Every month we send one newsletter to the people that have subscribed to our mailing list. We consider all 12.000 people that have chosen to accept our monthly newsletter, part of our extended business family.

We have some basic rules for our Newsletters:

• We never send any kind of spam-feeling emails.
• We never share their names & emails with other companies or brands.
• We provide valuable information about our industry hot topics.
• We never use “buy-this-now” technics.
• We have only one goal: to provide a good reading to our friends.

As a team, we are fed up with the aggressive approach of thousands of companies that are reaching out through their newsletters and are forcing us to buy their services or products.

I believe that is way better to have a healthy conversation with your audience through your newsletter, as if you were having a cup of coffee together sharing your news. If they want to hire you, they know where to find your website or blog. Live the “salesperson” out of the conversation.

Attract New Subscribers

Sorry for not giving you the same hocus-pocus magical techniques for the growth of your mailing list, but is really cheap to grab a person’s email + name by giving a sweet carrot via a variety of tricks like: download this, get that, get all the book, get a ticket and blah, blah, blah…

Produce something interesting, create outstanding content, solve a problem, make people notice that you are a trustworthy source of information, make people admire your work and let them search the way to follow your journey.

If a person wants to sign up in your mailing list, with their free will, it means that you are doing a hell good job in your industry. For example, I follow people and brands that inspire me to the bone. I would even prefer to pay to join their mailing list… this is how much I love their work in their field.

In my humble opinion and the evidence of 12.000 Newsletter subscribers, I protest against the abuse of aggressive email marketing in the digital world. Stop feeding this bad practice of grabbing with any way (legal or illegal) the people’s emails. There is absolutely no excuse for adopting this kind of digital behavior.

It’s abusive to force a person to give you his/her email as an exchange for information. Either you are ready to share a piece of valuable information or you aren’t. But if you want to sell your product/service/app then use your website or eshop.

The secret of a successful attraction hook for new subscribers is your work to be so outstanding that people actually want to get more.

Ways to Boost your Newsletter

Show up in top events as speaker

Talk for your favorite topics and invite the audience to follow your work in your website, social media and newsletters. If you are not a big audience person, then pick some small scale meetup groups and start networking face to face. And the right moment invite people to follow your digital path.

For those that are still exchanging business cards, when you will do your first follow up through an email, add a signal for your newsletter.

Email Signatures

Add a sign up invitation into your personal + professional email signatures. People tend to use this door by 40%. Impressive, right? Have a look at this example:

Use Social Media Posts

Spread the word of your Newsletter all over your social media accounts. With this, I mean share a fresh post twice a month about your favorite topics and let your followers know for your recent newsletter edition. Something like this will break the ice smoothly:

“Have you seen this month’s newsletter? [Topic] has taking our wheel these days and we are so excited for sharing the fresh news with all our 12.000 email friends.“

Create a Branded Facebook Group

All brands and companies should own a Facebook group for their community, but that’s a topic for a future blog post.

Go to Facebook and create a group. Then invite friends and followers to join your group. Post direct reminders, twice a month, about your Newsletters and wait for the new subscribers. See this example:

Have a Dedicate Page into your Blog

It is common to find a sign up form in the footer or sidebars of websites and blogs. But only few take the step to create a dedicate page about their Newsletter mindset, goals and topics. Why don’t you try it? For me it has been the source of 20% new subscribers since the very beginning. Have a look at Ideadeco Newsletter page here…

Add regular blog posts about newsletter creation process and how you deal with the common issues that usually appear in your industry. Providing solutions to email marketing challenges can become an attention magnet for your audience. It sure had been rewarding for us!

As a general marketing strategy, when we are creating new blog posts, we prefer to add links for the newsletter subscription form only if the topic of the post justifies that. As a general rule within Ideadeco’s 30 posts you will find only 10 newsletter references.

Become a Sponsor

Sponsorships may have a variety of obligations but also have a lot of perks! You can build a strong brand awareness with a reasonable amount of money. Brand awareness brings more traffics, more new visitors & pageviews and more new subscribers.

Teach

The only way to convince people that you actually have deep knowledge over a topic is teaching. Run online classes or became an instructor in a seminar. Run a series of your own workshops. 90% of the students will keep following you through your digital assets and newsletters. Do you need another reason to start teaching?

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Have you seen our latest Newsletter?

We would love to have your feedback about our last Newsletter. Do you want to have a look at our previous Newsletters? Here is the door to the past letters: Ideadeco Newsletters. If you like what you see then join us and enter your name and email in the subscription form.

Topic: Professionalism Definition

Let’s talk about the main characteristics of professionalism.

In the business world, skills are good but character and ethics are better.
The last 12 months we had the privilege to meet and talk with more than 200 freelance professionals in different industries for our research on this topic: What are the characteristics of professionalism? We had the chance to hear their definition of what are the main characteristics of professionalism. True professionals have a number of important characteristics that can apply to virtually any type of business.

Ethics and Honesty

In all industries, the most valuable characteristics are honesty and ethics. Professionals that are honest, evenhanded and authentic tend to receive more respect both from clients and colleagues. Having these makes it easier to become a trustworthy name among your peers. To stand out for a great character is priceless and most companies value their official code of ethics more than any other skills. It is common to find a similar code of ethics in freelance professionals.

Behave Morally and Ethically

Professionals know that even if there isn’t any official book of a written code of ethics in some industries, an unwritten code of ethics does exist. For serious professionals, there is no debate upon the matter of morality and ethics. You should display ethical behavior at all times and protect the main human rights at all costs. Presenting the best behavior, showing a respectful & lawful attitude to everyone you do business with separates the professionals from the non-professionals.

Responsibility and Dependability

Knowing that you have a person in your team where you can depend on 100% to deliver any goal is a proven factor of professionalism. Acting responsibly and fair under all circumstances can impact the way other people treat you. Responsible professional earn the trust of their clients and have an open dialogue with them. Doing your job as it should be done, solves many issues and builds healthy relationships with your clients and colleagues.

Honor your words

Deliver what you promised. Do what you said. Act as if you have a signed contract for everything you have promised. As a professional, your words should be solid as a contract. Responding accordingly in all situations. Be on time, follow the schedule and deliver all your commitments. Continue reading…

Have a great day!

Sincerely,

Areti Vassou
www.ideadeco.co