Top Three Mistakes to Avoid in Your eZine Campaign

Using an eZine (Electronic Newsletter) as a part of your overall Internet Marketing plan can be a powerful way to achieve your marketing goals. Less experienced marketers commit a number of common mistakes that may cause your targeted list to opt-out. Here are several common mistakes to avoid in your eZine campaign.

1) Sending Out Promotions Rather than News

All Internet marketing, including your eZine, should focus on building long-lasting relationships with your subscribers over time. If your eZine message is consistently aimed at prompting an immediate sale, you’ll find a steady stream of subscribers opting out.

To build a loyal following, design your eZine campaign to provide content and resources that will help spark interest in your product or service by subtly providing them with topics that show the benefits of your offerings. For example, if you’re a business coach, sharing information that your target market could benefit from, will quickly show them you are an expert in this field. This will eventually lead to a positive action on their part, i.e. contacting you for professional business coaching.

2) Not Focusing on Subscribers

When organizing your eZine campaign, provide relevant and up-to-date content written in a way that speaks to your subscriber’s needs, never on your business offerings. People don’t care much about what your business can do for them, but what they can gain by building a relationship with you, that may ultimately lead to working together. Using our coaching example above, sending valuable resources and information about challenges your ideal client may face would be better than just an announcement about your next program. By providing relevant content in a timely manner, subscribers are more likely to be loyal to your eZine campaign.

3) Making it Difficult to Opt Out

Your eZine success is not driven by the number of subscribers on your list. The quality, not the quantity of your subscribers is far more important. Making it difficult for people to unsubscribe can potentially lead to disaster. Beyond annoying and alienating potential prospects, it will be more difficult to track your eZine results. Allowing people to easily unsubscribe keeps your reputation intact and allows you to achieve optimum response rates.

It is perfectly understandable for you to want to make the most out of your eZine campaign as quickly as possible, but don’t let that allow you to defeat its entire purpose. Realize that it takes some time for eZine marketing to produce optimum results by making sure it’s implemented correctly. To keep you focused on the desired result, avoid these mistakes that eZine marketers often commit when running their Internet campaign.

Jeannine Clontz, owner of Accurate Business Services, a VA practice, is an author, writer, speaker and VA Business Coach specializing in providing professional business coaching to established and start-up virtual assistants (VA’s). For her FREE audio CD “What’s Holding Back my Business Success?”, a 2-month trial in her Insider group coaching program, or 1-month trial of her coaching club visit: http://www.VAbizcoach.com; or contact her at: coach@VAbizcoach.com.

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This entry was posted on Thursday, November 12th, 2009 at 11:25 am and is filed under Business Coach, Business Coaching, business growth, Business owner, Business Start up, Business Tips, Entrepreneur, Goals, growing a business, Growing your business, Marketing Plans, Marketing Support, Marketing Tips, Marketing Your Business, Starting a business, VA, VA Classes, VA Coach, VA Coaching, VA Training, Virtual Assistance, Virtual Assistant, Virtual Assistant Classes, Virtual Assistant Training. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

2 Responses to “Top Three Mistakes to Avoid in Your eZine Campaign”

Jan Tallent Says:
November 15th, 2009 at 12:46 pm
Excellent article, Jeannine and all so true. I will be celebrating ten years with my ezine, Rim Digest, for internet marketers and small business owners, in February of 2010 and can attest to these facts and tips first hand.

Most of my subscribers have been with me from four to the whole almost ten years and it is because I send them the most interesting and useful information I can find and relate to them as people first and potential customers after.

When I took over my ezine all that time ago, we were discouraged from being personal and were advised to keep everything professional and business-like but that did not work with my and my personality so I veered away from the “norm” and did things my way and it has obviously worked.

They know ME, about my life, its ups and downs – both personally and in my business world and really CARE when something good, bad or just different happens to me or my family and you cannot get that loyalty and faithfulness without thinking of the subscriber as a person first.
Jan Tallent Says:
November 15th, 2009 at 12:51 pm
oops! Wonderful mistake for someone who is a proofreader and editor – I meant to say “that did not work with ME and my personality” instead of “that did not work with MY and my personality” ! and can find no way to edit my comment!