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Start Your E-Mail Newsletter to Stay in Closer Touch with Customers

© Chris McClean

Can you think of any more convenient, thoughtful and inexpensive way to demonstrate your expertise in your business to your customers, prospects, relevant reporters, staff, colleagues at the business and civic clubs? Without the costs of layout, printing and mailing, you can provide helpful advice, offers, other ways to show people why they should buy from you, pass your e-mail onto their colleagues who might and become familiar with you.

If you aren't comfortable writing the newsletter, get a freelancer to interview you or take your first draft to polish your words. Get another consultant to help you with the small details of online design of a newsletter, and/or mass e-mailing it. Still your costs will be considerably less than with a traditional mailed newsletter. You can "mail it" more often, offer a poll, lead them to a web site where they can learn more, link your web site with valuable business and non-profit partners whose sites also serve your kind of customer so you gain access to each other's customers . .the list of benefits goes on.

To jump-start the introduction of your newsletter, offer prizes for the names to be drawn of the people who submit their email address to you. Offer to maintain their privacy, indicating you won't trade or sell your list of names. Tell them about upcoming topics, offers, etc.

When you announce the introduction of your newsletter, also announce an online poll on a topic of interest to your customers -- and the media that your customers read (local and industry). Offer poll respondents first glimpse at a summary of poll results, and offer reporters an extensive description of poll results, thus positioning you as a subject matter expert, for them to also call upon whenever they come across a story that touches on your kind of business

The frequency of your e-mail newsletter will depend on how much time you have to write or find useful info. Ideastation (http://www.ideastation.com/) and/or Kevin Nunley (http://www.DrNunley.com) are a few places that will provide articles for use in online newsletters and on web sites.

You can publish daily, weekly or monthly or spontaneously. You can distribute your e-mail newsletter by using your e-mail program (e.g., Pegasus Mail) or a service especially designed for this purpose called Majordomo Listbot. Read other e-zines to get a feel for the kind of content your target audience finds important. E-zine fall into many categories ranging from purely organizational with updates about a specific company to general tips for a specific target audience and classified ads ezine that direct readers to specific products and services. Remember to focus and communicate audience benefits, and through word of mouth your e-zine subscription size will expand.

The copyright of the article Start Your E-Mail Newsletter to Stay in Closer Touch with Customers in Online Marketing is owned by Chris McClean. Permission to republish Start Your E-Mail Newsletter to Stay in Closer Touch with Customers in print or online must be granted by the author in writing.