May 2002

Email Technique
Ezine Strategy

The Bargain
The implied deal I have with my subscribers is that I will give them really great information and in return they will allow me to keep sending my E-zine and marketing to them. If I break my part of the bargain by sending lousy information, then people will withdraw their permission for me to email to them which is called "unsubscribing." If I send too much marketing stuff compared to the great information, I have again broken the bargain and they will unsubscribe.

People know that I give usable stuff, or I keep my mouth shut. I'm always helpful as much as I can because I want people to keep coming back. I want to be known as a good source of information. I want them spreading my name. That's one of the ways I use my E-zine. I give them good information and let the readers spread the word for me. The best way to maximize the value of this though, is a one/two punch between your website and your E-zine. That's what I do.

The Website Connection
The strategy is to maximize the value of the connection between my website and my E-zine. I do this by publishing articles and ads that are linked back to my website for more information, or compelling ad copy. I can write as much as I want on the website, but I can only fit so much in the electronic magazine.

I can't advertise all the time so I still might link people to my website or other websites just to keep giving them more great information. This helps solidify their subscription. You just can't forget about giving good information, or you will lose subscribers.

The psychology of the E-zine / Website connection is that many people read their email while online. Your enticing links to the website are similar to a person picking up an impulse-buy item at the cash register of the grocery store. The reader figures, "Heck while I'm here online I may as well pop over to his website to see what it's all about."

Once you get them to the website you can write long copy that really sells the visitor. You can't make your sales copy too long in an electronic magazine. People will go and read long copy on a web site, but generally they don't want emails that are excessively long.

The articles, links and ads drive people back to the web site. I'm going to show you an example of this.  I made lots of  money on product sales in a short period by sending people from my ezine to  http://www.antion.com/speakervideo.htm . That is professionally written copy. I actually wrote it, but I had a professional advertising copywriter look at it. Good copy on your website is a critical piece of marketing strategy to make a lot of money. You can make money with just the E-zine, but when you put the website and E-zine together, that's when sales can really go crazy.

As you'll when we talk about the website sales process in another issue,  this page is obviously a product. Even the URL tells you it's a product before you even click on it. Sometimes I'll send a person to a different type of copy that is designed to hide the product until you show all the benefits of having it. The same video product is being sold with ad copy at http://www.antion.com/public-speaking.htm check it out and see the difference. The page in the above paragraph is obviously a product. This page doesn't' t look like a product it looks like an article, but it's actually selling the same product..

The first type of copy is fine for people that know it's a product and just want to look at it. The second copy is better for people that find the page while looking for free information.

Make Back Issues Available
Another strategy, is to make back issues available at your website so that people can go back and look at articles. They'll also be exposed to the ads again. I have all back issues of Great Speaking on the website at http://www.antion.com/ezinebackissues.htm  , http://www.antion.com/ezinebackissues2000.htm  ,
http://www.antion.com/ezinebackissues2001.htm ,
http://www.antion.com/ezinebackissues2001.htm

Keep back issues handy and update them once in a while if some of the web pages that have your ads on them have changed. You don't want somebody going to a back issue and finding links that are no good anymore, although that will inevitably happen once in a while.

Some of the individual back issues could show up in search engines too, but they're usually not optimized very well.

Bigger is Better
This is something I learned once I started to get lots of subscribers. People all of a sudden wanted to make deals with me. Joint ventures come out of the woodwork now that I have about 140,000 subscribers. This actually was part of my strategy and continues to be. Having control of a list of people this size gets me invited to speak to other business people who also want to learn to do what I do. Having a good product mix actually makes no fee speaking engagements very profitable because of back of the room product sales.

Other joint ventures can be very profitable too, but you've got to watch them closely. You will get lots of people approaching you with pitiful products that don't sell for much and get lots of returns. All you'll end up with from them is unsatisfied subscribers, unsubscribers and very little, if any, money to show for it.

Ad Revenue
This is another issue that just came up for me last month. I don't really push advertising sales because the value of the ad space for my own products and services is greater than the revenue from selling an ad to someone else. This really hit home last month when the ad rates for a single stand alone ad to my entire list was only $475.00. Seem like a lot of money for just sending out electrons doesn't it?

Well I lost my proverbial electronic shirt on that ad. At least 3500 people unsubscribed from my list. The person placing the ad made a fortune which I'm happy about, but even if I placed a value of as little as 35 cents for each of those subscribers it will cost me $1225.00 to replace them. So the ad rates must go up substantially for me to sell stand alone ads.

Ads in the body of the ezine can be more reasonable because there is more space and it's surrounded by content, so one particular ad unless it was offensive (which I wouldn't allow) won't cause a massive exodus.

Upcoming topics for this section:

• HTML email

• Smart Email

• Getting subscribers fast

• Getting content fast

• How to make money with your zine

• How to gain clout with your zine

• How to maximize the signups on your website

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