Amy Harrison is a copywriter for entrepreneurs. In addition to writing for her clients, she also coaches business owners to smash up their sales copy obstacles and get their offers out there. She is the also the author of How To Get Your Sales Page DONE!

A newsletter is a powerful marketing tool when you’re building your online business. Once it is set up and visitors start signing up, you are creating a virtual waiting room of people eager to find out more about you and your products or service.

A lot of business owners miss big opportunities by not starting a newsletter soon enough, or not making the most of it once it is set up so I’ve put together these simple Dos and Don’ts of starting your business’s newsletter so you can build a valuable business asset from the word go.

Don’t wait to set one up

Don’t delay progress by thinking the following:

Even if your website hasn’t been fully designed yet, you can have an opt-in box that says “Opening soon, to find out when our services will be available sign up below.”

If you don’t, you’re turning away people who might just turn out to be your best customers.  You don’t have to flood your newsletter subscribers with content from the word go, but you should at least create the space for them to hang out and wait until you’re ready to release your killer products!

Do use a professional newsletter service provider

A professional provider such as iContact or Aweber is essential if you want to send out mass emails and not have them returned as spam. Newsletter providers let you design branded emails, keep track of your subscribers and analyse the performance of your newsletters which is essential for your marketing as your business and your audience expands.

Don’t make the sign up page hard to find

Don’t create a newsletter and expect your customers to seek it out on your site. It should be prominent and definitely on the front page. A great place to have it is in the top right of your site (just where Amy Applebaum has hers!) because visitor’s eyes naturally drift here within seconds of landing on your website.

Do create a separate “sign up” page to link to in your blog posts

As well as having a form on your home page, you’re going to want to have a separate “opt-in” page that just talks about why people should sign up to your newsletter.

On this page you then want to tell them why it’s going to rock their world when they agree to be on the inner circle of your newsletter, for example:

The link for this page should then be used in every blog post, or in any guest posts you might write for other people’s websites.

If you don’t have this, you can only encourage people to go to your home page if they want to sign up and there’s a risk that your customer might be distracted by the other great features on your site.

Do offer your audience great freebies to sign up to your newsletter

Getting your readers over the threshold of your newsletter is incredibly valuable, so show your appreciation and don’t be afraid to dangle a great incentive in front of them to get them wanting more.

Some great ideas of free bonuses to offer your customers include:

Do produce regular content

You might feel like all the hard work is getting people to sign up to your list but remember, they signed up because they wanted to know more about you, so make sure you communicate how often they can expect this to happen.

It doesn’t matter if it’s once a month or once a week, but consistency is important in building your trust, credibility and loyalty with your crowd.

Now it’s over to you, what makes you sign up to a newsletter? What incentives really catch your eye and what turns you off? Let me know and let’s get the discussion going below!


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