A Simple Tool to Inspire Customers


By Leslie Hamp

Entrepreneurs and small business owners are often stumped when it comes marketing their business online. They want to build a relationship with prospects in the hopes that they eventually become regular customers. They also need an inexpensive, reliable and fast tool that requires little if any technical expertise. One of the best ways to solve this problem is to build relationships via a weekly, biweekly or monthly e-newsletter, also known as an ezine.

Most people don't realize the power of ezines. When prepared properly, ezines are viewed as a news source and become a powerful marketing tool to change a reader's beliefs and behaviors. Think about it this way:

For a business, an effective ezine can inform and motivate customers to buy a new product or service and maintain customer loyalty.

For nonprofits, ezines can generate new memberships, encourage meeting participation, maintain loyalty among current members, and raise money from a supportive donor base.

For an educational institution, the ezine can increase community awareness and improve communication between alumni and their alma mater or between parents and teachers.

You are probably already receiving ezines in your inbox, some you read, and others you delete in a flash. The key to sending out a successful and well-read ezine is to keep it simple, interesting, and informative. Your subscribers join your list for a good reason: they want information that is useful and helpful. When you provide the content they want and send on a regular basis, your subscribers will connect with you and get to know, like, and trust you.

You can achieve outstanding results with just a small investment of time, effort and money.

54% of small businesses surveyed rated email as the top online promotion to drive site visitors and customers to their web sites and storefronts. More than half of the businesses surveyed believe ezines are one of the most powerful marketing tools because they are inexpensive, effective, immediate, targeted, and simply put, easy to do. In addition, if you write an interesting, informational newsletter, people naturally pass it on to friends and colleagues. Let them help you create more leads!

Be sure to follow some simple rules to get recipients to actually open your newsletter without sending it to their trash or spam folder. Use the same email address to send your ezine so that your customers become familiar with your communications and treat you as a trusted sender. Ensure your name and email address appear in the 'from' portion of the email, that it fits on one line and appears in its entirety.

Now create a subject line that sparks the reader's curiosity. Your subject line is the second most compelling reason your email gets opened. It's part of the first impression readers receive and can be the deciding factor whether they open it or not. Use only "power" words and keep it under 30-40 characters including spaces. Avoid using all caps and punctuations. Also, when proofreading your newsletter, don't leave out the subject line.

Determine the ezine format will work best for you, text or HTML. Text ezines are the most commonly published due to simplicity. Although text ezines are a snap to create, they're also a snap for your recipients to delete. An HTML format, on the other hand, requires the sender to get more sophisticated, and it's perceived as more sophisticated in the eyes of the recipient.

Whichever format you use, be sure to track readership. Distribute with an automated program or site that allows you to view the number of people who opened your ezine and how many emails bounced back.

Bottom line: An ezine is a powerful tool to stay in touch with your clients and prospects on a regular basis. Since most people need to be contacted at least seven times before they buy from you, an ezine allows you to reach that goal. There are plenty of great, affordable tools online to create professional looking ezines, so get started today. Before you know it, you'll be building profitable relationships.



 
About the author

Certified Marketing Spitfire Leslie Hamp is the creator of Business Boost In A Box. To learn more about the step-by-step program, and to sign up for your *FREE* Marketing Mastery Success Kit, visit www.boostyourbottomline.com from http://www.ContentHere.com


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