Last time, here, we covered Part 1 of this blog on building a quality mailing list.

Let’s take it a little further….

Structure

There are a thousand and one ways to structure your email – some will work, some won’t, like many things in business as in life. But the following works and is heavily adopted by successful ‘list marketers’:

• Greeting with a short introduction on what this issues article will be about.

• A short ad on a product/service that you are recommending.

• The article – this is key and is the content for your Ezine/bulletin.

• Resource box – this can provide associated, contextual information and utilities.

• A list of helpful links.

• Subscriber information.

Building a relationship with your Ezine readers

To follow-on from the piece on business marketing, above, it’s undeniable that having a strong relationship with your readers will take you a long way down the road to achieving your goals.

How do you do this? It’s typically a good idea to ‘get personal’, but not too personal. For example, let’s say you have a list of golfers because you sell golf products. Or a list of bloggers because you’re an expert on blogging. For the golfers, tell them about experiences on the golf course, funny, stupid, or educational – stuff they can relate to as they are golfers and have probably done things very similar. The bloggers will typically want to develop their skills blogging; or to try new things and cover new subjects that interest them.  The blogging community is great at “self-help” – people are keen to share their knowledge and to learn from you, too.

Try to relate to them as best you can. People want to know that there are others out there just like them. When they find out that you are just another person out in the world with the same experiences they are having, it becomes a lot easier for them to trust you.

If you sell products or services, it’s all about getting each subscriber into your life. This should be a huge focus of your list and your marketing efforts across the board.

If you really want to have an incredibly responsive list, then do these three things, in this order:

1) Build a relationship with them.

2) Educate them with quality content.

3) Promote good quality products and/or services that you believe in.

Doing this is a win-win for everybody.

Quality content is king

There isn’t anything good that can come from using bad content.

One of the big reasons to get on the Internet is to research information in some way or another. Who wants to go looking for something and read worthless, unhelpful material?

If you waste a visitors’ time, annoy them, or confuse them with bad content, they are certainly not going to buy from you. You just lost a potential customer. It is pointless. Furthermore, the search engines are not going to like you much either. Especially if your information is the same thing that everybody else is using.

Your information has to be good to make it big online. It has always been this way, and it always will be, so start producing good information now!  Don’t be tempted down another route, whatever the motivations (be them time-saving, or otherwise).

Look at your content from a visitor’s perspective. If you were looking for information on that specific topic, would you be happy with the content that you are presenting?

Get used to stepping inside your visitor’s/customer’s shoes and looking at your business through their eyes.

It is a surefire way to improve your web sites (blogs and others) and business overall.