I've gotten a decent amount of email addresses from my website in an excel file. I want to send out my first ever "newsletter". I've never done this before so am not sure of the best way to do so. Is there a free software template? Should I pay a 3rd party to create it for me? This is nothing I see myself doing more than a few times per year and depending on response it may just be a one shot deal (if 99% don't respond or click the opt out link then I won't do it again). I've been building traffic and users on my website for a year. Any advice on what to do with this list and how to do it would be appreciated. Should do giveaway if they become fans of facebook page or YouTube channel? Should I try and promote a product? Should I try and get them to Digg or Retweet an article? Thanks in advance for opinions
I think that if you have a great list, you should work on finding out who is responsive and who isn't. Maybe your first email could call for people to reconfirm their email addresses in return for a bonus offer. You could then use mailchimp to manage your sign ups and unsubs and measure your marketing effectiveness. Then you could move onto promoting your product through email marketing. I am a firm believer that email marketing should be used with a strong call to action to get people to purchase something. You can still use it to generate Diggs or Fans, but use that as a secondary. You can use Twitter, facebook etc as much as you like to promote blog posts etc. However email marketing should be as personal as possible and you should use it sparingly to generate income, otherwise you risk overloading your recipients.
You can filter out who is responsive and whom is inactive by sending them 4-5 emails to a squeeze page. The ones will subscriber will be open and active to your new offer and can be the ones you can promote further stuff too, The rest will typically be inactive.
Sorry I don't follow. What is a squeeze page. Also, I'd rather not have to bother members with 4 or 5 emails. I was hoping one would do the trick. Also, my website isn't selling anything. I was thinking I just wanted them to post my article on their Facebook page, Digg, Twitter etc. to build more traffic and increase Adsense. Sounds like you think I should find a partner and try and pump their product. For example, I guess I could review an iPhone case and say they get discount with this code. But if a case is say $20 how much should I expect to get in commission per $20 item?
A squeeze page is where you collect email information. I'd just dump it into Aweber and send a double opt out to the whole list.
if you have a huge list the next thing you want to do is try to message them and try not to send a bit advertising because they might flag you as spam and that's really a major problem if ever.
If your lists is good quality, try to send them a link of your new post. See who is active and who isn't, then you can always sell them of Fiverr. xD
If you already have the list, I'm assuming that means they already opted in, so there's no need for them to do it again. People don't take extra steps. If they're already opted in, go ahead and send them a newsletter, or even just some daily tips. Anything you send them needs to be kind of like an article - informative, compelling, and not a hard-sell. So, what could you write about?? Lots of things. Are you offering a new service? Did you add new products? Did you make an existing product better? If you think of your newsletter like article marketing (go informative, then hit them with the hard sell when they visit your site), they'll be much more responsive than if you just send them a glorified ad. As for the writing, do you feel comfortable doing it yourself? Do you have time to do it yourself? Do you have time to do the research? If not, you probably need to hire someone.