So, here we are again. Part two of a two-part post on e-newsletters.
As I said in part one, I’m a fan of e-newsletters because they deliver a lot traction without the high cost or hard work of direct mail and other print media. You get nearly instant response to your news, special offers, ads—whatever business you’re about.
It’s always about the e-newsletter’s content
Your content determines your e-newsletter’s format. I advocate for e-newsletters with two or three columns. Lengthy copy in wide columns is hard on the eyes. Again, your objective is to play into the way people read on the Web. Pack your page real estate with many bite-sized chunks of content instead one epic narrative.
Use simple graphics. Unlike print, online readers tend to focus more on text than graphics. Use colored boxes to highlight key items to make your layout visually interesting and guide readers to key topics. Your e-news email will download and pop open faster too.
One of the cardinal rules of publishing an e-newsletter is to send it out on a regular schedule. You want your readers to become accustomed to receiving your newsletter and, ideally, anticipate when it will arrive. What should that schedule be? I hate to equivocate, but the truth is, it could be anywhere from everyday (rare) to once a year (even rarer). It depends on your audience, content and your objectives.
The worse thing is to send your e-news out too often, especially if your content doesn’t merit it. Everyone gets newsletters these days, and not many of them get read as it is. I’ll bet you automatically delete some of the newsletters you subscribe to because you get sick of seeing them turn up in your in box or don’t have time to read them. So do I.
If I were you, I’d start by sending out your e-newsletter once a month and see how it goes.
Tracking the success of your newsletter is relatively easy–you’ll know soon enough if it’s effective by the number of people who opt-in and then unsubscribe. There are other ways to measure the success of your e-newsletter—everything from the number of inquiries you receive in response to special offers, to the number of recipients who actually open your email.
I worked for one publishing company where we sent out the same news-oriented, e-newsletter twice a week. At another place I worked, we sent out seven different newsletters every week and a four more every other week. Based on reader feedback, ad revenues, the leads the newsletters were generating for our advertisers, open rates and other factors, those schedules worked for us.
Make it easy for subscribers to opt into your e-newsletter. Make it easy to unsubscribe too. If you don’t, subscribers will tag your newsletter as spam. You’ve probably done it. Same here.
If you don’t have the in-house talent to produce an e-newsletter or lack the resources to manage your subscriber list, you can outsource part or all of the job. Do a search. You can download free templates, find companies who will handle your subscriber list and more. I grabbed the newsletter template above free off Templates Box.
I’ll write about outsourcing your e-newsletter and the variety of options you have to build and manage your list some other time.
