Driving traffic with email newsletters

Spark their interest
Write about something that is of benefit to your customers. It sounds simple, but it’s a point that is often overlooked. Your newsletter should contain topics that are useful, interesting and add value to their businesses or indeed, their lives. Give people what they want to read - don’t just put things in to fill up space.

Keep it snappy
Think short. In most cases, the shorter and punchier the newsletter, the better, especially when it comes to e-newsletters. Then use links to your website to provide more information. In some cases, just a simple ‘tip’ as a monthly e-newsletter can be very effective in demonstrating to your customers and prospects the types of services and value you can offer them.

Readers like to skim
Write so that the eye can quickly scan the email, find the stories of interest and quickly click to your website for more. Accept that people don’t want to read everything but if you are doing a regular newsletter to all customers, ensure you provide a mix of topics to attract different types of customers. Use headings, bold key words, interesting layout and low-res graphics to make your newsletter easy to read.

Tie it all together
Have a lead story or focus for each newsletter – perhaps one key idea and a couple of smaller points.

Be accessible
Although you may be aiming to increase traffic to your website, remember that some people will want to communicate with you offline, so always give plenty of other contact details in your e-newsletters, including your business's phone number, email, and physical location.

Join forces
Joint email promotions with a related but non-competing business can also work well to drive traffic to your and their websites.

More than a sale
Try not to always sell. People want their e-newsletters to be informative, not always just another push from you for new products and services. Try to offer useful guides, tips or ideas and other helpful and interesting information.

Consistency is key
Be consistent and regular. Customers will come to expect a frequency and standard of information so, whatever it takes, don’t let them down. The regularity of your newsletters depends on your market but generally people prefer a short, more frequent e-newsletter, to a six monthly booklet.

Study your stats
Test and measure the traffic hitting your website. Look for peaks and troughs in traffic and test different links to different website information to learn what works best with your market.

Sixteen ideas for using web links
Use a variety of links to your website from your e-newsletters. Don’t use them all at once of course, but give your readers several different reasons in each newsletter to hit your website. Links can take readers to:

• More product or service information

• Detailed diagrams

• Technical specifications

• Photographs of events or products in use

• Customers' testimonials

• Case studies of how that product or service has helped someone else

• An ordering form

• A form for booking a service or class

• A form for sending an email enquiry for more details

• Online competition entry forms – a perfect way to gather more details about your customers

• Promotions, current deals and offers

• A 'sharing' function, so they can tell their friends about your great new service or product

• An online customer survey (including what information they would like to get via email)

• Your online suggestion box

• A free gift voucher

• A useful guide or ongoing tips

E-newsletters continue to prove themselves over and over again as being highly effective in generating traffic to websites, and to the phones and premises of small and medium-sized businesses throughout NZ. Make them part of your web marketing strategy to communicate with the people most likely to use your products and services.