5 Guaranteed Ways To Kill Your Ezine

DoubleClick's recent survey indicated that over 88% of onlineconsumers have made a purchase as a result of receivingpermission-based email.

The most common forms of permission-based emails are ezines oremail newsletters. Currently there are hundreds of thousands ofezines available on the internet.

Ezines are excellent tools for generating new and follow-upsales, driving more pageviews, building customer loyalty, andimproving sales credibility and brand awareness.

Even though ezines are vital to the success of every onlinebusiness, there are some marketers who unknowingly kill theirezines with not-so-wise marketing methods. I have highlightedsome of the killer mistakes below.

Killer #1 .. Who needs permission? Just mail 'em!

A recent study of permission email recipients by IMT Strategiesrevealed the following:

48% were curious to read the permission email 13% were eager toread 30% were indifferent 7% open it somewhat annoyed 2% deletedit without reading

When it came to unsolicited email or spam:

77% deleted it without reading 16% said they were annoyed butopened it 3% were indifferent to it 4% were curious to read spamemail 1% percent were eager to read it

In the above results, we can see that 9 in 10 recipients ofpermission email were fine with reading the messages, with anear half curious to read!

But for spam, 9 in 10 didn't even read the email or wereseriously unhappy about opening it.

We can clearly see a remarkable difference in the response topermission-based emails and unsolicited emails. Always ask forpermission!

Only add subscribers who have consciously chosen to receive yourezine. You'll reap the rewards of having a highly targeted andloyal audience that are interested in reading what you send them.

There have been many times when I received issues of ezines thatI don't ever recalled subscribing to. These ezine owners hadtaken their own 'initiative' to add me their list. Such spammingantics only seriously piss me off!

Never try to buy a list of email addresses and then send themyour ezine issue telling them to remove themselves if they don'twish to get further mailings. That's spamming.

Killer #2 .. Don't let 'em unsubscribe

Since it is so difficult to acquire new subscribers, let'sprevent them from un-subscribing at all costs. Heck .. justdon't provide them with an unsubscribe option in the newsletter.Then they won't unsubscribe!

Nothing pisses me off more than newsletters that I cannotunsubscribe from. There are no unsubscribe instruction nor anyemail address to send an unsubscribe request to.

Such practices are totally unethical and unprofessional. If yoursubscribers can't even trust you over something so minor, howwould they feel secure doing business with you?

They may even complain you for spamming and tell people aboutyour unethical conduct. Bad news spread very fast on theinternet.

When your subscribers decide to leave your ezine, promptlyunsubscribe them. Make sure you never email them again unlessthey decide to re-join your ezine.

Killer #3 .. Let's blast them with tons of mailings

Recently I had to unsubscribe from several ezines that weresending me a solo mailing every alternate day!

In the beginning I didn't mind those mailings. But after some 14days of getting tons of advertisements, I bailed out. TheDoubleClick survey revealed that the average online consumerreceives 36 permission email messages weekly.

With that number of emails waiting to be read, excludingpersonal messages and spam, you wouldn't want to be guilty ofclogging your subscriber's inbox.

Strike a good balance between your profit line and yoursubscribers' interest. The lifetime value of a subscriber can beworth thousands of dollars. Why kill the golden goose when itcan lay golden eggs year after year?

Killer #4 .. Forget about content, I got no time for that

With an intensely fierce competition for ezine eyeballs, yoursubscribers may unsubscribe after a few issues if they don'tenjoy your ezine.

You need to publish real content that appeal to their interest.One of the best ways to discover what your subscribers want toread is to check out the ezines of top players in your industryor related ezines with large subscriber bases.

If they are at the top, they must be doing some things right! Itwill be an eye opening experience to analyze the kind of contentsuccessful ezine publishers offer to their subscribers.

Never fill your ezine with advertisements that are disguised aseditorials. Quality content is king!

Killer #5 .. The ezine that never came

Some ezine owners produce a few issues and skip the next few. Orthey are perpetually late in mailing out new issues.

If you tell your subscribers that you publish your ezine weekly,make sure it arrives in their mailbox weekly. You lose yoursubscribers' loyalty and trust when you fail to deliver. How canthey then trust you with their credit card numbers?

Publishing an ezine requires time and effort. Writing up theeditorial, proofreading and amending the copy (many times),testing the final copy and maintaining the subscriber list caneasily take a day or more.

If you can't afford to publish your ezine weekly, do itfortnightly. I don't recommend monthly because the time lapse inbetween issues are too wide. Try preparing future issues 2 weeksin advance. Have available backup editorial content that you canalways fill your ezine with at the last minute.

There you've it .. 5 guaranteed ways to kill your ezine. Well, Ihope you'll never need to use them :)

About the author:Michael Low is a professional PR Strategist. He provides top-notch PR services at highly affordable rates. Check out his fullrange of PR packages at http://www.prbuilder.com/pr.cgi?a006

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