Comments on: Email Newsletters Tips for Bloggers

By: Affiliate Solutions

Affiliate Solutions — Sat, 04 Apr 2009 09:26:17 +0000

These are all great tips. I personally provide my subscribers with tips, guides, and free products to get them to subscribe.

I aim for providing people with valuable content to help get them started in internet marketing.

One thing you did not mention is whether you should outsource your email newsletters, especially if its a 10-20 email campaign.

What are your thoughts on that?

By: Blogs and Email - How to Get the Best of Both Worlds

Blogs and Email - How to Get the Best of Both Worlds — Mon, 30 Mar 2009 14:02:16 +0000

[...] an email newsletter, Darren has written a few interesting articles in the past. You can also find a few tips for bloggers [...]

By: Ryan McLean

Ryan McLean — Wed, 16 Jul 2008 15:47:52 +0000

I was running a newsletter on my site quite effectively getting about 1 person to sign up per day. I need to start implementing this again as it does result in a lot of increased traffic to my website

By: How to Grow Your Blog’s Readership: ProBlogger Blog Tips

How to Grow Your Blog’s Readership: ProBlogger Blog Tips — Sun, 23 Apr 2006 04:56:11 +0000

[...] 3. Collect email addresses – This is something I go on about from time to time and is something I’m seeing a lot of the top bloggers out there utilizing. There are many ways to do it ranging from starting an email newsletter (getting permission from readers to highlight your work) to using other email lists you might already have (be a little careful with this as it’s open to abuse). [...]

By: Why Email Newsletters Can Improve your Blog: ProBlogger Blog Tips

Why Email Newsletters Can Improve your Blog: ProBlogger Blog Tips — Sun, 23 Apr 2006 02:09:28 +0000

[...] them? Which are the most effective strategies you’ve seen or used? If you enjoyed this post Bookmark it at del.icio.us and Subscribe to the Free ProBloggerNewsletter [...]

By: David

David — Sun, 30 Oct 2005 22:24:57 +0000

My 2c..

I’ve started up a “hybrid” blog / mailing list, at http://www.inspirationaljournal.com – It’s a combination of WordPress and PHPList, which makes for a very powerful system, in both contexts.

The basic PHPList Wordpress integration plugin is here:
http://www.funkypenguin.co.za/wp-phplist

Although it hasn’t been live for long, I’ve found that having the blog available in an email format has provided an effective “feedback loop”… blog visitors subscribe to the email (they’re mostly non-technical, and have never heard of RSS), and email-subscribers click through from the email to the blog.

- David

By: Lucy MacDonald

Lucy MacDonald — Fri, 28 Oct 2005 10:42:07 +0000

I can attest to the fact that email newsletters are still a relevant marketing tool that builds relationships with clients. My newsletter Positive Perspectives is now read throughout 60 countries and everytime I send it out (monthly) I get new clients and return clients. It is great ROI on time and money. Blogs are another form of “newsletter” and all marketing efforts converge to help create your positiion and visibility in the crowded market place.

By: Wayne

Wayne — Thu, 06 Oct 2005 22:51:20 +0000

Great tips and while maybe RSS is the new wave, for some sites a newsletter may still be more effective. Not _everyone_ is subscribing to Feeds yet, take my mother as an example who is in the last few years becoming an avid Internet user but I doubt she has a clue what RSS Feeds are nor how to subscribe to them.

What I wanted to add to Darren’s recommendations — perhaps as part of “make it clear what it’s about” — is to consider keeping your past newsletters archived within that site. This gives people a chance to view the content and better determine whether they want to receive the content in their inbox, and also increases your indexable web pages and generates additional internal links.

By: Denise O'Berry

Denise O'Berry — Thu, 18 Aug 2005 09:43:40 +0000

Darren — I’m glad to see a pro like you offering up email newsletters as a compliment to a blog. Way too many people see it as an “either / or” proposition and it’s not. They can help each other in so many ways.

By: Guy

Guy — Wed, 17 Aug 2005 21:05:05 +0000

I have used Constant Contact for my newsletter. Any other suggestions? Free or low cost are best, of course.

By: John (SYNTAGMA)

John (SYNTAGMA) — Wed, 17 Aug 2005 08:53:14 +0000

The real point is that most email newsletters are illegal in one jurisdiction or another. From a simple email address it’s almost impossible to tell where the recipient lives. Send out a newsletter which has links to prohibited stuff ~ and that could be anything, not just porn ~ and you are in breach of the law. You could be sued or barred from that jurisdiction, and your business closed down. It’s important to know that, where commercial email is concerned, the bar has been raised to a much higher level and, worse, it varies across its length, so you never quite know where you are.

By: Darren Rowse

Darren Rowse — Tue, 16 Aug 2005 22:35:00 +0000

Thanks for the comment Duane,

You’re right about blogs/rss being the way of the future I think – but I still think there is a place for email and wonder if many are throwing the baby out with the bath water.

By: Leon Kilat ::: The Cybercafe Experiments » Blog Archive » Improving blog headlines: lessons learned offline

Tue, 16 Aug 2005 20:25:35 +0000

[...] 1ProBlogger series on building a better blog [...]

By: Duane

Duane — Tue, 16 Aug 2005 19:10:41 +0000

Wow. I think you’re walking a very thin line by promoting email newsletters as a way to drive traffic back to your blog. Isn’t the major push right now to sell blogs as an alternative to email newsletters and aleviate all the problems that come with email? I know I’d like to see my company go that way (I run the weekly newsletter, personalized to 2million people, and feel all of that pain on a regular basis).

* With HTML email you can at least attempt to track opens (some measure is better than none, the marketing department will tell you).

* Users click on HTML links far more than they ever cut and paste out of text letters.

* There will always be people that call you spam. Don’t take it personally. Many people think “Report spam” means “Move to trash” or “Unsubscribe.”

* If it can be measured, it can be tested. Learn quickly to pay attention to which subject lines you use, etc… and how well they do.

Personally I think a better way to go is drastically improving RSS / syndication acceptance as a whole. The audience for my blog (Shakespeare fans) is not exactly early adopters, for the most part. When I took a poll among those that said they were visiting my blog daily and asked what RSS is, they had no clue and hoped that I would tell them. If I could get them to use a mechanism such as RSS that watches a blog for them automatically and simply tells them when there’s new stuff, I think that I would have a much bigger audience. And, most importantly, it wouldn’t cost me the effort that an email newsletter does.