Email newsletters are a good way to stay in touch with your subscribers and to remind them of your products, but many email marketers don´t use their emails to the best of their ability. You´re already talking to your readers anyway, so you´ll want to ensure that you make the most of this sales opportunity. Here are just a few ways to do that.

• Reviews. Writing an honest review about a product you are promoting or publishing a client´s review is an excellent way to get people to take a second look at the product.
• Discounts. Offering a subscriber-only discount off your product will inspire hesitant buyers to make a purchase.
• Multimedia. Use links to video or audio files where your subscribers can learn more about the products or services that you are promoting.

For many email marketers, email newsletters with a hard sell just don´t work. It might be uncomfortable or perhaps it simply isn´t getting the results wanted. By using discounts and reviews, you´ll find that many subscribers are more responsive to your email newsletter messages.

People enjoy reading email newsletters for the content. If it´s funny or informative or both, they are more than likely to keep reading it, which is obviously to your benefit. Too many email newsletters these days are just a collection of links, ads and a little promo jargon tossed in. They don´t really tell you anything or inform you of anything except new product launches. This might be fine if you are in a buying mood, but many people won´t be until they´ve received some quality information as to why they would want to buy something.

How do you know what to write in your email newsletter? Take a cue from your readers. Chances are they´ll be asking questions and sending emails. Read them and then write email newsletters that answer their questions. This can be a great way to figure out how to leave them with some great information and still wanting more, which will keep your readers coming back.

Quality content is not always easy to come by, but if you make the effort, it will definitely be appreciated by those who read your email newsletters. And, when something is of great quality, people often refer their friends and associates as well, so you could end up with an even bigger list.

No matter what topic your email newsletter covers, chances are you’ve got competition. And if you’re in a popular industry like internet marketing or cooking, you’re going to have a LOT of very good competition. The trick to gaining new subscribers and keeping the ones you have in the face of all that competition is to simply be better. There are a few ways to go about becoming the best in your field.

• Read the competition. This will let you know what they are doing and then you can make plans to top it. Notice their features and what they report on . . . how many ads they contain, etc.

• Stay on top of the news. Whatever the news is in your industry, you want to be the first to report on it, so you’ll need to subscribe to news blogs or Google Alerts to make sure that you are receiving the latest information and then write about it in your email newsletter.

• Get reader feedback. When you give the readers of your email newsletter what they want, you´ll find they stick around a lot longer. While you can´t please everyone, you can certainly find out what your readers prefer to see in the newsletter.

Email newsletters don’t all have to be the same, in fact, they shouldn’t be. So try to add something extra to your email newsletters that will make yours unique and get people reading.

Every email newsletter will have people who unsubscribe. While there are many reasons that someone would leave your email list, it is not always possible to know exactly what the issue is. Knowing why people don´t want to read your email newsletter anymore is a good start and can help you keep them on your list.

First, you´ll need to know why they are leaving. A good way to discover this is to ask. Set it up so when someone unsubscribes, they are asked to give you a reason.

• Too much information. Many people find that they subscribe to too many email newsletters and have to do a purge every once in a while. Keep them on your list by providing quality content and making yourself indispensable.

• Too many emails. If your email newsletter goes out more than once a week, it´s possible that subscribers feel rather overwhelmed with the quantity of emails that you are sending. If you find this is the case, consider backing off a little and keeping more subscribers.

• Unwanted email content. Maybe your readers thought they were signing up for something else. When they aren´t getting what they expected in your email newsletter, you will see a lot of unsubscribes.

Keeping your subscribers should be just as important for your email newsletters as gaining new ones. After all, they are already signed up and eager for information.

Your email newsletters could actually do you more good by publishing them twice, once to your email list and once to your blog or website. Dawud Miracle on Sparkplugging CEO offers a post that points out five great reasons to publish your email newsletter online.

Should you put your ezine archives on your blog?

The simple answer? Yes!

Think about it, why wouldn’t you? Unless you keep your ezine content private, behind a membership site of some sort, there’s no reason not to archive your ezine (or e-newsletter) articles. And if you’re going to archive them, wouldn’t it make the most sense to archive them on your blog?

While there are five reasons in the post, a very good one is simply SEO. Your email newsletter likely has a lot of your keywords in it and this can help you out with the search engines. Not to mention, putting your email newsletter up on your website or blog will offer a constant stream of fresh content which will also help you when it comes to the search engines. They just love fresh content!

With that in mind, it´s a good idea to write your email newsletter with SEO in mind. Keep your keywords prominent and make sure the content you are writing is worth reading. That way it will add a lot of value to your website for your readers as well as the search engines. This can be a great way to get an SEO boost without any extra writing.

There is a big difference between talking to your readers and communicating with them. Email newsletters that talk at readers may be informative, but they tend not to gain huge readerships. People like that personal touch, something that makes them feel connected to you.

Some email newsletters are very good at communicating with readers, they draw the reader in and make them feel like a friend that you´re sharing information with. This helps to build trust, something that is essential in email marketing. With trusting subscribers, you´ll find that you get a lot further.

A little personal information goes a long way. Most readers will be thrilled to read a bit about you in your email newsletter. This actually works to make you seem real, but you do need to be careful that you aren´t bragging or talking down to your readers. If you read any “guru” email newsletters, you´ll have a good feel for what a little personality can do for email.

People usually enjoy hearing anecdotes about how you learned life lessons, etc. so it´s a good idea to include those in your email newsletters from time to time. Communicating with your readers is far better than talking at them and hoping they´ll want to buy what you´re selling!

Some online businesses find it difficult to come up with news or special offers for a daily or even weekly email newsletter. That doesn´t mean you can´t run an email newsletter, but you should definitely keep in touch with your subscribers at least once a month. Sending less frequently greatly increases your chances of being forgotten about!

Finding things to write about when you have no news to send out can be difficult, but here are a few ideas:

• Tips. Write 5-7 tips to help people. For example, if you sell toilet deodorizers, you could offer 5 tips on how to clean mildew or how to keep other areas of the bathroom smelling fresh.

• New ideas. Why not share new ideas on how to use your products? You can see this used very effectively in Arm and Hammer Baking Soda ads, where they offer new ways to use their product.

• Contests and special offers. Whenever you do have a contest or special offer, send out an email newsletter announcing it. This will bring people back to your website and will also keep them interested in your email newsletters!

• Photos. Why not send out some photos of clients using your products? Include some testimonials and a short article to round out the text part of the email newsletter.

• Facts and stats. Sharing some interesting facts and statistics about your industry will provide your subscribers with interesting information and could even spur them to purchase your product.

As you can see, there are still plenty of things to write about for your monthly email newsletters and you´ll find that maintaining that steady contact with your readers will help forge a relationship that really pays off later. They will think of you first when needing your products, which is really the whole point of email newsletters, after all.

No writer works in a vacuum, we´re all influenced by what goes on around us, and, in the case of writing, by what we read. That doesn´t mean you should start writing exactly like a big name internet marketer, but reading quality email newsletters can really help you make improvements to your own.

Email newsletters are so abundant these days that it is extremely easy to find badly written ones. Taking the time to search out well written email newsletters is worth it, though. You´ll be inspired by the email design, the writing and everything about them. This will quickly reflect in your own newsletters and you´ll end up with great emails that people want to read.

Finding well-written email newsletters is tough, but you can do it. Talk to friends and ask them which emails they love to get in their inbox. Subscribe to those.

Take a look through an ezine directory to find new email newsletters that you might not have known about before. Subscribe to the best ones.

It´s not necessary to subscribe only to newsletters that pertain to your industry or talk about email marketing. In fact, you can learn a lot from subscribing to other types of email newsletters. Look for ones that interest you and inspire you and then read them on a regular basis. You´ll see an improvement in your own email newsletters pretty fast!

Many email newsletters sell ads to help eliminate costs and even to earn a bit of extra money. Should you be doing this, too?

While the decision to sell ad space in your email newsletters really depends on you, there are a few factors to keep in mind. Selling ad space isn´t an easy decision for many!

First, you need to consider if it is worth it to you to send your readers somewhere else. If you are using email newsletters for marketing, then you definitely need to consider this, since the ads you run may attract more people to them than your own links. If you do decide to go with ads anyway, make sure you keep the price high enough to make it worth your while.

The other thing to consider is whether you will simply accept anyone who pays, or if you will screen your ads. And what about solo ads? While they bring in a good chunk of money, they can also make your readers angry and you will likely lose a chunk of subscribers every time you send one out.

The impact on your readers has to be looked at when deciding to sell ad space in your email newsletters. If you feel that it will hurt your email business, then don´t do it. Otherwise, proceed, but be careful!

Offering an email newsletter to your clients is a great way to boost business and keep them updated on the latest happenings in your services or products. But how do email newsletters actually work to improve your business, especially if you are mostly sending out useful information rather than ads?

Establish yourself as an expert. When your name is on all the useful information, you can bet people will start thinking of you as the expert in your industry and everyone wants to buy from the expert.

Keep your name fresh in their minds. How often have you thought “oh, I need such and such an item”? Probably pretty often, and with that thought comes an idea of where you can get the item. By reminding people of your products from time to time, they have your business in mind.

Build trust. People are far more likely to buy from someone they feel they know or at least have heard from frequently than a person who has never talked to them. Email newsletters build trust and that can be a very valuable commodity in today´s world.

Email newsletters really are very useful in promoting your business and gaining repeat customers. If you don´t have an email newsletter set up yet, they are really very easy to do and well worth the effort.

Email newsletters create a bond between you and your readers. It´s a good way to keep yourself and your business fresh in people´s minds. But, if no one opens your email newsletter, it won´t do anyone much good!

The key to writing great email newsletters that people will want to open and read is to give them what they want and need. That involves finding out what their problems are and then offering the solution, which is a great way to bond with your readers.

Email newsletters are only as useful to you as they are to the subscriber. If you are just tossing stuff out there to get the newsletter out, you´ll find that it doesn´t do you much good and you´ll be stuck with a list of unresponsive subscribers.

Far better is to simply make your email newsletters something that people will actually want to read. Do that and you´ll have no more issues with no one opening your emails.

One problem that many internet marketers have is keeping subscribers to their email newsletters. It´s inevitable that you will lose some of your readers over time, they may no longer be interested in the information you have to offer, or they might just have too many emails and decide to clear out their subscription list.

But there is another reason that readers unsubscribe and that is because they aren´t getting what they need from your email newsletters.

Keeping subscribers that would normally only leave because you aren´t providing them with the information that they need is something that can easily be remedied. Here are a few ways to do just that.

• Keep your content fresh. Don´t just rehash what is already being talked about everywhere and don´t reuse old newsletter articles very often.
• Find out what your readers need. If you know what they need, it´s far easier to give it to them. Try a survey to find out.
• Give them solutions. Offering solutions to problems that your subscribers have will really help boost your chances of them reading your email newsletters.
• Be interactive. Don´t send out your email newsletters with a “Do not respond to this email” disclaimer. If you are using an autoresponder that can´t forward your emails, add an email address where they can contact you and respond to questions. This will enhance your chances of keeping subscribers, too.

Email newsletters are such a great way to stay in touch with your subscribers that you really don´t want to blow it by offering inferior content. Keep things fresh and useful and you´ll be amazed at how quickly your list grows.

How do you know if your email newsletters are being noticed? If no one cares, you probably need to change a few things in your email newsletter to make it have more of an impact, but first, you need to check and see if it is actually interesting to your subscribers.

Are your open rates dropping? If so they may be indicative of a lowered interest in your email newsletters.

Do you get emails after your email newsletter goes out? That´s a great sign that things are going well, people are interested in your email newsletters.

Do you get testimonials? These are a very good indication that your email newsletters are doing their job!

Are your subscribers buying products that you recommend? Then you know that they trust your opinion and are listening to what you have to say.

You should be able to tell if your email newsletters are making an impact by looking at the results. If no one every writes you about something you included in your newsletter and you don´t see any results after promoting something, it´s time to look at changing your tactics, which we´ll look at in upcoming posts.

Every holiday, there are huge giveaways, one of the most popular opt-in techniques out there for building your list. These can be a great way for you to grow your list of subscribers and reach far more people than ever before, even if you are just getting started in email marketing.

First, you´ll need a product to give away. This should be something useful and captivating, but also something new. There´s nothing worse than finding the exact same product several times in the same giveaway or in every giveaway that you hit! It´s pretty cheap to hire a freelance writer to do a small e-report or book and you can give that away, or if you´re handy with coding, write a simple script to offer. The idea is to either help people earn money or learn something useful from your product.

Next, you´ll need to find some giveaways. This is super easy considering that there are literally dozens of them going on at any given time. Just do a search for the holiday you are interested in, along with the word “giveaway”. For example, “Easter giveaway”. This should turn up a few opportunities and you can also subscribe to internet marketing lists where you will be sent invites for many giveaways.

Once you have decided on a giveaway to try your new opt-in technique, you´ll need to write a description and upload a photo. Now, since your product is virtual, you will need to design an ebook cover or image to go with this. Don´t use your own photo! That just looks tacky. You will want to write an enticing blurb to make people want to sign up and don´t forget to spellcheck, you could turn a lot of people away by having spelling mistakes in your description.

Finally, make sure that you are set up so that your autoresponder will capture the email addresses of those interested in your product and send them the free ebook once they have confirmed their email. This is a very handy opt-in technique that just about anyone can use.

Many successful email marketers made it by having multiple email newsletters. This can rapidly get confusing if you aren´t careful, particularly if you have similar topics in each one. Trying to keep track of everything can become a nightmare without some good organization.

Email newsletters can be set up pretty quickly with a decent autoresponder service, so it´s tempting to create a whole bunch . . . after all if one email newsletter earns you money, ten ought to bring in ten times that amount, right? The problem lies with producing content for ten different email newsletters on a regular basis. This is something that many people are unable to do for themselves.

It´s a good idea to start out slowly if you plan to write your own email newsletter content. Don´t do more than two to begin with and then gradually add more as you feel comfortable with the additional work load. For many email marketers, it´s just easier to hire someone else to produce the content while you focus on the marketing and management side of things. This may in fact be the best option since it allows you to work on publicity without having to stress over email content.

Another very useful tool for managing multiple email newsletters is a simple spreadsheet. Keep track of which articles went out, your subscription numbers and the frequency each email newsletter is sent out. This is especially vital if you are sending your email newsletters out at different frequency rates, to keep track of which ones have been sent and which are still waiting to go out.

Staying on top of your tracking and analysis will always be very important, as well. Once you have a system worked out for the content of your email newsletters and are able to track everything, you just need to stay organized in order to make it all work.