You can build your e-mail newsletter list quickly through the use of strategic partnerships. Look for companies who target similar demographic audiences with their Web sites and e-mails, but who are not your direct competitors.
You can then strike up any of several means of partnerships:
Barter ads: This highly effective means of growing your e-mail list can include exchanges of e-mail newseltter ads with another company or placement of ads on each other’s Web pages.
Co-registration deals: This is an effective practice for sites that are targeting a similar audience with non-competing products or services. In this case, you add an option to sign up for your newsletter on their site. For example, take two sites that target men, age 20 to 30. The first focuses on the latest sports news. The second promotes deals on male exercise and fitness. When men are signing up to receive the newsletter from the sports news site, they are asked if they are interested in receiving a newsletter from the fitness site, and vice versa.
Affiliate programs: Here you are paying the other Web site for sending your subscribers. The ad runs for free on the affiliate’s Web page, and when someone signs up for your newsletter through that source, you pay the affiliate. It’s important that you calculate the value of each new subscriber, or the cost of conversion, so that you can accurately determine a fair per-address price.
Syndication: Spread your content around. If your content is truly unique and valuable, you can use it to leverage and build your list and your brand by syndicating the material to other newsletters. If, for example, your newsletter is for a dance site and you know of a newsletter for the site of a theater company, you may, as non-competing artistic associations, share the content and run each other’s articles. In addition, you will want to include sign-up options for each other’s newsletters, as outlined in the co-registration section above. This is a way to gain additional quality content and to build your list by introducing your newsletter information to the readers of another newsletter.
Co-branding products and newsletters: If your company is known for quality content, you can try partnering up with another company that specializes in a product. Offer to give them an existing newsletter, or perhaps create a new one that suits their interests and gives them sold sponsorship. By providing quality content you will grow your list, while the sponsor can benefit from the opportunity to maker their product(s) to a growing audience.
Before entering into any kind of partnership deals, due diligence is required on your part. If the company you are looking to align with has a reputation for sending spam (and some well-known companies are spammers), you will become a spammer by association. Also be aware of the overall reputation of any company with which you strike a deal. Many businesses have lost customers by choosing the wrong partners.
Matt Blumberg is the driving force behind Return Path, an e-mail performance company. Collaborating with him on this project are his colleagues, e-mail strategists Stephanie A. Miller and Tami Monahan Forman. This article was excerpted from their new book, “Sign Me Up! A Marketer’s Guide to Creating E-mail Newsletters That Build Relationships and Boost Sales (iUniverse Inc., 2005) © 2005 Return Path, Inc. All rights reserved.
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