Direct-to-Desktop Publishing Primer Part 1
By: R Market Daily
Direct-to-Desktop Publishing Primer Part 1 by John Botscharow
Today I am going to start a training series on becoming a direct-to-desktop publisher. The information in this series will apply to both brand new publishers who have never done a newsletter and to email publishers making the transition to direct-to-desktop publisher. The most important factor is being a successful direct-to-desktop (DTD) publisher is your attitude about publishing. This is especially true for any of you who are making the transition from email publishing or have done any email marketing. Email publishing and marketing teaches an "in your face" attitude that I will refer to as push marketing and publishing. Push means shoving your messages into the face of your readers. This assumes that your message is, first, getting to your subscribers, and second, that they think what you have to say is so important to them that they want to read everything you say. The statistics on the effectiveness of email marketing proves the first assumption false. The second assumption shows a level of arrogance on the part of the publisher that is being rejected by subscribers more and more. With the exception of a limited number of very reputable, very large email publishers, the click-thru ratio of email messages, advertising and newsletters, is dropping dramatically. This is especially true of Internet marketing newsletters. That conclusion is based on first-hand discussions with publishers and email ezine advertising co-op owners, all of whom told me that advertising sales are falling off because advertisers are not getting the return on their advertising dollars. Direct-to-desktop publishing, unlike email publishing, is based on providing very-high quality content. As much as possible, this content should be original (written by the publisher) content. We all use third-party articles. When you do, I suggest you do as I do in my Daily. Write a multi-paragraph commentary on the article. Post that in your newsletter with a link to the actual article, preferably on your web site. That way, your readers will get your views on the subject as well as whatever the author of the article has to say. But, to make sure there is no misunderstanding, you must provide high quality content in your direct-to-desktop newsletter and provide a lot of it and provide it often, or you will not be as successful as you could be. We will get into more detail on why and how to do this in a future installment of this series. The change from push to pull means not being a bean counter. A lot of email publishers are hesitant about making the shift from email publishing to direct-to-desktop publishing because they are afraid their subscribers will not follow them. Making the shift will certainly reduce the size of your list, no doubt about it. But the reasons for that having nothing to do with direct-to-desktop publishing and everything to do with the fundamental problems of email. I have lots of personal testimonials and statistical evidence to back up the following statement. Email lists are worthless because, on the average, 10% of the email addresses on your list represent real readers. The rest of the addresses fall into a myriad of categories, all with one thing in common. No one ever reads the messages in that inbox. So, if your list is similar to what mine was, out of just over 1000 valid addresses )I cleaned out all the bounces), just over one per cent moved over to the direct-to-desktop delivery in the beginning. In a little less than a year, my list has grown slowly but steadily. But even with only a couple hundred subscribed readers, my newsletter has achieved a level of success that it never even got close to as an email newsletter. The best way to put this in terms any email publisher should understand, one subscribed direct-to-desktop subscriber is worth the same, if not more, than 100 addresses on an email list. All of the attitude adjustments I have mentioned are very important, but there is one more adjustment you must make that stands head and shoulders above the rest. Email marketing and email publishing gurus all preach making the customer your first priority. But what they teach about that and how that is practiced by email publishers is far different from how direct-to-desktop publishers make their customers their top priority. First of all, most direct-to-desktop publishers seem to realize that their readers are customers. They realize that, if you do not provide what the customer wants, it is very easy for them to leave. All you do is delete that newsletter from your RSS feeder. No fuss, no mess, no spam complaints. Email publishers, even the really big ones, feel the need to make unsubscribing from their lists as hard as possible. The more complicated the process, the more likely for things to go wrong technically. And if your subscriber has tried to unsubscribe and then receives another issue or ad from you, they are increasingly prone to file a spam complaint. I hope you realize the repercussions of that! Why do email publishers make it so hard to unsubscribe? They use all kinds of rationalizations for this. The most prevalent is for your protection. BS! Most of them do it for other reasons, partly based on what list server they use. Some list servers, like Majordomo, need a special email code sent that is confusing, even for me, to make work right. If they wanted to make it easy for their subscribers, they would have picked a different list server, one much easier to use. The best email list servers provide an immediate unsubscribe link at the end of every message. But even some of the lists that have a link like that, will tell you that it will be two weeks before your request is processed. That makes me suspicious, because it only takes them ten seconds to get you subscribed. It seems to me that they want to hang on to your email address even harder than some banks want to hang on to your money. Have you noticed something about the email unsubscribe process? You, as the subscriber, are not in control. Yes, you make the initial request, but after that it is out of your hands. Your request can be delayed at the discretion of the publisher or even be ignored due to "technical difficulties." With direct-to-desktop publishing, it is you as the subscriber who controls what newsletters you receive and read. Don't want this one or that one? Just delete it. Much like the channel set up on your satellite or cable and just as efficient. Having readers who can leave whenever they want and you won't even know that they left until you check your stats at the end of the month and compare them to the previous month, puts a tremendous responsibility on the direct-to-desktop publisher. We have to learn to provide content that will constantly pull both our present readers and new subscribers to read our newsletters. The only consistent way to get and keep readers is content. The better your content the higher retention and acquisition rates you will see. If you are not keeping your readers or getting new ones, then look to your content first. For direct-to-desktop publishers, content truly is king! To summarize all this in one short paragraph you can easily remember: Email publishing uses push technology and focuses on quantity for success. Direct-to-desktop publishing uses pull technology and focuses on quality for success. To read the rest of this series, please http://quikonnex.com/channel/subscribe/3rmarketing/143" target="_blank">subscribe to the R Market Daily © 2004 John Botscharow All rights reserved worldwide
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