| In a earlier article we discussed the power of newsletter marketing to make stronger your community.Newsletters can help to build your membership because they are easy to forward. Additionally, they help you communicate regularly with your members, giving you a reliable medium to promote new products, forum discussions, case studies, success stories, special offers and more. persuade membership donation by asking members to write in questions for a column, or provide success stories or other information that they may feel is relevant to the site.Regular e-mail contact makes your members feel involvedWhat will you include in your newsletter?Here are a few ideas to get started.1. Mention the new content you have added to your membership site that week. Give a brief summary of any articles to wet the reader’s taste and leave them wanting to read the whole article.2. Give an overview of any interesting discussions on your forum that week. Invite them to log in and join the discussion.3. Discuss your blog posts for the last week, but also make sure you tell your members what you are going to be talking about in your blog for the following week. This will give them a reason to log in during the week.4. Use your newsletter to promote any new products you are selling on your site that week, or any associate programs you are entering into.5. It is up to you how much personal information you include in your newsletter, if any. Some membership site owners often include a short update on what they and their family have been up to that week, to connect on a more personal level with their readers. Others stay completely focused on business but are still friendly. You’ll need to decide what works best for you.When and how often will you contact your subscriber?That, along with what you put in your subject line, seems to be the question of the millennia. Consider testing a few options to find the one that offers the best results. A lot of it truly depends on your market. 9-5 business people have a different schedule than students and a different schedule than moms. Moms, whether they’re working or not, may not have time during the weekend to open an email but Wednesday afternoons are moderately free. 9-5 business folks may be more than happy to open an email from you every Monday afternoon for the rest of their lives. The answer…consider who you’re marketing to and then test a few options.As far as your subject line goes…again, testing is important however many have found that cute and clever gets the trashcan every time. Keep it simple, simple, and benefit driven.Terrific tips for effective newsletters…Don’t rely too much on graphics; many of your members’ e-mails will have graphics disabled on html e-mail by failure to pay. Make sure you use Alt tags if you do have graphics so your readers will know what the pictures should be.Look at your newsletter in the preview panel of Outlook or other email accounts to get an idea what it will look like to your members.Make sure you include links directly to your site, preferably to different areas of the site in the germane sections of the newsletter.Use tables for structure. This ensures your newsletter retains its format on most e-mail systems.These are just a few ideas for adding newsletters to your membership site. |
