An e-Zine is a form of an email newsletter and can be very effective for ongoing communications PLUS it gives you a way of building our own prospect list.  Building an inhouse list of prospects is one of the more important things you can do to build your business.  It is an asset that has value like any other asset in your business.  Starting an e-zine or newsletter is pretty straightforward.  Any good email marketing platform will let you do this. Like I said, I recommend SendPepper for this type of thing, but other systems like Vertical Response, Awebber or InfusionSoft do similar things.

Once you decide that an e-zine is in your future,  you need to work out a schedule for your e-zine.  When will you publish and how often.  Weekly to monthly is pretty standard.  The main thing is to publish regularly.

Next, make sure to publish news and information related to your product or service that people want to or need to know.  A good e-zine will have between two and four articles of genuine interest to your audience, and will have one to two promotional articles for your products or business in a way that makes them visible but not so obnoxious that it drives your readers away. Sometimes you can find people who are willing to write articles in exchange for a listing of their business below the article – it is advertising for them and content for you.

There are several ways to write articles, but some of the more popular types of articles include “How To…” or “Top 10 Lists”…or you can interview someone and publish highlights of the interview.  You can also feature customer questions and provide answers to common questions.  It doesn’t have to be great literature.  It does have to be helpful and the shorter and more direct the better.  Use a combination of different articles types so that your e-zine is interesting and will have something to offer all of your readers.

Once you have your ezine written and regularly scheduled, you can begin building an “opt-in” list.  This is not only a good marketing practice, it is required by the CAN-SPAM Act.  Opt-In  means that someone asked you to communicate with them, or they have given you permission to communicate with them via email.  Double opt-in is used to refer to the process of verifying a subscription by sending a confirmation email that the subscriber has to click on to activate the subscription.  You also need to have an unsubscribe link in your e-zine and you need to include your company name and physical address on all e-zines and newsletters and other emails sent to your opt-in list. Create a registration form using your marketing platform and post it on your website, blog, anywhere you can.  Describe the e-zine and offer subscriptions.

The goal is to collect names of people interested in your stuff.  Then you can market to them in an ongoing way.  Use your e-zine to establish your credibility and to build a relatinoship with your prospective customer.