How to Use Contests to Promote Your e-Zine

Email marketing is a very effective online marketing technique. By building an email list, you can communicate with customers and potential customers on a regular basis. Publishing an e-zine gives them valuable information while allowing you multiple chances to make sales or referrals. A way to promote your e-zine is with contests. By giving your readers a chance to win something, you increase the chances that they will remain subscribers.

Instructions

Difficulty: Easy

1. Decide what you are going to give away. You could give away your products or services, or you could team up with other marketers and give away their products or services in a joint venture. Or you could offer advertising on your website or in your e-zine for an easy, low-cost prize.
2. Determine how you want people to enter your contest. Automatically entering all subscribers into each giveaway requires little effort on everyone’s part. But if you want more active participation, you could have scavenger hunts or trivia contests. These types of activities will require subscribers to read your e-zine in order to win instead of just passively subscribing.
3. Promote your contest. Announce it on your subscription page, and consider purchasing ads in other e-zines. Some e-zine publishers might be willing to swap ads with you if you are looking for a way to keep costs to a minimum.
4. Consider doing giveaways on a regular basis. You could have them monthly, weekly, or with each issue of your e-zine. This will keep current subscribers interested and encourage new subscriptions.

Tips & Warnings

• Make sure the prizes you’re giving away are of interest to your target audience and relevant to your e-zine’s subject matter.
• If you have a blog, you could do some cross-promotion between it and your e-zine. For example, you could announce your giveaways on your blog, or require entrants to post comments on your blog to enter the contest.