I-Marketer

PRODUCT REVIEW:
eZine Advertising
by Kevin Bidwell

Before I knew much about advertising on the Web, I heard all the "hype" about eZine advertising.

And I wasn't impressed.

Almost all of the information out there at the time seemed to be written by eZine editors wanting to sell ad space. As a result, I questioned whether or not their accolades were honest or just an attempt to sell more advertising.

You may feel the same.

Since I DON'T sell advertising, I decided to take some time to look at eZine advertising and write up a review for you so you can have some HONEST input about eZine advertising.

First, let's look at what we mean by "eZine Advertising".

When you start looking into eZine advertising, there are several terms you will come across. Here are some definitions:

Solo Ad--This is an ad sent out to the subscriber base that contains ONLY your ad--no articles, no other ads. Just you.

Semi-Solo Ad--Similar to the Solo Ad, only this ad may have from 2-5 different advertisers all in the same ad.

Top Sponsor Ad--This is the "top" ad in an eZine. Some eZines place multiple ads at the top and refer to each as a "top" sponsor ad.

Middle Sponsor Ad--This is an ad that appears in the body of the eZine.

Bottom Ad--This ad appears at the bottom of the eZine, normally near the publishing and contact information. Again, some eZines publish several ads calling each the "bottom sponsor ad".

Classified Ad--This is an ad that runs anywhere in the eZine. It may appear between articles, or in a special section with other ads.

HTML eZine--An eZine that is published in an HTML format (It looks like a web page in your email).

Text eZine--An eZine that is published as text.

Online eZine--An eZine that is published online--as part of a web page. Often the mailer is text and contains only headlines with a link to the online version.

Subscribers--The number of individual emails the eZine is sent to.

Open Rate--The number of emails sent that are actually opened by the recipients. This can be expressed as an absolute number (2358 average open rate) or as a percentage of the subscribers (15%). This number can only be calculated for HTML emails.

CTR or Click-Through Rate--The percentage of people who "click through" from your ad in the eZine to your offer. Also referred to as the VISITS rate.

Impressions--The number of times your ad is viewed.

Advertising CoOp--While this may actually be called several different names, it basically refers to a group of eZines that have come together to offer a single advertiser a wide range of places for their ad all for a single rate.

Now that you have some of the terminology, here is what we have found concerning eZine advertising.

1. eZine advertising is one of the BEST ways to spend ad dollars--if it is done properly.

This may surprise you--it did me. When we began running eZine ads, we found that they performed extremely well--if we had done our homework (see below). Since you might pay as little as $5 for an ad, it is available to almost everyone. At the same time, the return on that $5 can be quite high.

2. Before buying advertising, you have to do your homework.

Just looking at number of subscribers and type of ad will NOT tell you much. Here's why: Some eZines are read by a large percentage of their list, some are virtually ignored. We did two identical mailers, each to 500,000. One had an open rate of 5%, the other had an open rate of over 10%. In addition, the one with the higher open rate had a CTR twice as high as the one with the lower open rate. Bottom line: The second group resulted in 4x the sales that the first group provided.

Here are some of the things you need to do to check out your potential eZine:

Subscribe to the eZine and see what it looks like. Make sure it targets your best market niche.
Get the number of subscribers, open rate and any other statistical information you can. If it is an HTML, ask them to guarantee you an open rate, especially for a solo ad.
Get a list of emails from previous advertisers from the eZine so that you can see what kinds of results others are getting.
Compare prices with other eZines. Make sure that you don't just randomly decide to choose just one eZine, research several.

3. Focus on TOP SPONSOR ads in SMALLER eZines.

OK, this is not always true, but it is generally true. If you do your homework properly, you will be able to identify the exceptions. Here is what you are looking for: The most profit per dollar spent. Most often, that is going to come from a top-sponsor ad.

Since you are buying a top sponsor ad, make sure that you are getting a TOP space. Since some eZines are putting 3-5 ads at the top of their eZines, ask for top placement.

The reason that you want to focus on smaller eZines (under 5,000 subscribers) is that OFTEN these are much more responsive than the larger eZines. Again, when you do your homework, take note of those eZines that are an exception.

4. Run your TOP SPONSOR ad in 3-10 issues.

You may get a bunch of sales day one. Probably not. Most of the subscribers will miss your ad the first day. Most will miss it the second day. It normally takes 7 or more exposures to an ad for it to register.

5. Track your results.

Make sure to have some sort of tracking in place to make sure that you are getting results. If you are running your ad in an HTML, ask them to include an image tag to see what their open rate is.

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6. Write a good ad.

There are many good resources out there to teach you how to write great ads, here are a couple that I use and couldn't recommend more highly:

http://all-in-one-business.com/af
http://all-in-one-business.com/pb

Here are some fundamentals that you can use in writing a good ad:

Have a headline that conveys your best benefit to your reader and that includes a stated or implied "You".
Make the ad short--just because you bought 5 lines of 60 characters doesn't mean you have to use them. Your goal is to get the click-through, not sell the product. Selling the product will happen on your site.
Give something away. Again, this can be powerful. It may not work for every product, but it can bring more people to your site.
Offer a free report or other email available information. This method is powerful, especially if you sell a product with a price tag over $25. If you get people to sign up for a free report, you can then send them a series of targeted messages via autoresponder that will lead them to a sale.

Keep in mind that this is a TWO STEP sale--the goal of your ad is to generate LEADS, not SELL. The leads are then sold via your autoresponder messages.
Stress that your offer is only good for a limited time.

Once you have written that great ad, then you are ready for the last step:

7. Test.

Don't write one ad, run it one time and then base all your future advertising strategy on that one experience.

We recently ran 5 different ads to a total of 100,000 subs in a variety of eZines. While most of the ads had a CTR of about 1.5%, one of them did over 2%. We then ran that ad plus 4 new ones to another 100,000. One of the new ads pulled almost 4%. Guess which one we finally settled on for the remainder of the campaign? Yup. Because we tested, our profits were almost THREE TIMES as great for the same dollar cost.

I hope that this clears up some of the FOG surrounding eZine advertising for you. If you haven't tried it yet, go ahead and risk the $5-10 and give it a shot. You might be amazed at the results!

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