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In this article I’m going to tell you the secrets to creating a great newsletter that will have your visitors coming back to your site in a shot! I’m going to discuss what type of content you should publish in your newsletter, how often you should send your newsletter out, and most importantly, how to “speak” to your visitors through your newsletter to have maximum impact and drive them back to your site in droves.
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A newsletter is one of the most cost effective and quickest ways to communicate with your sites visitor base. However, if you’re sending your visitors newsletters that contain old, stale content, spelling errors, dead links or too much advertising, then what’s the chance that they will return to your site? The number one purpose of sending a newsletter is to try and get each and every subscriber to come back to your site. How do I do that then, you ask? Through interesting, informative content, that’s how.
Here are a couple of ideas for content that you can put in your newsletter:
A what’s happening section that informs visitors of any new additions to your site since the last newsletter was sent out. In this section you can tell visitors about any new articles or interesting additions to your web site. Here’s a snippet of what I published in my recent newsletter:
-- What's Happing @ devArticles.com? ------------------
Hello Everyone,
Welcome to the mid-January 2002 issue of DevXPress. It's been another extremely busy yet productive month over at devArticles.com, so let's take a look at some new features that both myself and our entire team have helped add to the site:
...
Publish the results of your latest voting poll. What’s that? You don’t have a poll on your site? Naughty naughty. Head on over to http://www.ballot-box.net and get your free poll up and running in 5 minutes. Whenever you send out a newsletter, change the poll and include the results of the last poll in your newsletter. Use something like this:
The last poll question was "What type of content would you like to see more of on devarticles.com?". There were a total of 149 votes. The results are shown below:
- Articles: 58 votes or 39% - Book Reviews: 11 votes or 7% - Product Reviews: 13 votes or 9% - Interviews: 14 votes or 9% - Case Studies: 33 votes or 22% - Sample Books Chapters: 20 votes or 13%
The poll for the first half of February 2002 is sure to start some raving and ranting and is entitled "In the Netscape sues Microsoft case, who are you rallying for?". It's ready for your vote right now. Visit www.devarticles.com to vote.
Notice how I’ve mentioned the details of the current poll and have given the user a reason to re-visit my site to vote again? I do this in different ways throughout my entire newsletter.
Add your personality to the newsletter by addressing your readers and letting them know that you’re there if they ever need anything. In my newsletter I publish the first half, and my newsletter manager Todd publishes the rest. Here’s what I usually write to cap off my half:
Well guys, that's my two cents worth for these past two weeks at devArticles.com. If you've got any questions or suggestions, please email mitchell@devarticles.com or post them in our forums.
I know it doesn’t seem like much, but think about what would happen if I left it out. In my experiences, visitors like to know that there’s a real person
