Web Worker Daily

In spite of the fact that some marketing people downplay the value of email newsletters in these days of saturated inboxes, Don Nicholas, editor and managing director for the Mequoda Group, says he has clients today who can prove that between 70% and 80% of every dollar they generate starts in an email newsletter.

Nicholas specifically advises publishers on how to develop and refine their online strategies. His Mequoda Summit Napa Valley 2008 takes place in April. But the recommendations he offers for exploiting the value of email newsletters and building web traffic are relevant for other kinds of sites too.

Plan your website and email newsletter as companions to each other — where every bit of content you generate is posted online and pushed in the newsletter. For example, says Nicholas, if you’re blogging once or twice a day, send out a newsletter once a week that says, “Here are five or 10 new stories we’ve posted and here’s a synopsis for each story…”

Whereas content in email newsletters has a short lifespan — 72 hours, according to Nicholas — those same stories live forever on the web and in search engine results, if the site is architected correctly.

Make sure you hyperlink through the website. A lot of newsletters Nicholas sees are just plain text without any reference to content already published on the site in the last few months. Part of doing a good job is to make sure the topic is contextually linked to what you’ve written before. That helps the reader who may be totally ignorant of the previous 30 entries you’ve written on the same subject — and it increases your page views by driving people to related stories.

Be honest in your newsletter subject line. “A lot of what you see in subject lines tends to be deceptive,” Nicholas says. “We find that not to be the way to build relationships.” The more clear you are in the subject line and in the preview pane about what’s in the newsletter, the more you help readers make an informed decision about whether they want to read a particular issue.

A follow-on to that is to write your headlines straight up. “Google doesn’t get wit,” he says. So forget about cleverness if you want readership.

Try to keep the subject line to 70 characters or fewer. Any longer than that and it just won’t seen by the average user.

Repeat the name of the publication or company at the beginning of the subject line. Nicholas said his daily newsletter, “Mequoda Daily,” has a 10% to 15% higher open rate “if we remind them who we are.” Subscribers are constantly triaging the contents of their inboxes, he says, so it helps to say, “Hey, we’re one of the trusted guys.”

Use the first three to five words after the publication title as keywords. “Don’t exercise your vocabulary,” he says. “Don’t use the $5 words; use the $2 words.”

Also, include RSS as a function on your site for the incremental traffic and links a feed will produce. But remember: Depending on what kind of site you produce, in most cases, you’ll get more mileage from the email newsletters. Exceptions are tech sites, where RSS subscriptions sometimes exceed email subscriptions. For other kinds of sites, says Nicholas, “You wouldn’t die tomorrow, but it’s almost a freebie.” Besides, he adds, “It also makes you look cool and hip.”

Next week, Nicholas will share his advice for turning website visitors into email subscribers. Until then, how do you get people to pay attention to your web efforts?