Hello all, I'm toying with the idea of creating a weekly newsletter for my main site. The site is news focused and the idea of the mailing list would be an end of the week summary of the weeks events. I feel like this is something that could benefit a lot of my users but I also personally HATE newsletters. I think it could squeeze a bit of traffic back to the site over the slow weekends and also it'll give a little poke to those users who haven't visited lately. Subscribers would opt-in, so everything would be legit. Should I go for it? Any thoughts or suggestions?
I would say go for it. If you feel that it *adds* something to your site. As long as you provide a link to unsubscribe then newsletter haters won't have to read it. You could always promote something in the email too, an affiliate product for example. Even if you sent 1 email per month, it might be a little extra $$.
List building is one the safest and long-term methods of online marketing. Yes you should definitely try.
One thing you could do is go with Aweber if your website has an rss feed. It basically mails out your most recent x rss items automatically. I use it on a number of reality tv blogs. It mails them out every time I get to 5 new posts. It does result in more repeat traffic and it does give the illusion that I'm taking the time to mail them with no effort on my part. (that way when I broadcast a promo it's not a surprise).
You can also use Feedburner to send out your newsletter for free if you publish it as a feed. That is what I do. Works well, but you are limited on customizations to the email (ie no personalization).
List building is an absolutely great way to make money by sending out promotions as well as to retain a loyal visitor base by sending them weekly wrap-ups of your posts and non-posted content.
It is overrated, and it rarely works. That is the reality of it. But it sounds like you want to do it, so, go for it.
It does work if you do it correctly. We do it on one of our sites and have very good luck with it. Most of the articles in the newsletter links back to our site and we notice a spike in traffic with every newsletter we send out. Just a couple things. Keep the newsletter short and make it universal to read on anything.
take it from me that you need at least 1000 subscribers for any mass mail to have ANY effect. it needs to be well designed, and worth reading too. get these points right and it might be worth the investment.
Newsletters - they definitely do work but also require quite a bit of planning. I now have over 5000 subscribers (would have been much higher but I regularly trim them down. Brings in traffic and does make sales and build rapport. Go for it! Be sure to send them out in plain text though to make sure evryone will see it properly
Newsletter is a nice way to update users or members of your site. Make your newsletter short and worth reading for. I personally hate to read long newsletters. And yes you're right, newsletters can add a little traffic back to your site. So, if you feel like doing it, then go for it!