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Top 10 ways to avoid a little visit to "E-zine Hell"
Your e-zine is your most basic and wonderful tool to quickly grow a loyal contact/client base for your business, thereby increasing sales, profits, and multiple streams of passive income.
HOWEVER, things can quickly go South on you, and you can find yourself in the country of E-zine Hell! Bad Bad. Here are the top 10 dangers you could face, and how to avoid them. By the way, this top 10 will be a handy guide for all your business communications--not just your e-zine.
1) Your emails are viewed as Spam (unwanted) by your subscribers.
Top reasons:
- Low value, mostly product pushing.
- Too frequent (more often than weekly)
- Too long (longer than a 2-3 minute read)
- Too difficult to quickly understand.
Result:
- Your subscribers unsubscribe.
- Your subscribers block your emails and they bounce and the subscriber is eventually dropped by your e-zine service.
- Your subscribers send you complaints rather than compliments.
Cure:
- Always lead each article with an item of clear value.
- Keep your focus. If you're an e-zine for trailrunners, don't digress to articles on office equipment.
- Provide an easy-to-follow dual readership path (bold headlines)
- Organize your presentation with bulleted points.
- Avoid long sentences, long words, use of jargon.
2) Your emails are viewed as Spam by your e-zine service or your IP (Internet Provider).
Top reasons:
- Abusing the opt-in feature and sending to people who did not request.
Result:
- Your e-zine service puts you on notice (embarassing)
- Your e-zine service and/or IP drops you (disaster!)
Cure:
- Never add subscribers without their permission. Period. (But note, initially, to get started, you may import a contact list. Notify your former contacts ahead!)
- Always have an easy way for subscribers to "unsubscribe"--right on each article.
- Know the difference between what spam is, and all the urban legends about spam by reading the Canned Spam Act for yourself.
3) You put into action a process that is impossible to maintain.
Top reasons:
- Promise daily issues.
- Each issue has to contain the world of knowledge (my big problem!)
- You're trying to operate your whole e-zine manually to save money.
Result:
- Resentment
- Burn-out Not fun anymore!
Cure:
- Limit issues to weekly at most. Monthly is even okay.
- Limit the focus and content of each issue. If they're hard to write, you can bet they are also hard to read!
- Don't try to send your e-zine out using Microsoft Outlook. It wasn't designed for that.
- Don't try to import some complex e-zine tool that you have to maintain yourself.
- Cave in and get a high quality, economical service to manage your e-zine.
- Develop regular simple, repeatable procedures to produce your e-zine.
4) It's the day to send your regular e-zine, and you aren't prepared!
Top reasons:
- Procrastination and lack of preparation.
Result:
- Panic, burnout, and resentment.
- It's not fun anymore!
Cure:
- Just as you have an archive of past articles, develop a file of future articles.
- Set up the next four articles in your e-zine service--all ready to automatically send.
- Write a new article each week at your leisure and stay four weeks ahead.
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