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5 Secrets to Creating an Email
Newsletter That Gets Results
Copyright 2005 Donna Gunter
At almost every meeting I attend in my city, I get really positive
feedback about my email newsletter, Work Smarter, Make More, http://www.worksmartermakemore.com
. People generally tell me they love it, or they ask some question about
something I've written about in a previous issue. All in all, it's
pretty cool--I kinda feel like a celebrity!
In everything that I do, my goal and my focus is to get subscribers to
my newsletter. I'm not trying to sell them a coaching program, nor am I
trying to get them to buy some product. I just want them to get my
weekly email newsletter. That's it. Just get a little dose of Donna on a
weekly basis (pun fully intended).
My rationale behind this comes from my philosophy that people have to
know, like, trust and respect you before they'll decide to buy anything
from you. I've finally acknowledged and embraced that I'm a pretty good
writer and have decided to lead with that gift and use that as my
marketing tool for my business.
Back in 2003, I decided that I made some serious changes to how I
published my email newsletter, and I'm now starting to see the results
of the writing I do each week. The results include readers calling or
emailing me for coaching, to sign up for a program, to sit in on a
teleclass, or to form a strategic alliance with them. Just exactly what
I'd hope would happen!
Here are the five secrets to newsletter publishing that I learned
through the "school of hard knocks" that have helped
successfully market my business through email newsletter publishing:
1. Publish consistently on a weekly basis. I initially published my
newsletter on a not-so-regular basis initially because I didn't see my
newsletter as a serious marketing tool (silly me!). I then went to a
regular monthly publication about a year later and then to a
twice-a-month publication, and finally ended up publishing weekly in
2003 Now, if I miss a week, I'll get a couple of emails wanting to know
what happened and where the newsletter is.
2. Let your "voice" permeate your newsletter. My first
newsletters had some great resources that a busy business owner would
find helpful in the management of his/her business. The only thing about
me was a short paragraph about my business at the end of the newsletter.
What I realized was that the newsletters to which I best responded were
those in which I got to know the writer and liked what s/he had to say.
Resources were great, but lessons through personal experiences were
incredibly more valuable and were the things that I remembered about the
newsletter. I definitely put more "me" into my weekly
newsletter now.
3. Show how you can help clients resolve problems. I could just kick
myself for letting almost 3 years slip away by doing such a slip-shod
job in demonstrating my expertise. Again, resources are useful, but
stories of what I'm experiencing or what clients have experienced in
their businesses and decisions that have been made to change the way
we're doing business are much more helpful to my readers. Hence, in
every newsletter, there's now a "Business Gym" article in each
issue to help my readers run a better business.
4. Set aside time to write your newsletter. Finding space in my calendar
to set aside time on a weekly basis exclusively for this marketing
activity isn't always easy. There are many times I want to fill that
time with "profit generating" activities (i.e. work with
clients) rather than holding onto this time as a business development
activity. Since I now publish weekly, it takes me about 2 hours to write
the main article for the newsletter. I now set aside time from 9 AM –
noon each Wed. morning and knock out the newsletter copy. Some weeks the
process flows more easily than others.
5. Repackage and re-purpose your articles. One of my primary motivations
now for doing my newsletter is that I've now got a personal article bank
of roughly 50 articles that I can reuse, tweak or re-pupose when I need
to. I submit my newsletter article each week to various online article
banks through an article distribution service, place it on my website,
and have it available to use to create a special ebook or report that I
can sell as another income stream, or re-purpose as a special report for
a give-away on my website.
What I’ve now discovered is that by having this client “reservoir”
in place (my email newsletter subscribers that I go out and “tickle”
on a weekly basis), my marketing has gotten so much easier. On a regular
basis one of my readers will wake up and decide that they've had enough
and can’t do it this way any longer and decide to hire me.
If you don't currently have a newsletter in place that permits you to
reach out and "touch" potential clients regularly, I encourage
you to start one. I realize that not everyone likes nor enjoys writing.
Perhaps there's someone you can team up with who could ghostwrite for
you based on some conversations you've had or on some training or other
kinds of workshops you deliver. If you currently have an email
newsletter, pay more attention to its care and feeding so that it grows
a healthy prospective client base for you. It'll be one of the best
investments you'll make for your business.
About the author:
Online Business Coach Donna Gunter helps self-employed professionals
make more profit in less time online. To sign up for more FREE tips like
these and claim your FREE ebook, TurboCharge Your Productivity: 50 +
Tools To Help You Automate Your Business and Make More Profit in Less
Time Online!, visit her site at http://www.OnlineBizCoachingCompany.com.
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