For anyone who is looking to make the most of running an online magazine, its’ very important that you understand the vital nature of using email. Email is your most powerful marketing companion for an online magazine, and this guide is going to break down exactly how you should be looking to use such a feature to help take your business further. Let’s take a look at the four key steps of email marketing for online magazines.
Step 1 – Collect email addresses
Obviously, to make your online magazine worthwhile in an email marketing campaign, you should look to start collecting addresses and sending it out to people ASAP. Place some sign-up forms on your website (you can place in the Collecto WordPress theme and it will look amazing!), making it easy for people to subscribe and join up with you. However, never make it a distraction; add it as part of a full-page spread, a pop-up form or a side-scrolling form. Tell them the benefits they would get from signing up with you and what they would get from having your online magazine in their lives.
Offer them something valuable, too; a little eBook, a promotional deal: something worth money and tangible that you can afford to give away to help build hype about your new online magazine.
Also, try and keep the field for collecting content as free from excess as possible. A name and email address is usually enough.
And this is the first step of email marketing for online magazines.
Step 2 – Create emails
It’s vital that you spend some extra time making quality emails to send out too as a part of your lead generation campaign. Have the welcome email that you will be sending out: this should be super-friendly and informative, with a call to action that asks them to come and visit your website.
Then, you should be looking to add in your email newsletter. This will be the part where you really sell the email to the people. You should be making sure that your online magazine has clear highlights in terms of what it offers – what makes it worth reading, basically?
Take care of this and you can make sure that people have an easy way to see why they should invest time (and later money) into being part of your online magazine’ readership. If you can, break it up into short paragraphs to make it easier to read for the people who are receiving the email.
The emails are going to be used to help inform readers about promotions, announcements and new offers, so make sure you use it accordingly.
Step 3 – Create a segmented set of subscribers
Of course, to make your online magazine worthwhile, it has to be segmented. Not everyone will join up at the one time, so you need different groups to mail to. Using something like aWeber or MailChimp, you can easily set up a segmented set of subscribers to make your content relevant to each person as and when they signed up. Now you will be better placed to know where you are at and the success of your email campaigns.
Tools like this also help you track the success of your email campaigns and see who opened the emails, what links they clicked on and everything else.
Try and make emails as personal as you can, too; the more personalized they are, the more likely the reader is going to feel like it was meant for them to be reading. Lastly, use some A/B testing with new subject lines – sending it out to different groups and then using analytical tools to see which one got the most response from the readership.
If you do this, then you are much more likely to get a positive response back. It’s also a good way to see when e-mails are being opened so that you know the best time and subject line styles to work with.
Step 4 – Keep your consistency
So, make sure you invest in a publishing calendar – this can help you to know when a publication is being written, designed, edited and sent out. By doing this you can set clear deadlines and milestones and make sure that you are never late for an issue.
Readers are less likely to forget about you if they know that you deliver, say, every second Tuesday on a consistent basis. Just make sure that you don’t leave it too long behind publications but also try not to spam your readers.
Conclusion
So, what will you do?
Most people would suggest that you should look to put in place an online magazine that is capable of being shared around online. However, having your own email list to speak to by using the four steps above will make it very easy indeed for you to build a powerful online presence that is sure to bring you good fortune and positivity.
If you are looking for a guide that can give you all the help that you need, then, be sure to start here. Have a look through this again, and start using email marketing for online magazines and take your business further than ever before!
