Listing recent article and forum posts in your newsletter is a tried and trusted method of pulling visitors back to your site. Simply list ten most recent articles and forum posts that have been added to your site. If you don’t have a forum on your site, then checkout VBulletin at http://www.vbulletin.com. In my newsletter, I show visitors ten most recent article posts in a list, like this:

-- Latest Articles @ devArticles.com -----------------

There have been a total of 13 new articles posted in last two weeks. They are shown below:

- Working With PHP Data Types http://www.devarticles.com/art/1/55 ...

If you have more than 1,000 newsletter subscribers, then you should be including sponsor ads with each issue sent out. I usually include two or three five lined (65 characters per line) ads in mine. The key to effectively marketing a brand or product in your newsletter is to choose those that interest your visitor. For example, if you run a shoe store, include a promo by a shoe company that links visitor to their site to download a discount coupon.

One last thing I always include in my newsletter is an option for visitors to unsubscribe. I make it clear at both top and bottom of my newsletter that they can unsubscribe at any time, like this:

This is bi-monthly newsletter from www.devarticles.com. If you would like to un-subscribe at any time, please send an email to mailto:newsletter@devarticles.com with "unsubscribe" in subject field.

---------------------------------- How often should you send your newsletter? ----------------------------------

It all depends on amount of new content published on your site and how many visitors your site has. Let’s say that Fred Black runs a site about tennis and receives 4,000 unique visitors per day. Fred also receives an average of fifty new newsletter subscribers each day. His site has been running for six months, so he has around nine thousand newsletter subscribers in his database.

Let’s also say that Fred is a busy man and coach’s tennis too. He coaches five people for one hour each every day, so he doesn’t really have that much time to add new content to his site, which he updates once every 4-5 days.

In this scenario, Fred should send out a monthly newsletter that summarizes new content posted on his site, any new messages in his forum, as well as a couple of paragraphs about latest tennis news, such as winner of recent Australian Open.

How frequently should you send your article then? Well, as a good rule of thumb, smaller your site, less frequently you should send out your newsletter. If you’re adding new articles to your site everyday and have a nicely populated subscriber list, then sending a newsletter every day is not uncommon. On other hand, if you only receive a couple of hundred hits per day, then you’d be better of sending your newsletter monthly, and spending more time on promoting your site.

---------------------------------- How should you "speak" to your visitors? ----------------------------------

Notice in title for this section that I have quoted word speak, to indicate that I am referring to it an abstract sense? When you send your newsletter out, most of your visitors will assume that it’s been compiled by a couple of guys that help run your site and that it’s only going out to get them back to your site, or for them to click on ads included in your newsletter.

You have to change their mind set so that they are receptive to your newsletter and its contents. Talk to your visitors like they’re your friends, and you’re just emailing them to catch up. As I mentioned earlier, I have another guy, Todd, who manages our newsletter. When Todd takes over second half of writing newsletter, here’s line he uses to introduce himself:

Hi guys, Todd here... how's everyone going?

See how he introduces himself and makes you feel like there’s actually a person composing newsletter? Too many newsletters are just marketing junk. If you want to create a healthy subscriber base, then make sure you address your visitors like Todd has, maybe even spare a paragraph or two to tell them about what’s been going on in your life?

Whichever way you do it, more comfortable your visitors feel when your “speaking” to them through your newsletter, more likely they are to trust you, re-visit your site, and click on your sponsor ads.

---------------------------------- In Closing ----------------------------------

Well, there you have it… my list of secrets that I use whenever I send out bi-monthly issue of my sites newsletter, devXPress. If you don’t send out a newsletter because you don’t have faintest clue of what to include in it, then hopefully this article has given you some creative inspiration to start one.

If you already send out a newsletter, does it include everything I have mentioned in this article? If not, maybe you’d like to take some tips from this article and use them to better-equip your current newsletter?

Either way, a newsletter is best way to communicate with your visitors and invite them back to your site by providing them with useful, informative, free content that is sent to them on a regular basis.

If you’d like to see a sample of my newsletter, then you can subscribe for free by sending an email to newsletter@devarticles.com with keyword "subscribe" in subject field.

2. An easily amused individual repeatedly fills in an auto responder form on your web-site with fake names and email addresses, causing corresponding email to bounce like a rubber ball all over cyber-space. Meanwhile, his IP address is happily captured by auto responder numerous times. Making it easy to identify and report.

1. An individual sends angry email to newsletter address requesting immediate removal from list. They never requested newsletter. You, like me, run a double opt-in list. The only way for any one to receive a copy of newsletter is to personally enter their name and email address on a form on website or send an email to listserver. Then, they will receive a confirmation email, which they must answer, to be added to list. You, like me, do not personally sign up individuals. But, you bite your tongue or delete expletives in your mind and manually remove email address from your list when they could have easily removed their email address by clicking on unsubscribe link included in every issue. (But that would require ability to click a link and perhaps a fully formed thumb.)

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