Your email newsletter is likely only one of a dozen email newsletters your readers get every day. That’s why first impressions count every time you send an email newsletter.

Most importantly, the first items your reader will notice are:

The from line: Who is this email from?
The subject line: What is the content of this email about?
The preview pane: Does the newsletter represent exactly what you’ve described above?

Here are three checklists for these three most important “first impression” features of your email newsletter.

From Line:

• The email newsletter from line clearly identifies the sender.
• The email newsletter from line is instantly recognizable to subscribers.
• The email newsletter contains both a display and an actual from address.
• The email newsletter from addresses are consistent from send to send.

Subject Line:

• The email newsletter subject line is engaging and benefit-oriented.
• The email newsletter subject line features something unique in the current issue.
• The email newsletter subject line places the most important information first, so that it’s not missed by readers
• The email newsletter subject line doesn’t sound “spammy.”

Preview Pane:

• The email newsletter preview pane includes a recognizable logo (or in the case of a text newsletter, a brand or company name) in a prominent position.
• The email newsletter preview pane includes a strong, benefit-oriented headline or title to help pull readers in.
• The email newsletter preview pane includes a link to view the email online.
• The email newsletter preview pane would engage the reader and pull them in even if the images were blocked.

Does your email newsletter follow all of the above rules?

If you’re a product-driven online publisher, you know there are numerous strategies for making money with email. The fun (and higher profits) comes with testing, tweaking and fine-tuning.

You can test the email sponsorship model versus the pay-per-click advertising model. Which is more profitable?

You can carry multiple advertisers who pay different amounts based on the position of their ads. Which produces more revenue per thousand subscribers?

Or you can test basic template design. Where should the featured product be introduced? Does an in-line text ad beat a banner ad? Or does a product review generate greater response?

Should you link into the sales letter landing page, or straight into the data collection page? Should you offer the reader an opportunity to “Read more” or “Buy now”?

Any experienced direct marketer, working with an online newsletter editor, can think of 10 variations of the email newsletter template to test. And because we’re all so new at this, typically five or seven out of 10 changes will produce an improvement!

The key to incremental improvement is having a formal test plan and using the right tools to track and measure your results.

We recently re-recorded the Mequoda Pro Online Training Program entitled, “Email Newsletter Marketing — Testing to Maximize Email Revenue and Profit.”

This Mequoda Pro Online Seminar along with our Mequoda Email Performance Report, Email Circulation Calculator, and Email Lifetime Calculator are four of the many benefits of Mequoda Pro membership.

For one all-inclusive price, you can get instant-access to our Email Newsletter Marketing online training program, the Mequoda Email Performance Report, Email Circulation Calculator, Email Lifetime Calculator, ten more business-building sessions, and an ever-growing collection of reports and spreadsheet tools you can use to manage your own business.

Join Mequoda Pro today!

Successful and well-read email newsletters promote two-way communication and community-building with things like surveys, polls, links to discussion boards and ways to provide feedback to/communicate with the editor(s).

There should be a balance between editorial and promotional content—60%/40% is the rule. The newsletter should be a manageable length to read online, usually 2 to 3 printed pages.

Content and Tools of Engagement Checklist

• The email newsletter provides benefit-oriented content that is written in an engaging manner.
• The email newsletter includes engagement tools for readers, things like surveys, polls, links to discussion boards and ways to provide feedback to or communication with the editors.
• The email newsletter follows the 60/40 rule, with at least 60% of the content being editorial and no more than 40% being promotional.
• The email newsletter is a manageable length to read online—2 to 3 printed pages.

Case Study: Wine Spectator’s Sips & Tips

The editorial content in Wine Spectator’s Sips & Tips email newsletter is superb. There’s no question that readers, even those who aren’t paying subscribers, get value. There are links to free online tools (like the Wine Spectator reviews database) as well as articles and videos. At 64% editorial, 27% promotional, 9% housekeeping, it follows the 60/40 rule very well.

My favorite engagement tool, of all those I’ve encountered, is here – it’s the “What am I Tasting” challenge (screenshot below). Wine Spectator provides a “tasting note,” basically a description of what you would taste if you were sipping a wine. You are then challenged to guess “What you’re tasting” from a list of multiple choice answers.

“What Am I Tasting” Engagement Tool

The screenshot is from the Website; the link to it should be more prominent in the email newsletter – this has real viral possibilities for their target audience. It would be even better if you could challenge folks you know to a friendly competition.

How are you using email newsletters to interact with your audience? Let us know in the comments.

We’ve got #1 and #2 covered, come to the Mequoda Summit and be a part of #3!

If you think of a conference as a “training”, how do your expectations shift?

When most people think of a conference, they think of multiple tracks, networking, and the hope that they’ll get a few take-aways from each session.

In fact when we were at a conference recently, someone said, “if I get just ONE great take-away, I’ll be happy.”

This is especially true for publishers who attend events that aren’t focused specifically for them as publishers.

Consider how much you spend to attend a conference. $500? $1000? $2000? How much are you getting from your investment? $2000 for just one great take-away?

On more than one occasion, we’ve seen past Summit attendees at other conferences that tell us the Mequoda Summit is the best event they attend all year.

We’re really proud of that.

After all, it’s not just a conference, it’s really an intense two-day workshop. That’s not just fancy copywriting either.

Last year one publisher took so many notes and emailed so many new ideas to his staff during the Summit, that he’s signed up eight people to join him in Boston this year.

In fact, we have tons of Mequoda Summit “regulars” that bring new staff with them every time they come.

So join us at the Mequoda Summit in Boston on October 7-9th and save the rest of your budget for all of the great new strategies and takeaways you’ll want to start working on as soon as you’re back in the office.

After all, what other conference can you attend, where every session offers a take-home tool to use in your own publishing business?

Here are the tools attendees will receive when they attend the Mequoda Summit in Boston this year:

1. Sample Online Market Audit
2. Sample Keyword Benchmark Study
3. Website Template Inventory Checklist
4. Article Release Guideline Checklist
5. Sample Inbound Link Report
6. Sample Email Performance Report
7. Multivariate Testing Checklist
8. Digital Product Pyramid
9. Social Media Metrics Report
10. Online Editor Job Description
11. Sample Key Metric Dashboard
12. Sample Online Business Plan and Model

All of these tools can be customized and adapted to your own business. We also have a bonus SEO workshop on day three that will teach you how to build your own keyword universe and start applying within your editorial strategy.

We know budgets are tight this year. So even more than ever, our goal is to give you the ONE event you MUST attend.

That’s why we’ve even created the Mequoda Reader Survey this year so that you can tell us EXACTLY what you want to learn from the Mequoda Summit. Don’t be shy, take the survey.

When you’re done, register for the Mequoda Summit. Our first early-bird deal will expire soon, and the more people you send, the more money you will save.

See you in Boston! Any questions on what the Summit will cover and whether it’s relevant to your business? Email them along to us and we’ll let you know.

As a research company, we’re constantly looking to not only find the latest best practices in our industry, but we’re also always listening and soliciting feedback for hot topics and relevant case studies.

That’s why today we have a “reader survey” that asks what topics YOU are most interested in learning about. Is it social media? Membership websites? Email marketing? Something else?

Let us know! It will only take you a couple minutes and you’ll have our eternal gratitude.

Take the Mequoda Reader Survey.

Conducting user surveys is one of the best ways to got an overall consensus on what your audience is thinking about. Different types of surveys that might be relevant to your own business might be:

• New product surveys - What topics should we create a book about?
• New media surveys - Is our audience interested in video?
• Membership pricing - How much would our audience be willing to pay?

In our case, we’re very interested in what you have to say about the following topics so that we can cater our upcoming Mequoda Summit to your interests. It’s not only invaluable to our agenda, but it also helps shape the topics we write about on the Mequoda Daily as well.

When reaching out to your audience, we recommend gathering information from as many sources as possible:

• Your email list
• Your daily blog readers
• Your Twitter followers
• Your LinkedIn network

Be especially careful not to make your reach too broad though, as there’s a difference in getting tons of feedback, and tons of targeted feedback.

So, do us a huge favor so that we might serve you the type of content that you would like to be served, and take our Mequoda Reader Survey.

We put together a nice little 14 page white paper today that includes a bunch of Google Adsense articles, tips and best practices from the Mequoda Daily blog.

Here are a few bits of repurposed content from the white paper Web Advertising Tips for Google Adsense that we packaged together for you so that you can download it to your computer or print it out to keep at your desk.

Is Google AdSense right for you?

Size, in terms of traffic or the number of site pages, doesn’t really matter as to whether a publisher can, or should, become a Google AdSense partner. Quality content is the defining feature. In fact, the program is a great opportunity for publishers with quality content, but limited or light traffic and/or few site pages. In this tip we give you a brief overview of the Google Adsense program and how it’s useful for publishers.

How to Get Banned by Google AdSense

If you are a publisher using Google AdSense, you may or may not know how easy it is to tick off the Google Gods. We’d all like to think we’re honest business people, and we’d never click on our own ads, but you might be unaware of some of the lesser known rules laid out by Google. In this tip we showed you the best ways to get your Google AdSense account suspended.

Google AdSense Design Tips

According to Google, certain locations on your website tend to be more successful than others. In this tip we went over the different “heat maps” that Google uses to show Adsense publishers where the best ad-slots are on any given page.

With these tips (and a bit more), we put together a new white paper called Web Advertising Tips for Google Adsense. Download it today, it’s free!

Maximizing revenues with Internet ad sales doesn’t happen by chance. And it’s not solely the result of great ad sales reps, although well educated ad sales professionals are indispensable.

As our publishing colleague Diane Schwartz of minonline.com says, “From how to structure your sales staff, to how to price your integrated programs, Internet ad sales is a challenge faced by the whole publishing team: marketing, PR, advertising, sales, editorial.”

“Sure, the salesperson needs to close the deal, but others on your team need to create the opportunity, whether it’s outstanding editorial content or a well-navigated site design.”

We couldn’t agree more.

Driving online revenue with optimized ad sales is a deliberate process that requires configuring your infrastructure, content, marketing, research and sales.

A couple months ago, we held one of our best-received webinars called Internet Advertising Basics with Dan Ambrose. Dan has made a career of unraveling and demystifying the complexities of publication ad sales.

He worked on the founding of iVillage.com, About.com, MediaBistro.com, and Beliefnet.com and has consulted with Primedia Magazines, Smithsonian, Children’s Television Workshop, and many others.

We’ve conjured up several tips from this webinar (which was also a session at the Mequoda Summit in April) to share with you.

Dan’s suggestions on how increase ad impressions with email newsletters:

1. Content in the email newsletter can be set up as “teaser” copy and drive traffic back to the website. This is usually accomplished with a hyper-linked headline and incomplete teaser copy.

2. Make email newsletters part of your advertising package. Launch email newsletters that advertisers will support. Ambrose recommends focusing on your strongest advertising categories first.

Dan’s suggestions for several sponsorship opportunities you can offer your advertisers:

• Channel sponsorship
• Branded tools by the advertisers who “sponsor” them
• White papers for lead generation
• Webinars

Dan’s three steps for selling online advertising to print clients:

First, offer them a package. They are already buying ads in your print product, so the next logical step is to offer them ad space on your website for an increased rate as a “print + online package”. This shouldn’t be a hard sell, so long as you follow the next two steps.

Second, let them be more active. Advertisers get bored with “text links” and “banner ads” very quickly, so come up with new ways for them to increase leads by letting them become more active in your marketing. Let them sponsor contests, interview them for your subscription products, so on and so forth.

Third, offer them a sponsorship opportunity. If you’re looking to really build out your website, offer them the chance to sponsor sections of your website. Sites like RCRWireless.com let advertisers sponsor whole topics, while others like AutoTrader.com let them sponsor online tools. Still, some, like Computerworld.com offer their advertisers “Zones” where they can give away a free report in exchange for email leads that go directly to the advertiser.

Want to learn more from this 90-minute Internet advertising seminar for publishers?

We have two options for you.

You can get this seminar delivered to you on CD-ROM, complete with video presentation, slides in PDF format, and Dan’s two worksheets:

• Advertiser Schedule Flowchart – An easily customized Internet Advertising Sales Proposal Sheet and Hybrid Media Flowchart.
• Content Traffic Revenue Factors – A worksheet that will show you the cumulative effect of improving 5 factors by only 10% each that increases revenue opportunity by 89%.

Or, you can register for Mequoda Pro today—for the same price—and start watching the seminar and downloading the worksheets this afternoon.

In addition to the Internet Advertising Basics online seminar, with Mequoda Pro you’ll also receive TEN BONUS 30-60 minute business-building sessions for publishers, editors and online marketers.

Register for Mequoda Pro now and start watching Internet Advertising Basics instantly!

We recently got a question from one of our Mequoda Summit attendees, referencing Dan Ambrose’s Internet Advertising Basics session.

“At the summit, I got all enthused about “rabbit ear ads” (I think that’s what they’re called—the ads on either side at the top), but they seem to have disappeared from the New York Times, etc. Now, all the rage seems to be the rich media banners. Any thoughts on this?”

Here was Ambrose’s answer:

First, these are really two separate issues… the placement and size of the ad units, and the creative content of the units.

The “ears” that NYTimes.com offers on its home page only run when they are sold… so some days or for some page-views they may not be there.  They are today – for me.

As you can see Continental Air is in the ears today.  If they bought a million impressions today and the site was delivering 2 million, they might only appear in 1 of every 2 pages served.

Also it could be that the ads are geo-targeted.

However, rich media is an opportunity of interest to many advertisers.

You can (technically) put rich media into any shape ad unit.  The unit simply represents the space within which the rich media resides…or grows out of in a ‘mouse-over-expandable.’

The NYTimes may not allow distracting animations, or videos or expandables in the ears due to respect for their readers…but technically they could.”

When our attendee went back to NYTimes.com, he noticed that the ads were back.

Says Ambrose, “for most ad-units, the unsold spot is filled with a house ad or network delivered remnant filler.  In the case of the ears they appear only when sold.”

What about you, do you have any questions about selling or developing ad units?

We’ve just uploaded the recent Internet Advertising Basics webinar (and previous Summit session) we held with Dan Ambrose to Mequoda Pro today. When you become a member of Mequoda Pro, you can watch this online seminar and ten more on-demand at your convenience.

You’ll have access to our Q&A forums to ask questions like this that will be answered by us in under 72 hours.

So go ahead, join Mequoda Pro and lay your questions on us!

There’s a two-part strategy for building an online business that will outlive print.

First, you have two major duties owed to your audience:

• Deliver reliable, accurate and dependable content
• Accommodate your customers with content on their delivery platform of choice

Second, you have two major duties owed to your company:

• Hire a resilient and flexible staff that is always evolving
• Replace any staff that is unable to grow with you

Even as time goes on, these two principles won’t change. The more adaptable, flexible and innovative you are, the bigger your audience will become and the longer they will stick around.

Yesterday we talked about the many different products you can create from a single idea. Starting with the concept of “roses”, it could be turned into articles, handbooks, special reports, videos, webinars and live events. And that’s just the beginning.

If you wanted to go further, you could create photo contests to drive traffic, a stock photo gallery for your community to buy and sell their photography, and online forums.

So stop for a minute now and look at your product line.

• How many books could be turned into complimentary special reports that build your email list?
• How many webinars could be turned into “seminars on demand”, or re-streamed at a later date?
• How long would it take for someone to transcribe your digital event?

Now ask yourself who on your team has stood up to the plate in the last few years and pitched ideas like these, or has taken the reigns to headway a special project like the above. Have you allowed them the opportunity? Have you supported them in their pitches?

Ok, now ask yourself who on your payroll has stood their ground with their “job description”. This person is an editor, “not a copywriter”, a journalist, “not a photographer”, a marketer, “not a social media strategist”.

Start turning those that stand-still into can-doers.

In order to build a well-oiled machine, you may need to convince your existing print staff that these things are now part of their job description.

I’ll go ahead and dare you today, or later this week, to hold an impromptu content development meeting with your staff.

• First, start simple with an existing product. Hold it up. Ask your room full of smart and talented people to think of ways you can turn this single product into other products quickly and cheaply.
• Second, give your people some pride and let them take responsibility for their ideas. If someone pitches a great idea, tell them that they are now the lead on this project and ask them to research the associated costs for production (if there are any) and how much time is required of other staff members to get this done. People work better and more diligently when they “own” an idea or a project.
• Third, pitch some new ideas. Do a group brainstorm that starts with a topic. It might be your lead topic, or a subject you haven’t yet started building on. Take that topic and ask your staff to explore the content and products that can be created from this single idea. Our topic is roses, how many rose products can we create?

Two tips for your impromptu content development meeting:

• Don’t limit ideas to resources, time or money. In order for the creative juices to flow, there should be no boundaries. Are you going to start tackling every great idea? Probably not, but it’s better to have more ideas that you can build upon, than less ideas that you can’t.
• Use as many brains as possible. Invite as many people as you can to your brainstorm. Sometimes your big thinkers are tucked in a cubicle in the corner of the office building. Sometimes they smell like aged cheese and nobody wants to sit with them at lunch. Sometimes they’re your next rockstar.

Many of the most innovative and profitable online teams we know are small in nature, but huge in dedication and adaptability. If you want to learn how to build a team like this, which cranks out rockstars every day, you should attend the Mequoda Summit in October with us.

We’ll introduce you to our own rockstar team, whom you can poke and prod about job responsibilities, salary and digital product development. We’ll also introduce you to dozens of other profitable online business units during our Structuring Online Jobs session.

You’ll also learn the inside workings of some of our most admired publishers during our Digital Product Development session. In this session, we’ll show you the process and ongoing development of these publishers and how they’ve turned single print publication companies into very profitable multi-platform product businesses.

If your end goal is build an online team that is flexible, dedicated and ready to conquer every hurdle along with you, our two-day Mequoda Summit in Boston is for you. We have twelve information packed sessions exclusively for publishers, editors and content marketers. Join us!

Last week, Don gave seven reasons why all your products should be digital, to compliment his predictions on how all content will have a digital platform by 2025.

Whether or not print will completely die out is debatable, but what’s for sure is that as information becomes easier, faster and cheaper to consume digitally, the need for print becomes less and less.

The good news is that all it takes is a change in thinking to start adapting.

The good folks over at Mother Earth News have an admirable approach to thinking about content development.

“We think of an idea first, like energy-efficient lighting or solar power, and then we start asking ourselves how to best present that idea in a magazine article, in a blog or in a video. We think of the idea first, then we think of how to convey it to the various mediums that we have,” John Rockhold, Managing Editor told us, who increased his traffic 114% last year with free content.

So, what does it take to start with an idea, or a concept, rather than a story, or an article? A dramatic change in process.

Here’s a one sample project plan for repurposing one idea into many platforms:

You’re a gardening magazine and one of your topics is roses. Here are some items you could generate from this single idea:

Handbook: This is likely your main research project, if your specialty is research and developing content. If your specialty was producing video, you might write this, extracting from the video. The handbook will be around 200 pages long and be the “complete guide” to Roses.

Handbook quick-guides: Extracted from the handbook, focusing on one topic, such as “growing roses” or “where to buy the best roses”.

Complimentary “special report”: This is an extraction from the handbook, possibly a very condensed “10 tips” version. At the end of the report, it promotes the paid handbook. The orderflow for this complimentary report collects an email address for your list, and it also upsells to the handbook on the “thank-you page”.

Website articles: Articles are extracted from the paid handbook, and inline text ads promote it, or the complimentary report, or both.

Email newsletter: Just like the website, tips here are extracted from the handbook. The email newsletter promotes the handbook and any related products. It may be a single-topic email and sponsored by an online vendor of roses.

Webinar or “workshop” (paid): Content and graphics are extracted from the handbook. Suggestions on content are taken from blog comments.

Webinar or “workshop” (free): A short extraction from the paid webinar. This free webinar promotes the paid webinar where they can “get even more actionable tips” when they register.

Video: Original content based on the “roses” concept. The handbook may include a “step-by-step” tutorial, which can easily be translated into video. Video can accompany blog posts, or can be turned into a video membership site.

Membership site: Digital copies of your paid handbooks can be kept here in HTML format, with the videos that compliment them.

Live event: You might sponsor, or gather sponsors for a rose gardening event or workshop.

When you start at the moment of “content conception”, you can decide your lead product, and where your original efforts might go. In this case, because the hypothetical publisher decides that a handbook can be repurposed most easily by his team, it becomes the first product.

Since the handbook was created with all of these extra content platforms in mind, it is more easily re-purposed into video, email newsletters and webinars without the need for new research.

So have I made this sound too simple? Too complicated? How have you or your company started re-purposing content?

We’ve been giving away white papers left and right, so today I thought I’d compile a list of everything we’ve launched lately.

If you’re a member of the Mequoda Daily, you can access these white papers immediately once you log in. If you’re not, click on any one of these free reports and you can get a free account instantly.

Enjoy these business-building white papers, and please do pass this article onto your colleagues.

10 Email Newsletter Design Best Practices

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12 Master Landing Page Templates

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Five Deadly Membership Website Mistakes

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Blogging for Marketing 101

If you’re an online editor or website designer, you will learn how to monetize a blog with: social media, web 2.0 strategies, and good old fashioned networking when you claim your COMPLIMENTARY copy of Blogging for Marketing 101: Blogging Advice for Publishers Who Want to Learn How to Monetize a Blog. Download now…

How to Write a White Paper That Sells

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Internet Business Models and Strategies

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Launch a Link-Building Campaign

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Online Press Release Guidelines

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SEO Copywriting Secrets

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Seven Online Publishing Secrets

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So tell me, which one was your favorite? Have any suggestions for new white papers?