I have just returned from a trip that took me from my base on the Sunshine Coast to Sydney, Melbourne and Adelaide.
This trip was prompted by requests to conduct my emarketing seminar in Sydney and Adelaide.
Both invitations sprang from people reading this newsletter.
In Sydney I spoke to marketing representatives from one organisation; while in Adelaide I had the opportunity to address business people from a wide cross section of industries.
As you can appreciate it is much easier to run seminars where you have a local partner working with you to gather people to attend.
Both these seminars proved fruitful and were the direct result of establishing a relationship by this newsletter with readers I had never met. If you would like to talk with me about conducting a seminar for your business or network drop me a line

My time in Melbourne included being interviewed by Winston Marsh. Winston is a business consultant with a network of business owners who subscribe to his monthly CD called 'Business Marketing'.
Two segments on emarketing were recorded and we will be able to make them available early in 2007 on our website.
Once again Winston had been receiving my newsletter for several months and thought the content would be of interest to his subscribers. So he approached me to conduct an interview, which just happened to coincide with me planning the trip to Sydney and Adelaide.

Just recently we signed up a new client whose head office is in Brisbane. However the connection began with a representative from their Sunshine Coast office who first received my newsletter - then attended my seminar - then set up an appointment for me to meet the directors in Brisbane - then the company signed up.

But let Aaron put it in his own words. "Let’s see now. What a fantastic system. We’ve just sent out our first company internal newsletter and can’t believe the response we’ve got. Before this, each office would email it’s weekly meeting notes and hope for the best that they would get read. We now use the system to distribute the same notes, but in newsletter form. What a difference. Not only are the notes being read, but we know by whom and how many times. Everyone now receives one email, instead of 5 different ones and they love the format. I can’t wait until we start using this for our external customers."
Aaron Parker Company Research Manager Alex J Saunders Valuations.
P.S. "I hope this doesn’t sound too 'gushing'. But that’s how we/I really feel about it anyway."

Increase your presence on the internet

Make sure you have implemented meta tags into your HTML edition of the newsletter to maximise your search engine presence. Think about creating a unique domain as a 'home' on the internet for your newsletter. Something like http://newsletter.yourcompany.com. This again helps with your presence on the internet - and can be a valuable inbound source of sign ups as people come across your newsletter in their searches.

Make sure your subject lines are enticing

If you brand the company in the “from” field you don’t necessarily need to repeat the company name in the subject line. This leaves you with more space in the subject line - which has the job of enticing people to open. 37 – 45 characters show up in most inboxes, so work within that visible space.

Content in the newsletter

Remember that people SCAN email - so make the synopsis or executive brief to an article enticing to click on, and keep it brief - under 45 words.

If you are building a relationship with customers, consider having a spotlight feature on an employee – this is a good way to give a 'face' to the company and a personal touch. Include direct contacts in these profiles. A call to action should appear at the top of the article saying something like, “If you have a Service Department query, please give James a call and he’ll help you,” and include a direct phone number.

Implement a standard “About Us” article that appears in every edition of your newsletter. If you have an opening letter, keep it short - around 50-65 words. Also make keywords in the opening letter live links to articles. If the letter is coming from someone include their contact points. If you are establishing yourself as an industry leader, consider offering a “Round up of Industry News” feature. This brands your newsletter as a time saving resource of useful, relevant information for your readers.

Include a Useful Links section that appears on a side column in your newsletter. Links that customers would regularly need, such as the Log-in to the customer section of your website. This helps make your newsletter a time saver - giving it value. Consider having an “Ask the Expert” feature. Pose a typical problem that your customers would run into, and give a brief answer. Include an invite to readers to submit their own questions that you will answer in the next edition of the newsletter. This is a great way to generate interesting, relevant content.

Maximise your subscribe box

Make the descriptive text about your newsletter meaningful and clear so that it will attract the subscribers who are your target audience. Review your own website and ensure the subscribe box to your newsletter is prominent throughout.

Look at segmenting your mailing lists

Review whether you can segment your database into separate lists (e.g. prospects, customers and new subscribers). This will allow you to send targeted subject lines - and perhaps content - to each group, and will also give you seperate statistics. This will help you send more relevant mailings, and will also allow you to identify particular groups who are opening or not opening - so you can take steps to engage the non-openers in the next mailing.

Check that your Call to Action is a strong as it should be

The “Call to Action” (CTA) is the pay off for your mailings and should be carefully thought out. You need to have a CTA with all your articles and landing pages. Consider putting them at the top of each article (e.g. ‘print this’ 'call us', 'email us' or ‘tell a friend’.)

Always test something

Every issue of your newsletter is an opportunity to test and learn what works best for your unique database. For example, test the day and time, or the subject line, the call to action or something in the lay out.