Learn/Tips-for-Sending-Email-Newsletters

Revision as of 22:17, 20 July 2010 by KristinaWeis (talk | contribs) (add more tips)

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By Kristina Weis
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Using email to send out marketing pieces and newsletters can be a powerful way to touch your customers on a regular basis, prompting them to come back to your website or tell a friend about you.

Sending email is pretty cheap, too. It can cost as little as 1 cent per email, and many companies let you send unlimited emails for a low monthly fee.

While social media is gaining prominence and popularity in the Internet marketing space, email is still important. You can reach a wider audience with an email campaign than with a social campaign, because more people use email than any social network. It's also easier for people to check email while they're at work -- it's less obvious than opening a social media site, which may be frowned on as a waste of time.

Compared to posting something on Facebook or Twitter, email is a more likely way to reach people. Your message will sit in your prospect's inbox until he or she deletes it. But someone can easily miss your post on a social site if their stream is full of postings from lots of friends, or if they don't happen to log in on the day you broadcast your marketing message.

Below you'll find:

  • A few tips for sending great emails
  • Some email marketing services that can make your life easier and your emails better
  • Guidelines for keeping your message out of spam folders


Tips for Creating and Sending Email Newsletters

  • Keep your goal in mind.
Whether you want to get people to click a particular link, become your fan on Facebook, or contact you, make sure to craft your email to guide readers in that direction.
  • Make sure your email looks okay in various email clients and mobile phones.
An email can look great in the email client you're using -- but it may not look so great in Yahoo, Hotmail, or on an iPhone.
  • Make sure your email looks okay without the images displayed.
Many email clients don't display images in emails by default. Make sure to create the content of your email as actual text, rather than placing your important message in an image. The tools I recommend below allow you to create your message as text.
  • Pick an appropriate time to send your emails.
Sending emails during the middle of the business day on Tuesday, Wednesday or Thursday is generally recommended. People tend to be busy catching up on Mondays, and are rushing to complete work and leave on Fridays. But use your knowledge of your own business and customers -- other days may be more effective for you.
  • Make sure you send your emails from an email address that you actually check.
It's common for people to reply to marketing emails, asking to be removed or with some other customer service issue. You don't want to risk missing these messages.
  • Build your email list by giving people ways to opt in:
    • Make sure your website offers either a link or another way for people to sign up for your newsletter.
    • If customers visit your physical location, offer them a way to sign up while they're on the premises.
  • Keep it short and sweet.
Long emails and big blocks of text can make people gloss over and not read what you have to say.
  • Include a plain text version of your email.
Not everyone will view your email in its pretty HTML glory, either because of their email client or a preference they set. Many of the email marketing services below will help walk you through this.
Many businesses post to these social media sites more often than they send out an email newsletter, because it's easier and cheaper. Direct people to these sites so you can touch them more often.
  • Using an email marketing service is probably your best bet.
There really aren't good ways for you to send and manage bulk emails or craft a beautiful email without using some sort of service -- that is, unless you're an email marketing expert yourself, in which case you probably wouldn't be reading this article. In the next section below I have recommended some services that I know of.
  • Don't be a spammer.
Keep reading for tips on staying out of spam folders and blacklists.

Choosing an Email Marketing Ally

Creating beautiful emails and sending them to numerous people isn't something that just anyone can do. That's where an email marketing service company comes in.

A good email marketing platform can make your email marketing efforts simpler and more effective than they would be otherwise. You can choose a provider that does much of the work for you, or one that gives you a good do-it-yourself platform.

Below is a list of some providers. There are many more out there to choose from, but these are ones that come with a recommendation.

Many of the sites listed below offer a free trial so you can see what features they have and how easy they are to use. Depending on the size of your email list, some of the services offer a free version.

This is the tool I use here at AboutUs.org to send our newsletters. I like its friendly interface and options to customize my own email template. It even has simple A/B testing so you can see which subject line works best and make your email campaigns more effective. MailChimp is a good option if you're comfortable with poking around and building your own email (they do have lots of help pages) or using one of their ready-made templates. MailChimp has 400,000+ users and it's used by several technologically-hip companies like Firefox and Foursquare.
If MailChimp sounds good, you can sign up for a free account.
Before choosing MailChimp, I looked at Emma's tools and generally liked what I saw. Emma impresses SEO guru Rand Fishkin.
This is a popular provider used by a few hundred thousand small businesses. It seems to offer a bit more of a comprehensive service that is less do-it-yourself. AboutUs.org's director of user experience, Randall Hansen, has heard good things from ConstantContact clients.
This is a popular provider for web designers doing email marketing for their clients. It is re-brandable, so designers can sell the service as their own. CampaignMonitor has at least two big fans.
eROI is an Interactive Agency that helps companies with email marketing in addition to a slew of other services like SEO and brand identity. They have some big name clients like HP and Red Bull.
I would call this a full service email marketing company because they offer much more than just email marketing, and doing it yourself doesn't seem like part of the package. It seems to be geared for larger businesses and budgets, and it is used by many well-known companies like Groupon.com, Best Buy, and CareerBuilder.com.

Know of another good email marketing provider? Say something about it on Twitter and include me, 846ccd6cf422489a6efc5302b6c475af.png: @KristinaWeis in your tweet. (Or email me.)

Don't Get Confused With Spam

It's very important that your emails don't get marked as spam more than a very small percentage of the time.

If you get marked as spam too much you can get added to spam blacklists and less of your emails will make it to peoples' inboxes. Being marked as spam is also likely to result in your email marketing service dropping you as a client.

Below is a list of tips to help keep you out of peoples' spam folders:

  • Only email people that have opted in to receiving emails from you.
DO NOT buy email lists.
  • Include a clear and obvious "unsubscribe" link in your emails, or at least a description of how people can opt out of future emails. *
Make it easy, and don't frustrate people. Personally, I hate being told to reply to a different email address with "remove" in the subject line, or having to do much work once I click an opt-out link.
  • Don't email people that have unsubscribed from your mailing list. *
  • Include your physical address in the footer of your emails. *
This can be a P.O. Box or your street address.
  • Don't use false or misleading subject lines. *
Let people know what the email is about so they aren't surprised, and so your loyal customers will know to open it.
  • Don't make the content of your email read or feel like spam.
Focus on letting recipients know what your company has been up to, rather than emailing a sales pitch. If you do try emailing a sales pitch -- which I don't recommend -- be up front and honest about it and how much the product or service costs.
  • Send regularly: often, but not too often.
If someone signs up for your email list in January and doesn't get a single email from you until July they may not remember that they signed up, and they may mark you as spam as a result. On the other hand, daily emails quickly become annoying.
  • Avoid sending emails manually to your whole list by emailing yourself in the "To" field and everyone else via "BCC".
This looks spam-y to people and email clients. Sending emails manually like this isn't fun or very effective, so I would recommend using one of the bulk emailers listed above to up your game.
  • Use a reputable email marketing provider that follows strict spam guidelines.
Otherwise, your emails could be punished for the bad practices of other clients that use the same company (because your emails are being sent from the same mail server).

* Indicates a CAN-SPAM Act requirement


See the post about this list on the AboutUs weblog.

See more articles like this one.

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