Those of you that already have webzines or those that have
started one and not continued, know first hand that while it sounds great to
publish a webzine it takes a lot of time to do it on an on-going basis
particularly keeping up with constantly finding content. Fortunately, there is
more than one way to skin a cat (it is just an old saying, animal rights
activist please don’t start a campaign against me.)
Here are two alternative approaches to helping you achieve
your goal of establishing credibility, staying in touch with your prospects,
and capturing your Web site visitors.
The "Pre-Packaged" Newsletter
If you don't foresee yourself being able to write fresh new
content every week or month that you publish or know you simply will not have
time to dedicate to this then there is another way – the Pre-Packaged
newsletter.
While this method will not fit all newsletter styles,
particularly those that need to be time sensitive it can be a godsend for many
of you. Simply put, this approach means that all your content and articles are
written ahead of time. This allows you to set aside a designated time period to
collect articles and stockpile them. Once you have a sufficient number of them
collected you set up your messages on an autoresponder
and set it for when you want your information to go out. (For example, if you
want the frequency to be monthly then it would be day 1/month 1, day 1/month 2,
etc. — each subscriber would get a message every month.) Note the way this
works is that each new subscriber starts with your first ezine.
For example, if your frequency of publication is monthly, they would start with
- day1/month 1 - and then will get their editions each month.
You have probably signed up for one of these
‘pre-packaged’ newsletter and didn’t realize how it works because all
you knew is that each week or month the information shows up. Well now you have
the inside secret so you can make it work for your business as well.
The Email Mini- Series
Have you ever signed up to receive
a series of ‘tips’ or ‘articles’ online. Chances, are
that you signed up for an ‘Email Mini-Serie.’ It is a
great marketing tool and really easy to set up. Here is how do
it.
First, you either write or source
content that you will be able to spread out over a specified amount of
time. For example, you could write an
article on ‘The Top Ten Reasons Why It is Important for Businesses to do
Background Checks’ or you could write ten one paragraph or one page articles on
each one of the ten reasons. Either way you end up with ten segments. You then
set up each ‘reason’ on your autoresponder to go out
at a specified time period, e.g., weekly and bingo your subscribers will get
reason #1 starting week 1, reason #2 week 2, etc.
For both of the
above approaches keep in mind that the quality of your content is crucial to
the success of the marketing campaign. If you provide
high quality information that is of value to your audience they will look
forward to receiving the next installment of information. This allows you to
reinforce your marketing message and start building a relationship with them
which ultimately is the reason you created the campaign. Don’t waste your
valuable time and money by providing poor or outdated information. It will defeat
the whole purpose and lose you potential clients.
The final step is to write a sales
message that you will add on to your series as the 11th message. This is when you ask for the order or tell them what it is
you want them to do. Since you have now engaged them ten times with valuable
content they are familiar with your firm, have started recognizing your
expertise and are much more open to considering your product or service
offerings.
We recommend at this point you
reel them in with a free offering, e.g., one free background check to
experience our ‘Knock Your Socks Off Customer Service’
or offer an exclusive discount for having subscribed to the series. You would
be amazed how effective offering ‘exclusivity’ works. It makes people feel
special.
Put your messages into an autoresponder
series, set the timing to what you want (e.g. every week or every month) and
you are ready to reap the benefits.
Just in case you are not familiar with autoresponders
they are actually called e-mail autoresponders. You could think of it as a
fax-on-demand system that sends out e-mails automatically when others request
them. You preset the autoresponders with the timing
of a series ahead of time and then like clockwork they go out to your
subscribers.
If you are interested in creating either a ‘pre-packaged’
webzine or a mini email series we can help you with the content and set it up
for you. Call me, Barry Nixon 949-770-5264 or email me at wbnixon@aol.com for
more information.