Printing press
Actually, ideally you should be doing a weekly newsletter. A monthly one is the bare minimum you should offer. No matter what business you happen to be running, you’ll earn many more customers by having a mailing list and offering a newsletter on a regular basis. But before we get into the why of newsletters, let’s look at why you need a list:
Yes, You Need a List
Check out any Internet marketing forum and you’ll be told how having an Email list is the golden rule to making more sales from your website. They even include information on how to get people to sign up, by offering a free item of value such as an eBook or a video which gives them real value.
All well and good. It’s true that having a mailing list is a vital part of building an online business for yourself. And it’s true that regardless of what product you happen to have for sale, whether it’s a way to make money online or it’s a better vacuum cleaner, you can benefit from having such a list. However, that doesn’t mean you can’t screw it up royally.
No, You Shouldn’t Just Spam It
You see, as a professional blogger, I’m always looking for new ways to increase traffic (and share those ideas with you, not to mention building my own blog up). That means I often have to give away my name and email address in exchange for some kind of free report or video.
I use a special Email address which I consider my spam address s for the emails I get from these places and the inbox is always full these days. Most of the time, I’ll glance at what’s being offered and quickly delete it. Often, I’ll just delete the emails outright because I find they’re usually junk. This, sadly is what most people do with their Email lists and it’s largely a waste of time and effort.
The Right Way to Work With an Email List
There are however two internet marketers whose Emails I open consistently. One of them is John Chow and the other is Eric Holmund.
Why do I always open up their Emails? In the case of John Chow, it’s because the eBook he gave away was truly valuable. Plus I’ve found his Emails to be infrequent enough and useful enough that I don’t feel inundated with them.
I also find that his Emails often contain valuable information rather that just another spam message telling me about the latest and greatest opportunity available for parting me from my money.
In Eric’s case, he sends out a newsletter which actually has real, valuable tips included in it.
What do they both have in common? They’re both offering me real value and I welcome getting these Emails because of it. Contrast that with some other Internet marketers who bombard me with Email after Email, sometimes 3-4 times a day and every single one of them is another ad. I delete those unread and register them as spam.
Offering a Newsletter Means Offering Value
When you offer a newsletter, as Eric does, or you offer valuable insights as John does, you are giving your readers a reason to engage with you and to want to learn about what you are telling them about. This means you can also sell them products because they feel like they are getting value for their money since they’ve come to trust you.
The other guys by comparison, may make a few sales, but they are by and large wasting their Email lists by spamming them repeatedly.
It’s a stupid way to do Internet marketing because it’s short sighted and fails to take into account what a newsletter can do for you: help you build a relationship. And when you build a relationship, you create a real customer who will come back and buy from you again and again.