Our Reality Marketing series continues, now as a companion piece to the newsletter critiques you’ll be seeing in each issue. In these articles, we’ll be looking at some trends that we see publishers use that are either tremendously successful or hindering the performance of their newsletter program. Today we’re looking at how people set up the Cover Page of their newsletter.
We received an overwhelming request for newsletter critiques and I want to thank everyone who has asked to participate. If you personally have not heard from us yet, we’ll be in touch soon! In the meantime, we wanted to use this column to provide you with some immediate tips that you can put into practice. Today we’re going to share with you some practical techniques that can be implemented on the Cover Page of your newsletters.
Putting Your Print Publications Online
One of the things that we see several publishers doing is creating an online newsletter that is an extension and often a graphic duplication of a newsletter that was previously printed and distributed through direct mail. Often times, these newsletters will have one article on the Cover Page, with the full text displayed, and the remainder of the articles will be listed in a Table of Contents, just as you would see in a printed newsletter.
This doesn’t necessarily work well in the online world, where your readers want to be able to quickly glance at your newsletter and understand immediately “what’s in it for me.” If you use this approach, you have several disadvantages. First of all, your tracking of the readership of this main article will be less precise because you will be unable to track a click through to a micro-site page. In addition, the readership of the articles listed only in the Table of Contents may suffer, as your readers may not fully grasp the importance of the article or the relevancy to them in particular by merely reading a headline.
Put the Payoff Up Front
The approach that we suggest using on the Cover Page instead is the use of strong, attention grabbing headlines with short synopses for five to six important articles. Combined, headlines and synopses are powerful “hooks” that draw your subscribers into your newsletter as they scan the Cover Page, see something of interest to them, and then click on a “Full Story” link to read more. This is a sure fire way to increase the readership of articles that were once only listed in a Table of Contents.
Encourage Clicks with Article Pages
When your subscribers click on “Full Story” links, you move them to an “Article Page” which is part of IMN’s unique micro-site system. Article Pages are automatically generated each time you create a new article for your newsletter, either by uploading or typing content into the Article Editor. By moving readers from your Cover Page to the full story on the Article Page, you have now engaged your reader with one easy click. You have also enabled seamless further engagement by eliminating the need for your reader return to his or her inbox for future navigation through your newsletter.
By getting a reader to an Article Page, you are truly beginning to involve your subscribers in an interactive exchange with you and your company. But many won’t get this far if you bury the reason why they should make this journey in the first place. Also, by using this Cover Page and Article Page approach, you will gain a much greater perspective and understanding of what kind of information your readers want from you. While you can gather little more than open rates from readers who never leave your Cover Page, encouraging a trip to your micro-site allows precise tracking of reader behavior. With the IMN reporting and analysis system, for instance, you can track Content Popularity, with a list of the most popular articles and who is reading them.
Newsletters are all about engaging your readers and we encourage you to increase your engagement with your readers by taking full advantage of your Cover Page, synopses, and Article Pages within your newsletter service. They will most certainly increase the readership of your newsletter, resulting in a more interactive and loyal subscriber base.
Nancy Langmeyer of The Write Words is a freelance writer and a key member of the IMN Newsletter Team. Here is a list of Nancy’s recent Reality Marketing articles:
