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by Alyice Edrich

Owning a website is only half the battle when it comes to online marketing and advertising. Visitors need to see your services and/or products a minimum of seven times before they'll even consider purchasing your time, services, or products. But how do you keep visitors coming back to your website? How do you help them remember who you are when there are literally thousands of companies offering similar services and/or products? How do you get them to contact you instead of continuing their search for the one website that screams, "I have what you're looking for and here's how I'll meet all your needs"?

The truth is that not everyone who happens upon your website will need your products or services, now—at this very moment. Most are searching for answers, services, or products for a future date; some are simply browsing for the sake of browsing.

Many people spend a lot of time researching before they decide which company to do business with. They'll prepare a list of websites that hold their interest or save a website to their favorites list, but how many actually return to those websites? And what if they lose that slip of paper or their computers crash? How will they find you again? Most likely they won't. Irritated that all their research was lost, they'll simply go with the first company they find.

You can prevent them from forgetting about you. You can get them to return to your website. And you can market to them in an effortless, inexpensive way. All you need to do is start an e-zine—a newsletter that's emailed to opt-in subscribers.

The idea behind your newsletter should be to keep people coming back to your website, to educate them about your services, your books, and your products, and to offer them incentives to buy your services and/or products.

Below are a few tips to help your newsletter succeed:

• Pick a reliable e-zine delivery service.
For a free service, consider yahoogroups.com or topica.com For a paid service, consider zinester.com or marketerschoice.com

• Be consistent in your delivery.
Deliver your e-zine at the same time every month—pick a date and stick with it. Whether you choose to deliver your e-zine every Wednesday or the 15th of every month, make sure your e-zine arrives in your subscribers inbox on time. Regular delivery helps people remember you, your company, and your services. Besides, infrequent delivery is the best way to lose subscribers.

• Don't use your e-zine as a sales letter only.
While you may be tempted to fill your e-zine with advertisements for your products and testimonials from buyers, that's a sure fire way for your e-zine to fail. Subscribers only subscribe if there is something in it for them.

• Offer original material.
You may be tempted to use "free content" or "private label" articles for your e-zine, and for the most part, it may work out great. But don't forget to add a little "flavor" or "originality" to your e- zine, too.

Give your readers a reason to keep reading. Let's say your company sells gardening supplies. Your e-zine could feature one gardening supply in each issue: describing the benefits and features of the supply, offering a step-by-step article that shows your subscribers how to use the supply in a gardening project, and then finalizing the e-zine with a buy now link. If you're an author, on the other hand, your e-zine could showcase an excerpt from your latest book, a little background information on the town featured in that excerpt and a buy now link.

• Offer a freebie from time to time.
Freebies are great incentives for getting people on your mailing list, but make sure the item you offer for free targets the right audience. If you don't, you could end up with a bunch of subscribers who never buy a single thing from your company.

• Reward loyal subscribers.
Subscribers who actually take the time to read your e-zine are a precious commodity. Show them that they are special by treating them to "subscriber only" specials.

Finally, don't forget to let others know your e-zine exists by including a "sign up" link or button on every web page, advertising it in your signature line when visiting forums, blogs, and chat rooms, and placing the sign up address on your business cards.

Discuss this in our Forum

About The Author:

Alyice Edrich is a freelance writer for hire. To learn more about how she can help you produce quality articles for your e-zine or website, visit www.alyiceedrich.com