Yesterday, I started laying out my 2014 Business Resolutions. My first resolution was Moving to the Cloud for much of my computing. Today’s Resolution is a bit different from that. Let me tell you more.
All the news that is fit to print!
For several years, I have been thinking about and talking about setting up a Newsletter that I would send out to my readers from time to time. Normally, I would say that I am not much of a procrastinator, but in this case, I let the idea linger for a long time. Finally, about a year and a half ago, I got on the ball, and set up a system of gathering a mailing list, and where I would be able to publish and send out newsletters. I elected to use MailChimp for this effort.
After getting everything set up with MailChimp, and then getting subscription signup forms on all of my sites, a lot of people started signing up. I was happy and pretty impressed with the number of signups. My intention at that time was to let the signup process go on for a few months before sending out my first newsletter so that I would have enough people on the mailing to make it worthwhile.
Well, I slipped again, and for a long time I never sent out any newsletters! It was so bad, in fact, that on a fairly regular basis, I would get e-mails from people saying:
I signed up for your newsletter, but it is not working properly, because so far I have never received any issues of the newsletter….
Somewhat embarrassed, I would have to write back and let them know that there was nothing wrong with the software, it was just that I had yet to send out a newsletter!
Finally
In December 2013, though, I decided that I really needed to put out a newsletter and use it as a vehicle to offer some special deals on some of my products. So, about a week before Christmas, I sent out a newsletter. I have a lot of subscribers, I won’t reveal the exact number, but it is in the thousands. So, I figured that this would be a good test to see the power of the mailing list and direct e-mail marketing, something I had never done before.
I was surprised
The results shocked me! In just 3 days, I had done a lot of business because of the mailing list. I used special coupon codes to track whether the sales were mailing list related or not, and most were certainly from the mailing list. I did about 2 weeks worth of business in just 3 days. Not bad! My first newsletter sale happened within 15 minutes after the newsletter was sent out, and just continued on a very regular pace for several days. I was shocked.
The Resolution
So, I am making two commitments for 2014 that are newsletter related.
- I will be sending out my newsletter much more regularly. I am still deciding how often I will do it. My initial thinking was once per month, but I am also thinking of once per week. I am just trying to decide if once per week is too often, and I think that it probably is.
- I am going to set up a separate newsletter for one of my businesses, to target those customers more closely. I will send that one out regularly too, but will first need to build the mailing list (I’m not going to wait for a year and a half to send out the first newsletter, you can bet on that!).
So, there you have it, my second installment of my 2014 Business Resolutions. So far, I think that I can implement these things!
While it can be a challenge to determine how often to send out newsletters, I think once per week is too often. I know, for myself, I often will unsubscribe from newsletters that I get that often.
Hi Tom – I tend to agree with you on the frequency. However, I think that there is a huge factor to consider… it depends largely on what kind of content you are providing in the newsletter. If you are providing more than just a sales vehicle with quality content that cannot be gotten elsewhere, then a more frequent publication may still be successful.
True. I think you need to tread carefully. Most folks will think it is all about the sales. However, if you can show that there is real value there, I think it could be a winner.
For sure, something to consider carefully and weigh the pluses and minuses.