Grow Your Small Business with an Email Newsletter

Why should your business publish an email newsletter?
While email and email newsletters have been around for a while, very few small and medium size businesses effectively use email as a marketing tool. In fact only about 18% of small businesses are using any type of email marketing according to a national survey. Starting a regularly published email newsletter can help you stay in touch with old clients, build trust with prospective clients, build respect for your company in your industry, and keep your business in front of your contacts on a regular basis. Publishing an email newsletter is very easy to do, costs very little, and the return on your investment has no limit.

What is the difference between an email newsletter and just sending out a regular email?
An email newsletter when done correctly is something your subscribers will look forward to receiving on a regular basis. You’ll customize a template to use for your newsletter (very easy to do … keep reading), and you will be able to track vital statistics about the performance of your newsletter. For instance you can track open rates (percentage of reader who opened your email), click through rates (percentage of readers who clicked on a link you placed in your email, bounce backs (emails that didn’t get through), and forwards.

How much time does it take to publish an email newsletter?
The amount of time it takes to write and publish an email newsletter varies on how often you are publishing. I would recommend starting with one edition per month. Once you get the hang of composing and sending an email newsletter, it should take no more than an hour or two to put something together worthy of sending out.

How much will sending an email newsletter cost?
The service I recommend for setting up, managing, and publishing your email newsletters is called Constant Contact (http://www.constantcontact.com/index.jsp?pn=miketheinternetguy). They offer a free 60 day trial and their pricing is based on the number of subscribers on your list. The customer support at Constant Contact is excellent. They really give everyone the personal attention you deserve. After your trial your subscription is still free for 50 subscribers or less. 50 -500 subscribers is only $15 per month. In addition another great service with no monthly fee is Vertical Response. Vertical Response also provides free templates and great service and they charge by the number of emails sent.

Is there an easy way for me to get started?
Constant Contact has a great learning center with video tutorials on how to set up, publish and track your newsletter. I would highly recommend going through their tutorial programs to get started. If you get stuck or have a question their support staff will be more than happy to answer it.

How do I get people signed up for my newsletter?
So now you’ve got your great newsletter set up and ready to publish, but you don’t have any subscribers. Here are a few tips for getting subscribers:

Offer a free gift such as a Starbucks gift card or an industry white paper as a thank you for subscribing.
Place a “Join Now” graphic on your website
Collect business cards at networking events. Ask your acquaintance if it would be all right for you to add them to your email newsletter list. If not, write “NO EMAIL” on the back of the card
Hold a contest only for people who subscribe to your newsletter.
If you have a speaking engagement, hold a free drawing which attendees can enter by submitting their business card. Ask them to write “NO EMAIL” on the back if they don’t want to subscribe to your email newsletter
Offer incentives for your current subscribers to forward and recruit new subscribers

What should I write about in my email newsletter?
If you are experiencing a little writer’s block in deciding what to publish in your email newsletter, try finding topics in industry blogs, forums, and industry news websites. Even if you aren’t breaking news in your industry you can still bank off of your experience and write about a topic from your point of view. Internet forums and blogs are great places to grab topics from because there is new material appearing daily on these websites. You can also ask other experts to contribute articles that you think will benefit your readers.

What do I after my email newsletter becomes a success?
After you become a successful email newsletter publisher you may want to consider becoming a blogger. If you haven’t heard of or seen a blog I encourage you to learn more about this. I’ll be sure and compose an article about blogging in the near future. As for your newsletters, you can always republish the content of your newsletter on your website. It gives your website visitors more ‘inside’ information to either make them want to subscribe to your newsletter, or buy your products and services.

Good luck with your email newsletter!