This is a graphic that I shared on Twitter late last week that illustrates, in part, why I use email newsletters on my photography blog.
The graphic was taken 12 hours after I sent my weekly newsletter and shows the traffic (visitor numbers) to a single post. The initial spike in traffic occurred when the post went live (that traffic was generated largely by RSS, Twitter, and Facebook). The second spike was almost completely achieved through the newsletter.
In reality, the second spike was the larger of the two, as the screen shot was taken after only 12 hours, and I find that traffic increases following a newsletter mailout tend to last for around 36 hours.
Keep in mind that this graphic reflects traffic to a single post—each newsletter promotes between 20 and 30 links across the site (you can see this week’s newsletter here).
The actual traffic levels you achieve will depend on how many newsletter subscribers you have, but the principle remains. Email is not dead; in fact, it has the potential to drive a lot of traffic if you work to grow your subscriber numbers.
I use Aweber (aff) to drive my newsletters and I recommend that you consider them, too.
Awesome study. Thanks for sharing it with us. Now I realize the importance of making a huge email base :P
I’ve never before appreciated how much traffic newsletters attract. This has convinced me.
Thanks for the post.
I have not been able to utilize newsletter because I found out hard to get people to even sign up. But of course it will definitely help promoting your blog once you have a bigger blog and people trust you. I think it takes time for new bloggers to gain that trust and to get their emails.
Have yet to try Aweber, but at some point will.
Hello,
Yes newsletter has given me a significant traffic too . Not just that I have notice certain people reading more newsletter than even the rss feeds that they have joined.
Thanks for the research
Regards
Newsletter works great for me also. I started a blog, thinking it would eventually displace my weekly newsletter. I soon realized that most of my audience didn’t (and still don’t) really know what a blog is or how to access it. So I continue to send a weekly newsletter, but only with hotlinked titles of stories from the past week and folks love it. Gradually more people are accessing blog directly.
I have not started using newsletters yet but going start soon.Aweber is a paid service can you suggest any free one to experiment.
I suppose you consider a newsletter different from people subscribing by email to your blog (ie a-la feedburner where non-RSS people receive an email for every new post).
Indeed I can see that DPS has got both daily/weekly options.
Would you run both email options on a blog which generates only 2 posts a week?
I think it is slightly overkill but would be keen to hear your opinion.
Thanks
Jez
Yes, this is an awesome study as Mani put it. I never realized that enforcing your own posts through your newsletter could drive so much traffic to it.
Love the visual.
Picture really goes a long way to prove a point, it shows how strong a newsletter can be for posts, but it can also be great for promoting other things such as products and services.
Yeah an email list is definately good in more than just one way. I still have a long way to go, but I am working on it..
Hi,
I noticed the affiliate link to Aweber that is not nofollowed. Why? I know that Google penalizes post with affiliate link without nofollow. Can you tell me why you do not use nofollow?
Thanks
Newsletters worked and will work very well for those who know how to take advantage of it. Great post!
I’ve been playing with the idea of adding a newsletter to my blog. There are just so many things that you can accomplish with the newsletter that it’s definitely worth considering.
Surprisingly, I’ve never considered using it to increase post views. Thanks for the tip.
And as you said, email is not dead. Email response is a form of advertising so it follows the same rules as other advertising channels and should be treated as such to be successful with it.
hey thanks for sharing this with us . ofcourse, email list is definately good in more than just one way. this is very good. ill have to work on it very hard i guess.
http://tasksworkers.com
I really love visual displays and videos to accompany emails, as I think they make it much more appealing to the reader!
Wow. If I had influence over THAT many people(just 1 post!), I’d be scared. =) I know I’m supposed to use Aweber, but there’s this little thing called $$$ that I have to make first (I’ll looke at it again, tho)…but thanks for the link to your VERY perfect newsletter. I’ve been searching for something exactly like that, and haven’t found it. Well done. As always.
Thank you for linking your newsletter – I appreciate the way you used the image of your book. It’s given me a lot of ideas on how to incorporate my eBook into the blog newsletter I’m trying to get started.
Also, someone was asking about a free service: I use Mailchimp. You can send several hundred emails without having to subscribe. However, everyone seems to recommend Aweber.
your newsletter link i have read,thank you,i like this way so much,i hope after using it,something will be better