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[ What do I publish? ]

A newsletter is one of the most cost effective and fast ways to communicate with your site's visitor base. However, if you send your visitors newsletters that contain old, stale content, spelling errors, dead links or too much advertising, then what's the likelihood that they'll return to your site? The chances are low. The number one purpose of a newsletter is to try to encourage each and every subscriber to come back to your site. "How do I do that then?" you ask. Through interesting, informative content, that's how.

Here are a couple of ideas for content that you can put into your newsletter:

[ 1. What's Happening? ]

A What's Happening or News section informs visitors of any new additions to your site since the last newsletter was sent out. In this section you can alert visitors to any new articles or interesting inclusions you've made to the site. Here's an example of what you might say:

-- What's Happening @ MySite.com? ------------------

Hello Everyone,

Welcome to the mid-January 2002 issue of MySiteNews. It's been another extremely busy yet productive month at MySite.com, so let's take a look at some new features that both myself and my entire team has helped add to the site:

...

[ 2. Poll Results ]

What's that? You don't have a poll on your site? Head on over to ExpressWebTools.com and get your free poll up and running in 5 minutes. Whenever you send out a newsletter, change the poll and include the results of the last poll in your newsletter. Use something like this:

The last poll question was "What type of content would you like to see more of?". There were a total of 149 votes. The results are shown below:

· Articles: 58 votes or 39%
· Book Reviews: 11 votes or 7%
· Product Reviews: 13 votes or 9%
· Interviews: 14 votes or 9%
· Case Studies: 33 votes or 22%
· Sample Book Chapters: 20 votes or 13%

The poll for the first half of February 2002 is sure to start some raving and ranting, and is entitled "In the Netscape vs Microsoft case, who are you rallying for?" Vote right now at MySite.com

Notice how I've mentioned the details of the current poll, and I've given the user a reason to re-visit the site and vote again? Do this in different ways throughout your entire newsletter.

[ 3. Personality ]

Add your personality to the newsletter -- address your readers and let them know that you're there if they ever need anything. In my newsletter, I write the first half, and my newsletter manager Todd writes the rest. At the end of my editorial, I make sure that my farewell's on a personal, rather than professional note. Here's the kind of thing you might write to finish off your editorial:

Well guys, that's my two cents' worth for these past two weeks at MySite.com. If you've got any questions or suggestions, please email myname@mysite.com or post them in our forums.

I know it doesn't seem like much, but think what would happen if you left this kind of message out. In my experience, visitors like to know that there's a real person writing the newsletter and that it's not compiled by some super computer on the other side of the world.

[ 4. Unique Content ]

Include unique content that your users can't find anywhere else. In my newsletter I always include a "hot tips" section, which lists five hot tips that users can benefit from immediately. Depending on your target audience, you could include simple tips as well. For instance, if you ran a programming-related site, you might include a tip like this:

In C# you can place code within a checked block to have the C# compiler throw an exception if any overflow occurs when casting one data type to another.

Or, you might want to include a few more advanced tips:

In ASP you can use the DateDiff function to work out the difference between dates in terms of either days, weeks, months, years, etc. To get the number of days between Jan 1st 2001 and Dec 31st 2002, use it like this:

Dim oldDate
Dim newDate

oldDate = "01/01/2001"
newDate = "31/12/2002"

Response.Write DateDiff("D", oldDate, newDate)

Make sure the tips you include are unique to your newsletter, and be sure to allow yourself time to plan them. Sure, each tip is only a couple of lines long, but when a visitor finds a tip that helps them out, you're guaranteed that they'll be on your site quicker that you can say "pageviews".

Another great (although time consuming) method to add value to your newsletter is to include a "newsletter-only" article with every issue. Take 2-3 hours a week and write a 1,000-2,000 word article that you include exclusively with your newsletter. Mention this on your newsletter signup form and watch your subscriptions soar.

What kind of content should you include in a newsletter-only article? Well, try content that relates to some of the more popular articles listed on your site -- the ones that visitors have emailed you about to tell you how the article's helped them accomplish a certain task, etc. Your visitors will love this type of article because it's an additional bonus that no one but them will receive.

About The Author
Mitchell Harper is the author of many eBooks and he also owns SiteTell. SiteTell is a unique viral marketing tool that lets your visitors tell their friends about your site using either email or ICQ in just seconds. SiteTell harnesses the power of viral marketing, making it extremely easy for your anyone to let their friends, family, colleagues and others know about your site! Learn more at SiteTell.com.

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