Having an email list service is great, sure. It can help you manage your mass email campaigns and report back to you with all sorts of analytics about your delivery success, your click-through rates, and in some cases the kind of information that would make some people’s heads spin – like being able to tell if a recipient of your mass email campaign has forwarded your email to another party. And, even if that second party read the email.
This is all fine and dandy. Except for one major problem, which isn’t really a problem at all if you’re already busy addressing it, but which you might see as a major hurdle to overcome if you aren’t. The problem is this: none of it will matter if you’re not giving your subscribers something of value. And that, my friend, is where the email list service leaves off and you pick up.
So what’s the best way to infuse your mass email campaign with value? For one, you have to remember that more often than not, information is far more valuable than money. Not to everyone, but to many. And so eventually you’ll have to move beyond giving coupons away in your marketing messages, to delivering something substantial. If you run an online bakery that delivers cookies overnight, give your readers some of your best cookie recipes. If you run an online reseller of mass computer storage, write a series of in-depth how-to articles that they can't find elsewhere.
In the end, keeping your subscribers hooked is the other half of the battle. The one that comes after the first half, which is getting them to subscribe, has been won. And giving something of real value regularly is critical to your success. Remember that.