Newsletters and ezines are a fantastic way to follow up with your target audience and keep your business on the tip of their tongue… so to speak.

Marketing a business with email newsletters can benefit your business because the people who sign up for your newsletter want to hear your message, they are already familiar with your products and services, and you can build a lot of rapport with your target audience through a newsletter. In addition, a well-written newsletter provides you with a tremendous amount of credibility. It puts them in a warm, ready to buy, frame of mind.

Most important of all, however, is that newsletters and ezines can create the additional benefit of generating revenue for your business, provided that you don’t practice any of these humongous newsletter mistakes!

Mistake #1: Unprofessional Design

When you’re designing the look and feel of your newsletter or ezine, it’s best to make it look like an integrated component of your business.

Even if you choose to create a newsletter that’s strictly text, there are still things that you can include that will call to mind your website or business to the reader. For example, you could use your business tagline in the beginning of your email message.

In addition to looking like a part of your business, your newsletter should also look clean, easy to read, and well thought out. You don’t want to present a sloppy or unprofessional image to your target audience because it will hurt the revenue generating power of your newsletter and may actually hurt the business itself.

Mistake #2: Misspellings and Bad Grammar

Okay, everyone, including me, makes a spelling mistake or a grammar slip from time to time. But if you make a habit of it with your newsletter or ezine, it won’t be an effective marketing tool for your business. When a potential customer reads a newsletter full of misspellings and bad grammar then may assume that your business is equally sloppy.

In addition, simple spelling and grammar mistakes hurt your credibility with your target audience. If you can’t even spell correctly, what’s to say that they should trust your advice? Perhaps you’re a complete dope… at least your prospects may think it’s possible.

Mistake #3: Blatant Outside Advertising

This one is probably a sore spot with a lot of business owners. Some businesses earn quite a bit of money through outside advertising in their newsletters. It’s a business model that works very well for a lot of businesses, but it’s something to think carefully about.

When you get ready to start your own newsletter or ezine, you should carefully consider the purpose of your newsletter. For example, if your newsletter is designed to spotlight your product and it’s importance in your field, then carrying outside advertising really works counter to that purpose. You would want to point your target to your product and your product alone.

On the other hand, if your newsletter is designed with the sole purpose of generating revenue, then outside advertising might be necessary. Remember, whenever you accept outside advertising into your newsletter or ezine, you are inviting your readers to visit those other website, rather than your own. Therefore, you must determine if outside advertising fits into your overall newsletter model.

Blatant or “in your face” advertising is probably never a good idea, regardless of your newsletter model. It irritates your subscribers and costs you rapport and credibility with them. In my opinion, it’s much better to go with more passive advertising like linking within articles, small graphics, resource boxes, etc.

Mistake #4: Non-Focused Content

This is a humongous mistake that I see email marketers make all the time… sending the wrong kind of content to their target audience. For example, a stock trading newsletter should never send a weight loss article to their target audience unless it directly related to a specific stock. That would be completely ridiculous… but it happens all the time.

Your target audience subscribes to your newsletter because they want to receive information on your niche or business. If you fail to send them the kind of information that they expect, or that you’ve advertised, then you’ve irreparably hurt your own credibility.

Mistake #5: Ineffective Mail Frequency

In order for a newsletter or ezine to be effective in generating revenue or sales for a business, it has to be sent out at regular intervals and often enough to become a good marketing tool.

In my experience, you’ve got to send out a newsletter at least once every two weeks to be effective. You would be better off, however, to send something to your subscribers weekly.

The reason for more frequent contact is so that your subscribers remember you and don’t hit the “spam” button as soon as you send them something. In other words, if you don’t send mailings to your subscribers often enough, then will forget you, they will forget your product, and they will forget that they ever subscribed to your newsletter. All of this works counter to your marketing goals.

Of course, it’s also possible to go too far in the other direction and mail your target audience too often. You should take a look at your overall newsletter goals and your newsletter model to determine how often you should mail your subscribers.

There’s a lot of other mistakes that newsletter and ezine owners make that hurt their business, but these are the really humongous mistakes.

No matter how you approach your newsletter and what newsletter model you choose to employ, your overriding goal should be to put your subscribers in a warm, ready to buy frame of mind. If you do, your list will be more responsive whether you’re marketing your own products, affiliate marketing, or simply selling advertising.

In the end, building rapport, trust, and credibility with your subscribers will generate a substantial amount of revenue for your business.

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Filed under: Advertising • Affiliate Marketing • Direct Marketing • Email Marketing • General Online Business • Online Mistakes

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