The investment newsletter business, similar to other content businesses, is truly about marketing. Getting your content in front of the right readers and convincing them to buy. In an age of free content, this is not trivial. Even getting investors to pony up just $39-$99 (which is where some of the mass market Motley Fool newsletters are priced) is not easy.
The Sales Funnel
We’ve discussed the decision behind creating a broad investment newsletter versus publishing something more niche. While I’m a proponent of creating something unique in the marketplace, this decision will affect how you decide to market yourself. After defining your target market, it’s time to let everyone in that market know what you are doing and why your opinion matters. That’s where giving away free content comes in.
Think of potential buyers of your newsletters as entering into a funnel. There will be some major spillage but a percentage of the flow that attempts to enter the funnel will come out as buyers on the other end. I’ve discussed the mechanics of this funnel in a post called Sales 2.0: empowering sales and marketing with greater conversion.
Free content as a hook
It’s no surprise that free content is one of the best ways to hook readers in to your efforts. Just reading great blogs like Copyblogger and Problogger show that the better the free content, the better potential for an upsell to premium content. So think of your blogging efforts (read how and why to start blogging) as the carrot that lures readers into your content environment, creates an awareness and relationship with your efforts, and sets the stage for future efforts at monetization of your work.
Capturing the email address
Because so few of us have blogs that make money on their own (via ads), the purpose behind giving away free content in a newsletter business should be to capture email addresses. Browsers of your blog and even subscribers to your RSS feeds don’t enter into a relationship with you. But via email, you’ll cultivate a ongoing conversation with your subscribers.
Convincing someone to give you an email address is a whole new level of trust. The effectiveness of email marketing — turning generic marketing into direct marketing — has shown to be 3x what it would be on your site or via advertising. See why email marketing works.
Once you have the email address, you’ll have to tread carefully. Ramming bad sales pitches and spammy-type emails down your subscribers’ inboxes is a bad idea. View the ongoing email relationship as headed towards the goal of gently convincing your subscribers to continue reading your emails and give away just enough that the value proposition of paying up for the premium product is clear.
I recommend against tactics like very salesy emails that jump up and down screaming that subscribers can make 3000% on their money in two weeks with no risk.
Make a great offer in return for the email
Create a full, professionally-set, sample newsletter or ebook of your newsletter or similar content and make it clear to readers of your blog that this is available for free. They just need to give you their email address and you’ll send it right over. It’s a good idea to offer a couple of things extra with the newsletter. Let your users know that you’re piling it on by including a free report on “The top 5 stocks for 2009″ or “Why investors need to own retail stocks now”or whatever topic fits.
Use a email service provider like Constant Contact or StreamSend. Most of these systems cost just a few dollars a month but are essential for managing your email marketing.
I suggest the following:
- Set up an autoresponder via an email service provider. An autoresponder automates the process of capturing an email address and then sending out your collateral documents automatically once the user confirms his subscription.
- Use the html/javascript that your email service provider gives you for the email capture and embed it directly on your site in a sidebar with an option to learn more about the offer.
- Create a whole page that explains the free offer for your readers and why it’s important to them
If you’ve created compelling blog content, created a good free offer and made it easy for readers to subscribe to your newsletter to receive your offers, you’ll get the email address. Next step is what to do with it…
