HELP - Promoting follow-ups for email newsletter articles

Marketing services through newsletter publicity

[Marcia]

I've been contacted with a request to write an article which will appear in an email newsletter with a circulation of about 800 targeted recipients, most of whom actually do read it.

This is in exchange for promotion of my site, and a link. The newsletter is then placed in archives, which remain accessable on a very nicely promoted and trafficked niche site. The opportunity also exists to become a regular "contributor."

I've also been asked to write a weekly "tip of the week" for another niche email newsletter, same niche market, which reaches about 1,400 recipients, but the exposure is not as noteworthy as the first, since there are no archives, in spite of the fact that there would be exposure on a continuing basis.

THE QUESTION:

The link should not just lead to my plain old boring website, but should have something linked to that potential customers can ACT on. Thinking about possibilities, the following come to mind:

1) Post informative articles on a regular basis, with a script that will allow people to send the pages to people they recommend it to.

2) Have just a sign-up spot for my own newsletters (which I haven't started yet.)

3) Run a survey of some sort, to gather relevant market ressearch information, and gather names for a potential mailing list.

4) Run a "special offer," with a good price, to increase client base and portfolio.

Multiple possibilities exist, and any input and suggestions will be greatly appreciated.

TIA, Marcia

[rcjordan]

You are right, most would just use an url to their homepage and thereby lose an opportunity to interact with an anticipated referral source. If I couldn't come up with an idea by publication time, I'd still use a special link in the newsletter and point it to a 100% frame of your index page if nothing else. Later, you could hot-swap content under the url.

[Marcia]

>>> I'd still use a special link in the newsletter and point it to a 100% frame of your index page if nothing else. Later, you could hot-swap content under the url.

Special link, 100% frame, hot-swap - splain, please??

[rcjordan]

Set up a frameset page(or if you're really in a rush, just copy your index page) under a new url in your site -something like marciastuff.com/newsletter.

Use this /newletter url as the contributor's link when you write your article. Their newsletter will put this url in circulation and, later, in their archive.

After you turn in your article, you can go back and decide what needs to be on the page you've now put it in circulation. Changing the content after the fact is what I call a hot-swap.

We had a write-up on 100% frames (keeps coming up), I'll see if I can find it.

[rcjordan]

Marcia, I couldn't find that post with the example of the 100% frameset so you'll have to view source on

[4geeks.com...]

I use a 1 pixel top frame as a visual cue for myself, but this will give you the general idea. In this case, I set it up in my graphics directory but it's displaying the main index page as content.