When you’re using email to market your product or services your content should contain three basic elements:
1.It should be useful and/or informative for the reader
2.It should give something of value in terms of promotional offer on your product/services
3.It should low-sell your product/services
You can create the articles yourself, using themes that match up with the products you sell (without mentioning them), and which deal with issues that the people who buy your products/services are concerned with. There are also a number of places where you can get free articles that you could use as content for your email marketing campaign. These aren’t original but often you can use them as long as the writer’s name remains on them. Read any small print regarding usage of the articles before sending them out in your email so that you know you’re not breaking any copyright laws. Another idea would be to pay a writer to produce some of these for you. This is an email newsletter so you could keep them short – perhaps a couple of 100 word tips and a 250 word short article, or one slightly longer article of 400 words and a tip. By offering this useful information that’s related to your business area, but not selling anything, you are telling your client that you’re not just out to take their money, but you’re interested enough in them to spend the resources compiling a newsletter that they’ll find interesting. You’re also lowering the possibility that they’re going to unsubscribe from your mailing list!
Put all of the tip and some of the article in the email, and link back to your website so that you can get subscribers to visit the site. You should also put a linked line that says “for more tips click here” and for more articles click here” and have these linked up to the tips and articles pages in your website. Having an area for these (that’s not linked anywhere from the homepage or it wouldn’t be a subscriber only feature) not only means that you can get your subscribers to visit the site, but also that the search engines will recognize the content exists and that seldom hurts any site!
Each newsletter you send out ought to have some promotion attached to it that’s not given to anyone but your subscribers. It’s like a loyalty bonus. The thing about this is that it should only be available for a limited period of time, or be valid for only the first x number of subscribers. The reason for this is that it creates “shortage” and people are more likely to react earlier if they think it will run out, and also your next newsletter will contain a new subscriber only offer.
Lastly it shouldn’t be a “Buy me! Buy me! Buy me!” publication. If it is, you aren’t likely to get your subscribers to read it, and any that do are likely to unsubscribe because there’s nothing of value in it. It’s just junk mail that they signed up for, and they can soon stop that. Your email is there to promote your products/services, but it must be in a low key way. It’s a great way to advertising new products and link to where the subscribers can go and find out more information, but don’t use up 1000 words describing it – just give the main features and the link. Highlight one product as your “product of the month” or product of the week” and write the key features about that product – you could even link a promotion to that buy 2 get 1 free for example. Keep all self-promotion to a minimum – a “This email is sent to you by the friendly helpful folk at XXX” and a link to your site is enough, especially if you’re also highlighting a specific product within the email.
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