Two Creative Alternatives to Webzines

Those of you that already have webzines or those that have started one and not continued, know first hand that while it sounds great to publish a webzine it takes a lot of time to do it on an on-going basis particularly keeping up with constantly finding content. Fortunately, there is more than one way to skin a cat (it is just an old saying, animal rights activist please don’t start a campaign against me.)

 

Here are two alternative approaches to helping you achieve your goal of establishing credibility, staying in touch with your prospects, and capturing your Web site visitors.

 

The "Pre-Packaged" Newsletter

 

If you don't foresee yourself being able to write fresh new content every week or month that you publish or know you simply will not have time to dedicate to this then there is another way – the Pre-Packaged newsletter.

 

While this method will not fit all newsletter styles, particularly those that need to be time sensitive it can be a godsend for many of you. Simply put, this approach means that all your content and articles are written ahead of time. This allows you to set aside a designated time period to collect articles and stockpile them. Once you have a sufficient number of them collected you set up your messages on an autoresponder and set it for when you want your information to go out. (For example, if you want the frequency to be monthly then it would be day 1/month 1, day 1/month 2, etc. — each subscriber would get a message every month.) Note the way this works is that each new subscriber starts with your first ezine. For example, if your frequency of publication is monthly, they would start with - day1/month 1 - and then will get their editions each month.

 

You have probably signed up for one of these ‘pre-packaged’ newsletter and didn’t realize how it works because all you knew is that each week or month the information shows up. Well now you have the inside secret so you can make it work for your business as well.

 

The Email Mini- Series

 

Have you ever signed up to receive a series of ‘tips’ or ‘articles’ online. Chances, are that you signed up for an ‘Email Mini-Serie.’ It is a great marketing tool and really easy to set up. Here is how do it.

 

First, you either write or source content that you will be able to spread out over a specified amount of time.  For example, you could write an article on ‘The Top Ten Reasons Why It is Important for Businesses to do Background Checks’ or you could write ten one paragraph or one page articles on each one of the ten reasons. Either way you end up with ten segments. You then set up each ‘reason’ on your autoresponder to go out at a specified time period, e.g., weekly and bingo your subscribers will get reason #1 starting week 1, reason #2 week 2, etc.

 

For both of the above approaches keep in mind that the quality of your content is crucial to the success of the marketing campaign. If you provide high quality information that is of value to your audience they will look forward to receiving the next installment of information. This allows you to reinforce your marketing message and start building a relationship with them which ultimately is the reason you created the campaign. Don’t waste your valuable time and money by providing  poor or outdated information. It will defeat the whole purpose and lose you potential clients.

 

The final step is to write a sales message that you will add on to your series as the 11th message. This is when you ask for the order or tell them what it is you want them to do. Since you have now engaged them ten times with valuable content they are familiar with your firm, have started recognizing your expertise and are much more open to considering your product or service offerings.

 

We recommend at this point you reel them in with a free offering, e.g., one free background check to experience our ‘Knock Your Socks Off Customer Service’ or offer an exclusive discount for having subscribed to the series. You would be amazed how effective offering ‘exclusivity’ works. It makes people feel special.

 

Put your messages into an autoresponder series, set the timing to what you want (e.g. every week or every month) and you are ready to reap the benefits.

 

Just in case you are not familiar with autoresponders they are actually called e-mail autoresponders. You could think of it as a fax-on-demand system that sends out e-mails automatically when others request them. You preset the autoresponders with the timing of a series ahead of time and then like clockwork they go out to your subscribers. 

 

If you are interested in creating either a ‘pre-packaged’ webzine or a mini email series we can help you with the content and set it up for you. Call me, Barry Nixon 949-770-5264 or email me at wbnixon@aol.com for more information.