I remember back 8-years ago when list-building was just in it’s infancy, the ezine (or electronic newsletter) was THE piece of content list holders were urged to send to their prospects.Â
We had a weekly ezine for years and still do send electronic newsletters to some of our lists…the question though is that in this day of low open rates and a subscriber base that has been inundated with newsletters over the years, does it still make sense to send a newsletter to your list?
Does it still make sense to send ANYTHING to your list given that social networking is taking over and email open rates have been reported as low as a few percentage points maning that a list of 1000 subscribers may only see 20-30 people actually reading the content sent to them (of course there are exceptions to this rule).
In fact, we still see open rates that range from 12-15% on the low end up to well over 40% on the higher end depending on the content we send.
But even more important, regardless of your open rate, these will be the most highly targeted prospects you can reach – they have already opted-in to receive your content, presumably know you and quite possibly could already trust you enough to buy what you put in front of them.Â
CULTIVATING A BUYING RELATIONSHIP WITH YOUR EMAIL LIST
What we have found works best in today’s email marketing environment is to change up the content you send to your subscribers. One week send them a Youtube video notification, another week send them a recently compiled “Frequently Asked Questions” of the month, another week send them a valuable report and so on…Â
The key is to maintain contact with your list, here are some of the mailouts we use:
1. A weekly FAQ from various polls, surveys and reader email I get
2. A product review of the week related to the interests of my list
3. A bi-weekly newsletter, which today is really an article plus a summary of my top blog posts over that 2-week period
4. Periodic audio or email interviews, Youtube videos and/or special reports – giving value to my list
5. Single updates for certain blog posts
You want to keep contact with them, keep feeding them relevant and useful information and keep the lines of communication open so you can promote additional products and services to them over time.
So yes, newsletters are still a good strategy, but don’t limit your content creation to one single format. Think about sending your email subscribers to relevant blog postsm, social networking posts, product reviews, Youtube videos and so on…you will find they will open and respond to your email marketing to a much greater degree.
