How to Promote Your E-Newsletter by George Matyjewicz

Marketing tactics from an e-zine guru, George Matyjewicz.

(Shel Horowitz's Frugal Marketing Tip, June, 2000)

[Editor's Comment from Shel] This article, which originally appeared in I-Sales, is an excellent primer to online marketing in general. While some of George's suggestions are specific to e-zines, many have wider applicability.

Besides, in my opinion, if you have a website, you should have an opt-in e-list so you can continue to market to one-time visitors.[END Editor's Comment]

Guest Article by George Matyjewicz ;

As a list junkie (I subscribe to 125 lists plus own/moderate six and guest moderate four) I have developed some interesting marketing tactics. I helped grow the International Business List from under 100 members to 10,000 in 16 months and my own E-Tailer's Digest to 1,750 in 18 months (on Topica, BTW). Here are some tactics I use:

1. Submit to all search engines. We submit them to 900+ search engines every 3-6 months.

2. Issue press releases to publications in the industry that you target. With E-Tailer's Digest we go to retail, Internet and general business publications. You should go to travel and international pubs.

3. Do some cross promotion with other list owners, when you get to a larger size (the magic number seems to be 1,000 members). You will need to do an adjustment for size, i.e., if yours is 100 members and somebody has 500 members, you may need to post their ad five times for every one they post of yours.

4. Send an announcement to Net Happenings

5. Register with e-zine databases:
-- E-Zine List
http://www.meer.net/~johnl/e-zine-list/index.html
-- List of lists (Liszt)
http://www.liszt.com/submit.html
-- Publicly Accessible Mailing Lists
http://www.NeoSoft.com:80/internet/paml/
-- The List of Lists
http://catalog.com/vivian/interest-group-search.html
-- E- Zines Ultimate Magazine Database
http://www.DOMINIS.com/zines/
-- e-journal
http://www.edoc.com/ejournal/
-- The Flying Inkspots Zine Scene
http://inkpot.com/zines
-- New Jour Electronic Journals & Newsletters
http://gort.ucsd.edu/newjour/
-- The Zine Rack
http://www.ZineRack.com/
-- Zineworld
http://www.oblivion.net/zineworld/

6. Participate in newsgroups, forums and discussion lists. And develop a strong sig file that tells folks how to subscribe. Keep the sig file to under 6 lines, as many list owners limit it to six (some even four).

7. Advertise in other newsletters. Pay for it or barter.

8. Ask members to refer your list to others.

9. On your registration page, once they register, instead of merely saying thank you, ask them to refer a friend, and send an invite to that friend (to see this in action, subscribe at )

10. See if you can get a print magazine to publish your digest. Gifts & Decorative Accessories magazine published E-Tailer's Digest and we reach 100,000 people.

We are starting a new B2B discussion list, and there is no doubt we will have 2,000 subscribers by year end. It hasn't officially launched and we already have 125 subscribers.

And you thought it was going to be easy ;-).

________________
George Matyjewicz - GAP Enterprises, Ltd. http://www.gapent.com/
Moderator of E-Tailer's Digest http://www.gapent.com/etailer/
Join B2B Digest mailto:b2-@gapent.com?Subject=YES_B2B

Thank you reading this back issue of Shel Horowitz's Monthly Frugal Marketing Tips, published every month since May, 1997; please click here to view the complete archives, grouped by subject. Shel is an internationally known copywriter and marketing consultant, author of Grassroots Marketing Getting Noticed in a Noisy World, Principled Profit: Marketing That Puts People First and several other books, and creator of the Frugal Marketing web site. Please click here to contact Shel.


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