Fendi said:
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Tertten, an online newsletter help you attain subscribers and maintain a list...
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A newsletter can be a lot of work, if you want to make it useful to your business. No doubt you have seen many lists you may have signed up for become nothing more than a constant sales pitch -- to buy every unrelated product the author can be come an affiliate of.
The idea of the newsletter is to send your subscribers information that they will find useful/helpful or beneficial in some way. Most people don't buy the first time they visit your site. For example, a rule of thumb for off-line advertising is that most buyers don't buy until they have been exposed to your offer 7 times. Online, it is probably more like 10 times, considering they have a need or a want for your product or service. Regular communication with your prospects, who be come subscribers, helps you accelerate the relationship you have with these people and build an aura of trust. You want to expose these people to your offer enough times to convince them to become customers.
Depending on your business, most people will prefer to do business with people they know and like. Even though I've said (in the above paragraph) it is more like 10 times a prospect needs to be exposed to your advertising, it isn't a hard and fast rule. An example might be one client who used to visit my discussion forum for a year before he signed up for my newsletter. He would hang around and ask the odd question. About a year after he signed up for my newsletter, he hired me to do a few thousand dollars worth of programming on a number of websites he owned.
A lot of people think of a website as being the business, when in fact, it isn't really... I operate the business, and my
website is a communications tool for my business. It enables me to expose my products and services to people I would never have been able to afford to reach with traditional advertising. Publishing a newsletter, helped me build a relationship with people around the globe who were interested in working with me.
Which brings me to another point... you should have an interest in the type of business you choose to operate, and you should be able to write articles and newsletters based on your field of expertise. This is where so many people new to the Internet and marketing fail. Some people regard the Internet as sales tool, rather than communication tools, and they splash up a website trying to sell YOU Internet marketing related tools and services. Their newsletters contain 90% advertising, mostly junk... stuff they try to peddle without ever trying it themselves. They don't have the knowledge to write about effective marketing strategies and campaigns, so their newsletters quickly lose their appeal to the target market.
LOL... I can't count the number of times where I have visited forums and have seen people asking questions on how they can grow their mailing list, and their signature link is to an affiliate program they have signed up for, which is supposed to sell you a product teaching you how to grow your mailing list. If I were going to respond to a post like that, I would say, "Did you try reading the product you're promoting?"
A newsletter isn't compulsory for every business, depending on they type of business as well as the stage of the business. If you operate a brick and mortar type of business like a store, you might simply have a website where people can browse and order from your inventory. You are already an established name brand, with plenty of customers. Or, if most of your business is coming in through other channels, it may not be worth the effort it takes, to produce a quality newsletter. For example, most of my new clients come in as referrals now, and I haven't published a newsletter for two years. This is fine for me -- most of the time I have all of the business I want -- got to leave some time for goofing off
Best Regards,
Steve MacLellan