articles from your
e-newsletter on a web site is essential. Archived newsletter
content will be picked up and listed in search engines.
E-newsletter content is also effective for improving your
ranking in search engines for the following reasons.

* It's fresh content. Sites which update their content
regularly get better search placement.
* It's keyword rich content. Your e-newsletter is a niched
newsletter therefore its topics are going to contain specific
keyword phrases.
* It's linkable content. Others will link to your articles
improving your search placement.

As a result of your e-newsletter content getting good
placement in search engines you will draw more traffic to
your site. More traffic to your site will grow your in house
list and make you more sales!

5) Allow Social Bookmarking

Services such as Digg and del.icio.us allow readers to
share your content with others. By including tags on your
articles for these services your readers can easily spread
your content across the web. As a result you will again
increase traffic, grow your list and build your business.

Check out how to implement a Digg link on your site at -
http://www.digg.com/tools/integrate

6) Permit Republishing

Encourage your readers to re-use your articles in their own
e-newsletters. And ask readers to link to your articles in
their blogs and writings. You may even consider setting up
your content in a news feed so other publishers can easily
access or distribute your information on their sites. Just
ensure your re-published articles include a tag line and link
back to your site.

The more exposure the articles from your e-newsletter
receive the more traffic your site will draw and the larger
your in house list will grow.

7) Segment your List

Once a subscriber has signed-up for your list consider
requesting additional information from him/her. Use a
survey or offer a subscriber management tool whereby a
subscriber can specify his/her interests. You then will have
classified your subscribers into a specific sub list. Tailor
your e-newsletter to your sub list audiences and watch your
results skyrocket.

Relevancy drives email marketing's return on investment
more than any other factor.

Consider this simple example...

If you have prospects and customers all on the same
e-newsletter list - make 2 lists. Have an e-newsletter for
customers and another for prospects. While you can use a
lot of the same content for both lists, your prospect
newsletter can contain a strong call to action to turn those
prospects into customers. Your customer list can provide
additional resources on utilizing your product / service.

As a result your prospect list will turn more prospects
into customers. Your customer list will improve customer
satisfaction, encouraging additional sales and generate
positive word of mouth referrals.


There you have it 7 tactics that are sure to improve the
results of your e-newsletter and drive more traffic. What's
more they're all easy to put into practice so get started
on using them today!

###
Abbie Drew
DEMC Editor

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