We all wish we could have ultra-responsive mailing lists, don’t we? The dream of most marketers is to send out their ezine and sit back to watch a flood of orders come in. After all, while we always DO want to provide good, solid information for our readers, we’d all be fibbing if we said our ezines were not a promotional tool as well. So how do we build a responsive list? Ryan Deiss of http://www.SiteSightings.com has some great information to share regarding his last mailing that we can all learn from.

KARON: Hi Ryan! Thanks for your time.

RYAN: Anytime, Karon.

KARON: I know you have several lists. How many subscribers do you have right now?

RYAN: I have about 2000 on my main newsletter list and another 3000 subscribers to my lead generating courses and ebook downloads from my OptInAutomator.com and PopUpRotator.com sites. KARON: The last time you mailed out an issue featuring a product or service, what was offer, and what kind of response did you get?

RYAN: I sent out a recommendation for Alex Sampson's new ebook, "Grilling Net Gurus,” and a little more than 11% of people on my list *purchased* product. Note that that's an 11% purchase rate, not click-through rate, which still amazes me. And in case you were wondering, my click-through rate was over 20%. KARON: Wow! That’s great, Ryan! What’s your secret?

RYAN: I have Alex to thank for high sales conversion rate. His sales letter really does its job, not to mention fact that product itself is a winner and way under priced. As for high click-through rate, I credit that to a couple of things.

KARON: Like what?

RYAN: Well, I strive to fill my newsletter with quality information so that my subscribers look forward to seeing my name in their inbox. (And many have told me that this is case.) KARON: Yeah, that makes sense. What else?

RYAN: I send out very few mailings, never more than 3 or 4 a month, and so I don't overload my subscriber's inboxes with junk, which gets them in habit of deleting my emails. (That, by way, is not something you want to condition your subscribers to do.)

KARON: So less is more. All right… what else?

RYAN: The email itself was well written (if I do say so myself) and it included important elements such as a price increase deadline and a definite call to action. One thing I did not try to do, however, was to sell product in that email. (I knew Alex's site could take care of that part.) My goal was to peak their curiosity so much that they were literally forced to click link as soon as they saw it.

Why?

By its very nature, a press release is designed for distribution to a wide range of media. It is not targeted to any particular format, media or editorial focus. Because it has to be written in very general terms, news releases do not usually fit a particular audience of reader. When reviewing a news release, an editor must search for a story angle in text of release that would interest readers. Most editors do not have time or desire to have to do this. There are plenty of other proposals in month’s “IN” basket prepared by writers who have already done this for them.

Does this mean that a news release will never generate a story? Of course not. Editors use anything and everything that fit needs of publication. Press releases can spark some well-deserved company feature stories. Yet, savvy business owners (like you and me!) are interested in minimizing effort while maximizing results. A press release is low on that list.

So what should you do instead?

If you want job done right, go directly to source—the writers!

BUT, not just any writer. I’m talking about writers who are already being published in magazines you want your company to appear in.

Here’s why.

Editors of publications develop strong relationships with their recurring writers. Confidence in writer’s ability to deliver what publication wants is established. The editor trusts writer to pitch a good, usable story. With each published story from a specific writer, editor relies more and more on writer to continue to feed publication good stuff. The writer becomes an important extension of publication’s staff.

When a writer and editor have a well-developed relationship, two things happen:

1 The editor is more likely to take notice of anything writer sends because that editor knows writer is very aware of types of articles publication uses.

2 When an editor is ‘stuck’ to find additional last-minute filler information for a specific topic, writer becomes a reliable last-minute resource.

So what are advantages to YOU for writing to writers instead of publications?