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Keep Your Campaigns Alive in 2009! (and beyond)
Don't Be a One-Hit Wonder: Archive Your Newsletter Articles
You've done your homework to get to know your customers - what they want and need, what excites or frustrates them, what problems your business's products or services solve for them.
Now you're using this knowledge to write great email newsletters that your audience raves about, but it takes time to come up with those newsletter ideas and then to write, edit, and publish your articles. Have you ever wondered how you might get more out of your communications?
The Lifespan of an Email Newsletter Article
Some email marketers might be surprised to learn this fact:
85 percent of the response to an email marketing campaign happens within 48 hours.
That means the article you researched and wrote for your wine store newsletter on choosing the best cheeses to go with an Australian Shiraz has a shelf life of about...two days. After that, subscribers who haven't opened, read, and acted on your newsletter most likely aren't going to. And that article on the Shiraz that you poured your soul into will begin to gather dust.
So how do you preserve those valuable articles and keep your email campaigns alive beyond their 48-hour inbox lifespan? Create a web archive!
Build a Searchable Knowledge Warehouse
Every time you write an email newsletter article, you're putting one more brick in your business's warehouse of knowledge. You're adding to your business's written history and to your body of expertise. You're building credibility with consumers. You're also writing content that may be indexed by the search engines (more on that in a minute).
You worked hard on those articles. They deserve to live on so they can continue to work for you!
One of the things you can do to extend the longevity of your email marketing communications is to archive your newsletter articles on a series of webpages. If you have a website, you can devote an area to your articles archive where you categorize articles by topic or simply archive them by date. Alternatively, Constant Contact customers can also use our Email Campaign Archive feature, which automatically creates a webpage and index for you for any sent campaign. You can link to the index from your website and manage each campaign page through your Constant Contact account.
That way, when someone visits your website and wants to learn more about your business, products, and services, they can scan your newsletter archive and find deeper information. This helps current and potential customers research what you offer, so they can make a more informed purchasing decision and buy what they need from you.
An articles archive also gives you a place to point potential email list subscribers so they'll know what to expect when they sign up for your newsletter. Put a link under your sign-up box that says, "For past issues of our newsletter, check out our archive." And subscribers who remember reading a golden nugget of information from you, but deleted the email newsletter, can go back and find the article on your website - and then forward that information to a friend.
Give Search Engines - and Consumers - More to Find
When you archive your newsletter articles, you are also building out web content that may be spidered and indexed by the search engines.
Archiving your newsletter is a valuable form of Internet marketing, as new customers from around the world are searching right now for what it is that you offer! When they find an article you wrote, they have found valuable information from an expert who may have what they need to purchase. That gives you an advantage over businesses that haven't published their expertise in article form.
The half-life of your email communications is very short. But the knowledge you're building can live on forever. Start archiving your valuable content so your current readers can find it again - and potential new customers can find you.
