What makes a newsletter worth reading?

[Greg]

I have a junk mail account set up to receive email newsletters from operators. I want to see what other programs are offering and also keep up with any new promotions that seem interesting. To be honest most of these are newsletters are terrible and basically are just meant to: 1) put the brand back in front of your face 2) highlight a network promotion or tournament satellites 3) notify of some change in payment date or processor.

Today I got one from Cashcade which looked promising upon first glance. For starters there were no graphics and it was short. (Good first step) Then it went on to offer a 30% rev share bonus to affiliates sending 250+ new players per month. You don't need me to tell you that aside from rakeback (which they don't offer) no affiliates sending that player volume are on revenue share anyways.

So what makes a good newsletter? I think pointing out program changes is important. Maybe talking about new things to promote is helpful? I'd like to receive some marketing advise in there if possible. Maybe a link to some free SEO tools (like Shoemoney's). If your program really does convert players well then show some data to back it, tell us what you're doing to make this happen.

Just some ideas, what would everyone find useful and make these things worth reading again?

[Guerreiro]

are you talking about a newsletter from the rooms to the affiliates or more like something seobook could be sending you?

[Greg]

are you talking about a newsletter from the rooms to the affiliates or more like something seobook could be sending you?

Hey Guerreiro, sorry about that I should have been more clear. The newsletters from SEObook and even some of the CJ stuff is alright. What I was talking about here was the program newsletters sent out by operators to affiliates.

[Mark]

I know many affiliates are looking for more content to add to their sites. I try to provide emails/newsletters for affiliates where they can easily add the promotion or content to their site as it may be of interest to their visitors/members.

Mark

[Unknown Webmaster]

I would really like to get videos.

Don't get me wrong, the text version is good if you are writing an article about the information in the newsletter, but before I get to that point I need to get convinced to actually read it - something that I rarely do, even though there may not be anything wrong with the emails.

For new promotions I would be much more likely to write about them on my site, if there were a 4 minute video showing me how everything looks from the players perspective and talking about how it works.

[TheDonk]

For me, first you have to get me to open the thing. So many of us are so busy that unless it's coming from one of our top rooms, we don't even open them. If we do open them, it's for a quick scan for anything important, ie, change in our payments, deductions, a really hot promotion etc.

Promotions that only last for one month usually don't encourage me to make changes on my sites (and thus I don't bother reading beyond the part that says "until the end of the month"). If the promotion is really good, I might write a couple articles about it. Otherwise, they're here and gone so fast that I'd rather spend my time writing about something that is going to last.

If you're Stars, FT etc, you can get most of your affiliates to at least give the newsletters a decent scan. If you're smaller, you have to grip the shit out of us I think. Unless I'm making a decent chunk of my money from your room, I'm just not that focused on you.

I will say one thing I hate seeing from rooms.... when programs put up a contest where the affiliate with the most growth in sign ups for the month gets $xxxx. All that does is feed a big affiliate who decides to give you more exposure. It's patronizing to the rest of us, and makes me want to give those rooms less exposure. A lot of programs think we're stupid and I don't like to reward them for thinking that way.

Honest, sincere 'working together' and 'succeeding together' promotions catch my interest a lot better.

[Guerreiro]

Should they maybe include some sort of beta and alpha information, with this i mean give you some sort of small inside scoop of what is going to happen in the future. Maybe give you a sneak peak at a new design if they plan to redesign things, or talk about signing a new poker player. That is stuff you can damn sure write about. I think a small problem with taking information out of the newsletter is that you know millions of other people also get them so how would you then go through the process of making yours a little more unique than the next guy's article?

[Squizzel]

- free stuff
- content / exclusive newsletter content
- summary of content site updates

and give this stuff out, to market your product or products your an affiliate for.

[Lifeofsports.com]

Our market is University students and our weekly reading of the newsletter went from 31% to close to 80% by adding our weekly hot co ed University chick.

We give $50 to the student who submits each weeks hot chick...

Sex sells.. bottom line

[Turtleknife]

I would really like to get videos.

I entirely agree with this, and feel my audience is the same. So when I send out an email to my poker lists, I ALWAYS configure it around a video, and that's what is hi-lighted in my subject line.