It's short and sweet but it gets the job done. The pediatric e-zine sent out by Dr. William Sears reaches roughly 20,000 subscribers without the bells and whistles used by many e-mail newsletters.
"We're kind of small time here," says Rachelle Duvall, Web master and manger of the monthly letter that was started in 2002.
Written for parents of newborns through pre-teens, the newsletter contains blurbs from news sources and pediatric organizations, and links readers to the Web site (www.AskDrSears.com). Occasionally, the e-zine highlights a link to an advertiser or to Dr. Sears’ online store. Other times, reader interaction is encouraged by a link provided with a solicitation for information.
Most of the subscribers are people who have sought out the doctor’s expertise. Visitors to the Web site can sign up for the newsletter, and that option is also offered when they are placing an order. Due to the nature of the site and the doctor’s medical notoriety, the newsletter and Web site are usually not where readers and/or subscribers are first introduced to Dr. Sears. His books and appearances on television and talk shows have garnered him a well-known name for pediatric care. Those appearances foster an increase in site visitors and, in turn, subscribers, says Greg Young, Web site administrator.
"When we started the newsletter the number of unique visitors increased dramatically and I'm sure it was the result of the newsletter's pass along value,” says Young. “People started showing up, subscribing and hitting different pages on the site."
The Biggest Challenge
According to Young, the biggest challenge of the text newsletter is the grassroots approach to its production and maintenance. "Given the size it has grown to, it's challenging to maintain it without more sophisticated software," he says. "It can be done, it's just more time and labor intensive."
Automation is used only for subscriptions and the purging and cleaning of the list of bad e-mail addresses. Unsubscribe requests are conducted manually by Duvall.
Still, Young sees no plans to move to greater automation. "For what it does and the role it has, 20,000 subscribers are not on the large end of spectrum,” he says. “The number of bouncebacks and bad e-mail addresses we get is not horrible. We get more bounce back because of anti-spam problems - and that's a problem for anybody."
"It's been very difficult, he says. You can toss out mailings in smaller chunks to get around some spam thresholds, but the software we use is not real sophisticated, so we take our lumps and send it out. If a person is subscribing from their workplace, it may bounce back."
When a newsletter recipient has been notified of the capture by their spam software, Young relies on the subscriber to clear the correspondence with their ISP. "Once they give our domain a green light we don't have the problem anymore, so we rely on the end user. Since the amount of e-mail on the list has gone up over the years, I'd imagine an average attrition rate of 5-8 percent a month that usually gets offset by new subscribers."
Lessons Learned
One clear lesson has been that it is the newsletter can drive readers to a particular topic or place within the Web site, whether editorial or advertising.
Although there is no formal tracking of clickthroughs or open rates, success can be tracked through the top-page hits for the Web site, says Young. Usually, the top-page hits correspond with stories previewed on the newsletter.
"Sometimes we'll run a promotion or ad at the bottom of the newsletter, buy this book and get this free type announcement,” he adds. “We will definitely get a response to that from a jump in that particular book sales."
Another lesson is that less is more. In terms of newsletter content, a quick blurb or brief synopsis is all that's needed to take an interested person to the Web site.
Meanwhile, what makes Dr. Sears such an expert on kids?
He specializes in it as a doctor. And there’s this: He and his wife Martha, RN, have raised eight.
Further EZINE LISTS Reading:
- How to Build Your E-Zine List
- How to Write an E-zine Your Subscribers Will Love (or at Least Open and Read)
- How to Start and Run an E-Mail Newsletter
