How to Build Your Ezine List

Stacey Morris
How to Increase Your E-zine Subscriber List
Opt In
Out of respect to your mailing list, and the CAN-SPAM laws, only mail your ezine to those who have requested it, or opted-in. Even if you have compiled a list of contacts, prospects, and clients that is 2000 strong, you can’t just start entering them on your list.
So how do you access your current list of ezine addresses?
Start With Your Friends
I’m using “friends” liberally here, to mean all contacts with whom you’re on a first name basis, and who recognize you apart from your business card.
1.Send out an email announcing the launch of your ezine.
Make it simple, 2 paragraphs.
Make it low-hype. These are your friends—they don’t need a sales pitch, but they do need to know why they should join. So…
Make it benefit-oriented. What’s in it for your reader? Does the ezine address specific problems of a target market? If it’s a general “good life” ezine, how is it unique? What makes it different from the thousands of other ezines like it?
Include a sample issue, or your launch issue.
Give crystal-clear directions on how to sign up for future copies, and make it clear that your reader will be missing out on this great information if they don’t go to the site and sign up.
2. Develop a free report to give to all new subscribers.
The report could be a document, a short lesson series, an audio of a class or seminar you’ve given, a workbook of some kind, a top ten tips sheet, or a checklist related to your market.
Emphasize the report—not the ezine.
This report should be perceived as valuable enough to subscribe.
Make it less than ten pages. Don’t spend more than a few hours on this.
Develop a short sales-copy of 2-3 paragraphs outlining why this report is so valuable.
3. Make it easy to sign up.
Your business card should have the address of the webpage with the ezine information.
Every page of your website should have an ezine sign-up box.
Develop a website page or even a website devoted just to your ezine.
Mention your ezine at every networking event you attend.
Every time you give a talk, have a signup sheet available for anyone who wants to sign up.
Use your email-SIG file to advertise your ezine, and place a link to the sign-up box.
4. Get your articles out there.
At the end of each article, put a blurb at the bottom giving permission to anyone to use the article, as long as they give you attribution.
Subscribe to a article distribution service that will send out your articles automatically to dozens of article databases.
Offer to exchange articles with a colleague who also has a ezine. Guest articles can be very effective.
If you belong to any discussion lists, let other forum members know that your site is a valuable resource.
Offer a free subscription to members of organizations related to your industry. The newsletter editor can place a notice of your site and ezine.
This article is not intended to address the technical issues involved in setting up an ezine. If this is a new area for you, you’re welcome to contact me for more information on resources and next-steps. If you are able to update your own website, you may just want to sign up for a basic email distribution program (listserve) once you have over 50 subscribers. Until then, Microsoft Outlook or another email manager is the easiest way to start.