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DoubleClick's recent survey indicated that over 88% of online
consumers have made a purchase as a result of receiving
permission-based email.

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

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

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

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

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

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

When it came to unsolicited email or spam:

77% deleted it without reading
16% said they were annoyed but opened it
3% were indifferent to it
4% were curious to read spam email
1% percent were eager to read it

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

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

We can clearly see a remarkable difference in the response to
permission-based emails and unsolicited emails. Always ask for
permission!

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

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

Never try to buy a list of email addresses and then send them
your ezine issue telling them to remove themselves if they don't
wish to get further mailings. That's spamming.

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

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

Nothing pisses me off more than newsletters that I cannot
unsubscribe from. There are no unsubscribe instruction nor any
email address to send an unsubscribe request to.

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

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

the
internet.

When your subscribers decide to leave your ezine, promptly
unsubscribe them. Make sure you never email them again unless
they 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 were
sending me a solo mailing every alternate day!

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

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

Strike a good balance between your profit line and your
subscribers' interest. The lifetime value of a subscriber can be
worth thousands of dollars. Why kill the golden goose when it can
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, your
subscribers may unsubscribe after a few issues if they don't
enjoy your ezine.

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

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

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

Killer #5 .. The ezine that never came

Some ezine owners produce a few issues and skip the next few. Or
they 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 your
subscribers' loyalty and trust when you fail to deliver. How can
they then trust you with their credit card numbers?

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

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

There you've it .. 5 guaranteed ways to kill your ezine. Well, I
hope 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 full
range of PR packages at http://www.prbuilder.com/pr.cgi?a006

Written by: Michael Low

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