This is a graphic that I shared on Twitter late last week that illustrates, in part, why I use email newsletters on my photography blog.
The graphic was taken 12 hours after I sent my weekly newsletter and shows the traffic (visitor numbers) to a single post. The initial spike in traffic occurred when the post went live (that traffic was generated largely by RSS, Twitter, and Facebook). The second spike was almost completely achieved through the newsletter.
In reality, the second spike was the larger of the two, as the screen shot was taken after only 12 hours, and I find that traffic increases following a newsletter mailout tend to last for around 36 hours.
Keep in mind that this graphic reflects traffic to a single post—each newsletter promotes between 20 and 30 links across the site (you can see this week’s newsletter here).
The actual traffic levels you achieve will depend on how many newsletter subscribers you have, but the principle remains. Email is not dead; in fact, it has the potential to drive a lot of traffic if you work to grow your subscriber numbers.
I use Aweber (aff) to drive my newsletters and I recommend that you consider them, too.
