Before you start writing newsletters, you must collect e-mail addresses of readers to comply with the Marketing Act. How you build that list, I will go through with you in a moment.
It gives you at least 2 advantages that the law is like this:
- Your newsletters do not disappear among the other newsletters in the readers' inbox
- You attract readers who have specifically said yes to hearing from you. You don't have that advantage with very many other marketing methods
Make it attractive to sign up for your newsletter
Seen in isolation, signing up for a newsletter is not attractive. Because the word "newsletter" does not contain any value for the readers. Therefore, you must promise your reader something to get him to sign up for the newsletter. This welcome gift is called a freebie.
Your freebie can take many forms. The most important thing is that it is available electronically, so that the entire welcome flow can run automatically and that the right target group finds it attractive.
This could be, for example:
- an e-course
- the audio file
- the e-book
- the checklist
- the guide
When working with your freebie, you don't need to have all your newsletters ready. But feel free to decide which topics you want to write about in your newsletters, so that you ensure that readers who will be interested in the freebie will also be happy with the newsletters and are in the target group for what you want to sell.
You can make your freebie at several different levels. Some spend a few hours on it. Other weeks or months.
In the light department, you may already have a good blog post to entice. As long as you can write a good teaser text that gets people to hand over their email address, it doesn't matter if your gift is already freely available on your website.
You can also promise your readers an answer to a simple question and trigger their curiosity so much that it in itself makes them hand over their email address to get the answer.
These simple freebies can easily serve their primary purpose: Namely to get many of those eligible to sign up for the newsletter. With a more comprehensive freebie, you can achieve more benefits, such a freebie could for example be a thorough course or an e-book.
In addition, new readers will get to know you more thoroughly, the more you share. In part, it becomes more attractive for others to refer to the freebie, the bigger and better the gift in question. I myself have several times had organizations and the media mention my freebies, in addition to the recognition in the mention, it has also given many readers to the newsletter. And I probably wouldn't have gotten that publicity with a thinner freebie.
Give the reader something that can be used now
Regardless of how extensive your freebie is, your starting point must be that you entice with something that your reader can use immediately. In addition to knowledge, it can be a discount code.
It gives you more advantages. Because that way the readers get something from you at a time of their own choosing. Therefore, they are motivated to read or act. When they receive your subsequent newsletters, there is a greater risk that they will focus on something else.
You can target your new readers more precisely than your other readers. Because in the initial phase you know more about what they have in common than in a year. Among other things, what they don't know, and that they probably don't know you very well. In addition, there was probably also a good reason why they signed up for the newsletter at this particular time.
You can take advantage of that knowledge and create a welcome series of newsletters, written with the specific purpose of introducing new readers to your company: If there are special caveats to doing business in your industry, you can use them as a starting point, just as you can share some of the basic knowledge that readers will benefit from when they receive the "regular" newsletters in the future.
You can also use the model with the welcome series in an even more complete way. If you are unsure how much time you have to write newsletters continuously, you can settle for a welcome series and organize it so that it can stand alone.
This blog has been translated by Startup Central.