I put together a video for magicians on my current newsletter system. If you aren't already doing an email newsletter hopefully it will inspire you to start today, and if you're already doing a newsletter, hopefully you'll pick up some additional ideas that will help you out.

http://www.onlinemagicclub.com/2009/12/2......ans-101/

Sorry about the mic placement. I'll fix that when I make more of them! Let me know what you think either either here or on the blog comments.

Thanks for sharing! Definitely going to check it out.

I watched Leif's video and looked at mail chimp. Looks interesting so I got an account and will be launching my newsletter in the new year.

With Gmail you can upgrade to a Google Business account and then have higher send limits and more options..

but it is much better and safer to do these things through mailchimp, aweber, Icontact, Infusionsoft (my new favorite)

and newsletter marketing is very powerful (although if not done right is just more static along with other junk in your inbox)

what to think about is WHAT do you READ always
I think when starting a newsletter seth godins purple cow should be reread

Glad to hear you took action Neale. Good luck with your newsletter!

I put a line in my email signature so all my emails encourage people to sign up.

Neale: Let me know if you have any success with it at the end of your email signature. I tried it for a number of months and didn't have a single sign up from it.

The two best ways I've gotten people to sign up for my newsletter is by asking them when they fill out my show evaluation, and by having people enter a draw. At least that's been my experience.

I assume you're tracking that through Analytics and their URL Builder to track exactly from where people are coming?

Second, I agree about having a compelling offer. For example, having exclusive discounts to your newsletter list for your show. GoDaddy does this all the time to me and I take them up on the offer many times. I know we are offering a show and not just a 'product' but often the COST of a discount to a good quality group (your list) is cheaper than the COST of advertising in a phonebook or on some other advertising medium.

When you look at is as an advertising cost, things like discounts are much lower than they might seem.

All that said, since this thread started half a year ago, my thoughts have changed slightly about database lists. I still have mine and use it, but I have a new philosophy that I am refining, which I'll share in the coming weeks. It's sort of radical and so I want to make sure I have it well thought out first.

Good luck with your sig!
Scott

@Scott: Whenever somebody is added to one of my mailing lists it emails me to let me know who the new user is. This happens if they sign up automatically through my website, or if I manually add them. Using that method I was able to see that nobody was signing up through the link in my email signature.

Check this site out:

http://www.google.com/support/analytics/......er=55578

It's Google's URL Builder. You type in your site link in the first field. Then add things in the next field about your marketing.

For example, after filling in the following and hitting 'generate':
Campaign Medium: newsletter
Source: email
Content: jan10
Campaign Name: signature

It generates this link:

http://yoursite.com/newsletter?utm_sourc......ignature

This can be 'reduced' using standard html to look much cleaner and hide the tracking info:

Sign up to our newsletter and win a chance for a free widget

When this is added as the link in your signature, you can see in Google Analytics exactly that they clicked on your signature in your January 10 newsletter.

This way you can track not only each newsletter, but individual links within the newsletter, all over time. And you can compare newsletter clicks to other sources, like forum signature clicks or paid banner ads.

Using this I can see people clicking through to the website, as well as using mailchimp to see my open rates and click through rates. You can also, then determine if people are clicking through to your site from your email list, but signing up using the form on your site.

Hope that helps!