by Chrystopher Knight
One primary purpose of most ezines is to drive traffic to a website or multiple websites. The ezine publisher might not know this yet or even disagree with this statement, but when they enter their prime, they will know it as a golden truth.
You might say that I'm biased because that's one of my primary purposes for my ezines -- to drive ad revenue, but think of any ezine publisher or email marketer that wants to sell a physical or electronic product:
Unless they are putting in a BUY IT NOW link that goes directly to PayPal or their shopping cart program, their job is to get the ezine subscriber to stop reading the ezine and come to a website. It's part of the order flow…part of the sales or lead generation process.
If you agree with me that the purpose of an ezine is to drive traffic to a website, then how do you answer this question:
If you put an entire article in the body of your ezine, what reason do you give your ezine subscriber to visit your website?
They have already gotten the cow and the milk. There is nothing left to buy. Your article opened up a problem and solved it. Most likely, it pleased your audience and you achieved subscription growth and happy list members…but only a few sales or a fraction of the potential that you could receive.
Most readers want the full article and some are even insulted if you require them to click on a link for the full article.
PAID EZINE PUBLISHERS:
If your ezine is a paid ezine (meaning you charge a subscription fee for it), then I recommend that you put the full article in the body of the ezine. You've already gotten paid. You could still give them a link to "more related resources" to the primary article, but should give them immediate value without requiring them to click to get access to it.
FREE EZINE PUBLISHERS:
If your ezine is free, then consider every time a member clicks on a link that sends them to a website as payment for the free expert content you gave them.
"You must sell your email list members on why
they should click on your links just like you
sell the benefits of your product or service."
4 Tips To Leverage Your Ezine's Traffic Building Power:
#1 Send article summaries that are 1-2 paragraph teasers as to the benefits that they will receive if they click on the links to the full summary. Include a link under the summary to the full article.
#2) Supplement your full articles (if you must still send them) with a case study or client testimonial teaser summary that links to the full case study results or testimonial. This strategy allows you to do the full article but add a chance for increased click through to your website.
#3) Bold or make it easy to see which link to click to get to the full article. I've tested this and with the rise in anti-spam software & hardware filters, it's best to include a valid URL in the link so that folks who don't see an active link can copy and paste the URL if you are sending it via HTML.
Example: If I wanted to give an article summary teaser to this article, I'd include the first two paragraphs of the full article (or rewrite them to be more benefit oriented) and then include a link to this URL in my HTML newsletter body:
http://EmailUniverse.com/ezine-tips/?id=1271
Bonus note: I've tested including an instant web link to forward an article to a friend and this has failed for me. My research has shown that an email subscriber will not forward an article to a friend until after they have read the full web article… but, they will forward your entire ezine to a friend whether they read the article or not.
#4) Prep your members as to what to expect in the next issue. Build demand for yourself and you'll find your members are more receptive to clicking on your links if it's related or relevant to their current needs.
Ezine Traffic Building Conclusion:
As you can see, there are varying degrees as to how much you give before you require a link back to a website you control or an affiliate link. While we all want happy email list members that tell all of their friends, we also want to convert those members to happy paying customers for our products, services or enhancing ad revenue. If we don't, we are doing a dis-service to them in the long-run because without additional revenue, you will not be able to enhance your offerings to them in the future!
In fact, you don't have a right to deny your email list members from the benefits your website can deliver them once they land on your website from a link in your ezine. Consider testing this strategy in your next series of email newsletter issues and let me know how it works out for you. :-)
This Ezine-Tip was submitted By Christopher Knight -- Email List Marketing Expert, author and entrepreneur. Get your weekly dose of Email newsletter publishing, marketing, promotion, management, email-etiquette, email usability and deliverability tips by joining the free Ezine-Tips newsletter: http://www.emailuniverse.com/subscribe/.
