Four Tips for Writing Newsletters that Build Lists

Aspiring authors can build platforms—build mailing lists—with newsletters by doing two things: sending them out regularly and providing useful information. The first takes some effort and scheduling; the second simply entails writing about what you know.

If you want to build your mailing list with a newsletter, try using these four tips:

1. Include tips, tools and helpful advice. Your newsletter should be a service piece. If readers find it indispensable to getting their jobs done or achieving their goals, they will subscribe—and tell people they know to subscribe. You also can advertise your services, classes, products (books!), teleseminars in the newsletter. These become helpful “tools” as well.
2. Include a “forward to a friend” option in your newsletter or a “share” button. This allows your readers to tell other people about the articles they find most useful. This is a great way to gain new subscribers. They can send your newsletter on by email or notify others via their social networks.
3. Put a subscribe notification with a free offer of some type—give away a report, ebook, coaching session, podcast, etc.—on every page of your website. Yes…every page. I hardly received any subscribers from my website until I implemented this tip. (Of course, you need to have traffic on your website as well for this to work.)
4. Come up with a publication schedule for your newsletter and stick to it. (I need to take my own advice on this tip.) Allow your readers to expect your newsletter…to look forward to it. In other words, first give them a reason to want to read your newsletter, and then get them to look for it in their email box on a certain day. The only way people will continue subscribing or tell others about your newsletter is if they get familiar with it. And, yes, you might lose a few people because of the frequency of your newsletter; some people have newsletter overload. Don’t worry. You’ll gain the readers who really want to receive the information you are providing.

If you do this, you will find that your mailing list will slowly but surely increase. A large mailing list used to be the true foundation of an author’s platform. You can build a platform this way, especially since you are a writer. Writer’s, of course, write.

Next time, we move on to another platform element: social networking.