Ezines (or newsletters) are as old as the Internet itself and have been used as a Website promotion tool, both by their owners and editors as well as a means of delivering targeted advertising to specific audiences.

Ad placement in newsletters is certainly not as profitable as it once was but it still immensely popular with big spenders and small outfits alike. It's the ever increasing amounts of incoming junk email (whether it's spam in the technical sense of the word or just legitimate email ads) that has caused the audience to undergo some desensitisation to such ads.

But ezine advertising remains a little outside the mainstream of email marketing and can therefore still deliver good results if deployed correctly.

For starters, ezines have a subscriber base that has agreed to receive the publication, usually by means of a double opt in subscription process. Spam therefore is not an issue and it's reasonable to expect that subscribers really want to read this content.

Secondly, ezines reach a targeted audience, based on the subject matter. That allows the advertiser to apply the old adage of context based advertising. The Internet sports ezines on literally every conceivable topic under the sun, so finding some that cover your topic won't be hard.

Thirdly, many newsletters have large subscriber bases, so you'll be reaching out to a large but targeted audience.

But unlike Pay per Click ads or banner ads, newsletter advertising doesn't provide any metrics to evaluate the campaign by. If sales weren't forthcoming, then what was the cause? Were the ezines not delivered as promised? Was your ad copy not strong enough to entice readers to click? Was the ad placed in a dark corner of the newsletter?

The keyword here is: testing, testing and testing again. Only by using a link tracker (see Toolbox, left) to monitor clickthroughs from your campaign will you be able to find out what works and what doesn't. Tracking clicks will also allow you to measure how much the Cost per Click (CPC) of each campaign is and that's the only way to evaluate the campaign profitability (ROI). Without link tracking your ezine ads you're literally flying in the dark without radar.