Increasing Readership for Your E-Newsletter
Want to build your e-newsletter's audience? Try these tips.
Those of us who publish e-newsletters spend a huge amount of time writing content for a small amount of people who actually read our articles — or at least that’s the way it can seem at times!
Here are two ways I found to increase the readership for my weekly e-tips focused on one part of my practice — the fundraising industry.
Post Articles in the News Section of Relevant LinkedIn Groups
Each week, after we broadcast the latest issue, my assistant posts it to fundraising groups on LinkedIn, such as the Association of Fundraising Professionals and the Direct Marketing Fundraisers Association. Each group is like a mini-newsstand for these articles — and the members are almost all in my target market.
Within a week of posting my first issue, a consultant contacted me about working for one of her clients. After reading my e-newsletter, she could see that we took a similar approach to fundraising. Within minutes of our first phone call, we were chatting like old friends.
Display Links to Past Articles in Your Current Issue
I got this tip from a recent article in Mark Brownlow’s excellent e-newsletter, Email Marketing Reports.
He has a section in his e-newsletter called “What You Missed in the Previous Issue” where he features links to previous issues. He shares how he got “bonus clicks” for past issues here.
I’ve had a similar experience. While I get great CTRs (define) for my current issues, it’s really interesting to see how many new subscribers read every past issue as well. I list the previous e-tips in a sidebar next to the current content.
What’s most rewarding to me about this is when I first started publishing my e-newsletter, I led off with my best content — but my readership was small. I felt that I was going to put a lot of effort to write for just a small circle of people in my target audience. But now I see that the ROI (define) for those first articles is very high — because as my readership grows every week, the new subscribers are going back in the archives and reading the “charter” e-tips like mad.
How do you maximize the ROI for your e-newsletter investment? Share your case studies with Karen.
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