Ezine Design
13 Key Tips on How To Design an Impressive Ezine

I wrote these ezine design tips because I thought that they might help people who are operating small businesses and looking for additional ways to market their business.

An Ezine is an excellent marketing tool that just about any type of business can use to successfully market their business.

Businesses have been publishing newsletters long before the Internet became popular.

Newsletters are a great way to keep your clients informed about the latest and greatest things that your business has to offer. They are also a great way to build relationships with potential clients.

Because your Ezine or newsletter is such a critical marketing tool, it is important that you have a well designed Ezine that quickly becomes popular with your audience.

Below are 13 key tips in designing an impressive Ezine:

1. Provide Genuine High Quality Content

An Ezine should not sound like a Sales Letter. People read Ezines because they are looking for free information, ideas or solutions, that they can use. They are not looking to be sold on something.

To fulfil that need, include an article or two in your Ezine that teaches your readers about something that pertains to the services or products that your business offers. You can also highlight the benefits your clients receive when they do business with you.

2. Develop a Professional Look and Feel for Your Ezine

Create a professional looking Ezine that is easy to read. A professional, well laid out page, with a well suited color scheme that relates to your business color scheme, looks much better than one that is crowded and filled with unrelated bits and pieces.

Design your Ezine so that your content does not hug or overlap your pictures. Try to set it up so that you have nice thin white borders around your pictures.

Include your company logo on your Ezine if you have one.

When writing your articles use a 10 or 11 point font that is easy to read.

3. Personalize It

It is important that your readers feel that personal touch when they receive and read your Ezine. You can make that happen by simply starting your newsletter with their name, such as Dear Sally, as opposed to Dear subscriber.

4. Build Relationships

Your Ezine is meant to help you build trusting and long lasting relationships with your readers.

One of the things you can do to help with that is to add a personal paragraph each month about yourself so that people can learn a bit about you.

Consider adding a picture of yourself. You can either have a professional picture taken or you can use a personal one.

For example, if you just came back from vacation and you mention your vacation in your personal paragraph, then it may be a nice touch to add a good picture from your vacation.

5. Spicy Title

Every Ezine needs a snappy and memorable title that gets people's attention but also clearly relates to your business. Some people may find it easy to create a great title while others may find it more difficult.

You could try asking your friends and family for ideas if you find yourself struggling with this.

6. Ezine Navigation

Include a short table of contents at the beginning of your Ezine so that your audience can quickly see what you are talking about in each one of your newsletters.

7. Setup a Distribution Schedule

Be consistent when distributing your Ezine.

Setup a schedule that you think will appeal to your readers. It may be weekly, bi–weekly or monthly. Try not to overwhelm your readers by sending them too many Ezines or other announcement type emails.

The quickest way to get people to opt out of your Ezine is by overwhelming them with information.

Remember, less is more.

8. Keep Their Attention

Send new, fresh and exciting content in each newsletter.

A subscriber to your Ezine may not read each and every edition that you send out, but they will grow to rely on your Ezine and the excellent information that you are providing.

When they do need a service such as yours, they will quickly remember you because you were consistent in reminding them on a regular basis.

9. Unique Subject Line

Create a subject line that instantly grabs your reader's attention when they open their email inbox.

10. Keep It Light

Be light hearted and cheerful in your Ezine. The Internet is full of bad news. You want people to be excited and happy to read your Ezine because it provides useful and powerful information.

11. Again, Less is More

Also consider the length of your Ezine.

Try not to overwhelm your readers with too much information each month. Basically people are looking for tips and ideas that will provide them with solutions.

They signed up for your Ezine because they are interested in your business and they are hoping that you will send them concise and useful information.

12. Important Links

Add your contact information and a link to your blog or website at the top and the bottom of your Ezine.

Also have a forward to a friend link and an Opt in/Opt out link to make things easy for your subscribers.

13. Automate

Use a professional Ezine design program that has an autoresponder email setup to email to people as they opt in or opt out of your newsletter subscription.

Also, use an Ezine design program that offers templates for you to customize with your business name and logo.

Once you have a template setup, you can enter new content on a regular basis without having to re–design the entire Ezine.

You can also postdate the Ezines if you like. For example, if you are away on vacation next week and you do not want to mess up your Ezine schedule, you can postdate it to be mailed out while you are away.

I wish you much success in creating and designing your Ezine.