Steps for a Successful Newsletter Campaign

Marketing your business with newsletters is probably one of the most effective online marketing strategies. However, the whole process of devising and implementing a newsletter campaign involves a considerable amount of planning. Given below are a few guidelines that will help you make your campaign a success:

 Step 1: Determine what you can sell online, or how to monetize your site.

 Step 2: People use the Internet for information. Try to figure out what information is unique to your business? Everybody is an expert in his or her chosen field. This information is valuable to others.

 Step 3: Identify your target audience. Define your audience, and then find out where they are going online for information. E.g. which sites, newsgroups and discussions boards are the most popular. This technique alone will greatly build your traffic as well as your name. You’d be amazed at how many businesses still define their audience as "all people" or "EVERYONE needs my product". This is absolutely not true! Contrary to popular business myth, the Internet is not a mainstream medium. Communities are usually quite passionate about their interests. Find your community and become an authority to them.

 Step 4: Create content. By providing quality content, you can build a successful business online. Content works in becoming your company’s USP (Unique Selling Proposition). The quality of the content you provide will mean the difference between your site being a significant online business or just a “brochure site”.

 Step 5: Create and maintain your mailing list.

 Step 6: Produce your newsletter. Email newsletters are great because you can include “hot links” that will open a web page. Make sure you include the http:// because this is what most email software requires in order to understand text to be a live Internet address, make it clickable, and open the page in an Internet browser.

 Step 7: Make sure you have autoresponders in place to field often-asked questions, and to subscribe and unsubscribe your recipients automatically. You will always lose a few but don’t take it personally. Make it easy for people to unsubscribe from your mailing list.

 Step 8: Never SPAM. Spamming is the practice of sending information to people who didn’t actually ask for it. It has been an accepted practice in the offline direct marketing world but not online. Don’t even try it. You could find yourself switched off by your internet service provider or having other serious actions taken against you. Review the Federal Trade Commission website for more details at: www.ftc.gov/bcp/conline/pubs/buspubs/canspam.htm

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