Ezine As A Viral Marketing Tool
By: Douglas Peirseille | Posted: 15th August 2005
==============================================
Ezine As A Viral Marketing Tool
==============================================
A very popular method of marketing ezines and newsletters is by
making them viral. If your newsletter contains information of
value, such as tips, hints, news or tutorials, you'll find that
subscribers will forward it on to others.
Ezine Advertising is one of the most powerful ways to market and
promote your other products and or services. There are literally
thousands of electronic newsletters on the Internet with millions
of people who subscribe to them. Placing ads in online newsletters
is an inexpensive way to reach your target market quickly --
especially when you compare it with other forms of advertising.
In 2002, ezine publishing took a quantum leap, as its status
evolved from "amateur's hobby" into becoming the most powerful
marketing tool for business online. Email newsletters have come of
age, and increasingly, more ezines will take this route, as
subscribers prefer them to drab, lack-luster text-only ezines. In
the coming year we'll see more ezines published.
There are tens of thousands of Ezines being published every month,
with a collective audience of millions. And the editors of most of
those Ezines are all looking for quality content for their
newsletters.
If you master this technique of making the Ezine viral you can get
your name and your website URL in front of 100,000 or even a
million readers.
Tips for making the ezine viral
Pick a topic that you know something about and then go to the
Search Engines and find as many websites as you can that deal with
that subject.
As well as collecting information for your article, make a note of
any URLs that offer free resources dealing with the topic of your
article. Include those URLs in your article.
You should choose a topic very carefully. Once the topic is
selected, doing enough research on the subject is vital. Organize
the material and write in an interesting style. Make sure that you
provide links to free resources.
The content in your Ezine should not be pure sales copy. There has
to be valuable and genuine information. Promotion of your product
or service should be subtle. Viral marketing using Ezine is
different than running an E Mail marketing campaign that blasts
millions of mail messages to unsuspecting readers.
At the end of your article, attach a 5 or 6-line 'Resource Box'
that includes your website URL and/or your email address.
When you have finished your article, do NOT send it off straight
away. Let it lie fallow for 2 or 3 days and then come back and read
it again. You'll be amazed at the improvements you can make. Those
final improvements are what make the difference between an article
that gets published and one that doesn't.
Word Of Mouth
"Word of mouth" advertising can be very effective. Besides, it is
completely free. The Internet takes this ancient form of "buzz"
and promotion and amplifies it with a global network of people
connected digitally. "Word of mouth" now has an Internet version
called "word of mouse" (computer mouse). With greatly increased
speeds, people refer things to their friends and families spreading
the word through the Internet and to the far-reaching corners of
the world. This can be done for your ezines as well.
Many smart marketers and publicity people have learned to harness
the power of viral publicity with Internet "Tell-A-Friend"
promotional techniques and tools.
Providing incentives as part of the "Tell-A-Friend" technique
ensures higher success rate.
For instance, the website www.wz.com conducted a giveaway contest
where they gave away 4 Sony PS2's before Christmas as a website
promotion. They also gave people who had entered the Giveaway the
opportunity to get additional entries and additional chances to win
by telling a few of their friends on the "Thank You" page.
On the "Thank You" page, every giveaway entrant received the
following message: "Tell your friends about WZ.com, and get an
additional entry for each friend you email." In return for the
favor, they received an additional chance to win for every friend
they refer. This simple addition increased Tell-a-Friend results by
96 times.
So how do you use this technique to leverage and increase your
subscription rate, and "word of mouse" publicity? It's simple, just
"Tell-A-Friend" or "Tell-A-Friend about everything"! You can add
Viral "Tell-A-Friend" forms to all of your web pages just below the
subscription offer. This technique is simple and very effective.
Offer your ezines to all your customers, friends, relatives, and
colleagues. Let them spread the word. Offer your ezine as a
promotional tool to your affiliates if you have an affiliate
program. These can drastically improve the subscriptions to your
ezine.
===================================================
Douglas Peirseille
info@newslettermarketingtips.com
Ezine Marketing Magic
http://www.NewsletterMarketingTips.com
==================================================
About the Author
Douglas Peirseille
Occupation:
This article is free for republishing
Printed From: http://douglaspeirseille.articlealley.com/ezine-as-a-viral-marketing-tool-4921.html
Back to the original article
Tags: search engines, business online, urls, editors, placing ads, quality content, subscribers, ezines, email newsletters, target market, website url, free resources, tens of thousands, electronic newsletters, quantum leap, viral marketing tool, lack luster