Newsletters, emails, autoresponders for lead generation

I did my very first newsletter as a part-time employee at a local tennis club. Sadly, the three issues I typed out, cut and pasted onto paper, then xeroxed to hand out to members arriving at the club, were the only issues of that newsletter.

Some would argue that spam has killed the effectiveness of email. Others point to blogs as an email replacement. Still others advocate replacing the email lists with facebook fanpages. These may be great options for some companies, but for others, in-house print newsletters continue to be the best way to go for their audience (with PDFs for website downloads).

Newsletters themself have evolved from print to electronic and even to audio or video delivery. They also aren’t the only type of lead generation vehicle being used. Special reports, whitepapers, autoresponders (scheduled emails) and videos are all very effective means of providing value and continuing to build a relationship with prospective and current customers.

While I have helped companies set up their lead generation accounts and filled them with content of all types here are a couple of examples that I feel represent different presentation options. These were also extremely well received.

The Inside Edge newsletter that I am featuring here is one I took over producing for WSI (an international web design franchise) in 2003. At that time it had 200 subscribers. In the 20 months I created it for them, it grew to more than 102,000 subscribers. If the direct links to the example issues below no longer work (they are externally hosted and not under my control), hover over the “comments” box to see the notes for each slide.