Sending out Newsletters to clients is one of the oldest Internet Marketing Tools and still effective if done right. Email is still one of the main Internet usages, despite Twitter and Facebook.
When you send out Emails you should consider key basics to reach your contacts.
Here in Chile there are services around that sell contact databases, even promote them on their websites. In other parts of the world this is illegal. Spam filters are so advanced these days that they can easily detect emails sent with these services and block them from delivery.
I get lots of emails sent from these service providers. I find them all in my Spam box and I suspect that they land in lots of others Spam boxes, as well. Little value for a lot of money.
If you consider sending out Newsletters that actually arrive at the In-boxes of your clients you should consider the following:
Opt-in
Clients should be able to opt-in for your Newsletter and have the opportunity to opt-out if they don't want to receive Emails from you anymore. Most professional Newsletter Services offer an integrated registration process that can be easily included in your website. Only send emails to people who are really interested in your products and services.
Existing Contact Lists
When uploading an existing Contact List professional Newsletter Service Providers may ask for proof where the emails come from. Some rules are:
OK to use
- Opted in from your website
- Purchased a product or service from you within the last 2 years
- Contacts handed you their business card at a trade show or other event knowing you'd contact them
- Contacts completed an offline form and indicated they wanted to be emailed
Not OK
- You haven't emailed the recipient's address for more than 2 years
- You obtained the email addresses from a third party
- You copied and pasted the addresses from the Internet
Design
Most Newsletters that I receive from Chilean companies consist only of an image. I would need to download the image to read the message. From my experience a lot of people don't even know how to do that. So they don't receive the content of the mailing. Another problem is that "just image" - Newsletters are more likely to be considered Spam by the Spam filters. A better way to design a Newsletter is using HTML with inline CSS. A plain text version should also be included, as some mobile devices can't dieplay html.
Professional Newsletter Services offer ready-made templates that you can easily adapt to your company's look and feel, without any Programming Knowledge. These Templates fulfill the anti-spam requirements mentioned above and ensure that the mailing looks the same on most popular email programs, such as Outlook, Thunderbird, Gmail or Hotmail.
Make sure you use attractive subject lines and headers within the email to attract attention. The design should also include a link to an Online Version that can be accessed with a normal browser ("if you can't read this email please view the online version here") as it might be that the mailing is not display correctly, especially by old email clients.
On the bottom of the email it should leave a note why the recipient is part of your contact list and give the option to opt out.
Statistics
When choosing a software or an external Service Provider make sure they offer statistics for each campaign. You should at least have statistics about
- Bounces: Emails that could not be delivered, indicating the reason why; such as Email Address does not exist, Mailbox full, blocked as Spam, etc.
- Opened: How many were opened
- Links: What links have been clicked (links to your website with information about the products or Services you are promoting).
Usually you can even track who opened and who clicked on a link.
We have used Constant Contact, Campaign Monitor and Mailchimp. All are very reliable with awesome statistics. For starters I would recommend Mailchimp as it is free for up to 1000 contacts with up to 6000 Emails per month. It also includes a social network feature that allows you to publish your campaigns automatically on Facebook and Twitter.
What is your experience with Mailings?
