Category: e-Newsletters

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Doing an e-Newsletter? Make Sure to Create An Online Archive

Create a newsletter archive.
Create a newsletter archive.

E-newsletters are far from dead at this point, in fact they are getting a new look by many businesses. We have many clients for whom we provide writing and HTML services for their monthly or quarterly e-newsletters. I still find it surprising that when a new client comes to us that they have not been archiving their previous HTML newsletters on their website.

If you are going to create an e-newsletter in HTML format make sure to archive a copy in a newly created online e-newsletter archive section of your website. This way not only are you sending out a e-newsletter to prospects and clients, but you are also creating new website content for search engines.

If you are blogging, you can even use your best blog posts as e-newsletter content; saving time and money, as the people who will typically read your e-newsletter are usually a different demographic than the ones who will regularly read your blog.

The only time you would not want to archive e-newsletters on your website would be if you had a special price offering or coupon code for use for a certain list segment.

To get an idea of how you can create your own archive here is our own  e-newsletter archive to review for ideas.

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GMail and the Promotion Tab – What to Do and Know About It

If you are not a GMail user, you may be out of the loop when it comes to what happens to the nice e-newsletter you just sent out to your clients. With the new GMail inbox, your newsletter is now automatically sent to a tab in the inbox of users called the “Promotion” tab. For some website owners, this means that your carefully crafted message has just gone into “no man’s land”.

Although the promotion tab is not a junk mail folder, it is a place of less consequence and based on how heavily a user is entrenched with GMail, it may mean that your message is one of hundreds that may simply never be seen.

So what are website owner’s to do when it comes to getting your email message read by users of GMail?

1. Make sure your e-newsletter is interesting and provides value. Whether that be a special promotion or discount, to tips of real value to a reader, remember the following…

“Gmail’s filtering is smart, so once your subscribers engage with your email, the more likely they are to appear in the coveted “Primary” tab. Also, if your email subscribers are into doing a little up-front work, they’ll never miss one of your emails again. All they have to do is click and drag your emails to the correct tab, and choose to always filter those messages in that folder. ” Make sure to read this full article on this GMail issue as it is a good one.

2. Encourage your users to click in, and interact with your emails. You can even go a step farther and instruct users on how to move your mailings by drag and drop within the GMail interface to encourage them to put your e-newsletter in the “Primary” tab.

3. Make sure to use social media to point to e-newsletters you have done and archive them back on your website. This gives GMail users who may have missed your message alternative ways to find out about your news.

If you need help with your own e-newsletter program, we offer excellent writing services to make the articles and information you send out interesting and shareable. Find out more about how we can help you today.

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New Challenges for the Delivery of e-Newsletters

Clients are sometimes shocked when they review their first delivery report for their new e-newsletter. Their 1,000 subscriber list ends up showing that only 10% to 30% of their subscribers actually opened their campaign. From what I have seen with a variety of accounts, the open rate may never top 50% for e-newsletter campaigns.

So What Can a Business Do to Improve E-Newsletter Opens?

1. Make sure you are dealing with a reputable subscriber/e-newsletter service. I like iContact, Topica, and Constant Contact. If you are dealing with a small no-name service you may have delivery issues. The larger services will all police their own clients to be Can Spam compliant and typically work directly with ISPs (Internet Service Providers) to try to assure delivery of newsletters. That being said, it is not uncommon for double opted in subscribers to be sent via a specific IP block that has ISP service provider approval and those that are not double opted in to be sent through a different server block that may be filtered out at the ISP level and so never delivered.

2. Try to double opt in your readers. This is a hard one, and most lists we work with although typically “clean” will not be double opted in. Double opted in means that the reader has verified their email address and their desire to receive your message. This is a two step process – sign up for your e-newsletter and then respond to an automated email that asks them to click to verify their email address and desire.

3. Craft an e-newsletter title that is transparent and identifies who you are. Putting your name and a reminder of who you are in the title can help to increase open rates. So can sending at least once a month versus quarterly. For those clients that send infrequently to their e-newsletter list, their open rates will typically be lower, as readers in many cases have simply forgotten that they have signed up or who you are.

4. Make your newsletter sharable and memorable. ISP are watching reader behavior. If more subscribers never read, open, or click things in your newsletter, over time the ISP may lower your newsletter rating pushing it into filtered out status. Here’s a great article that speaks to this topic and shares with you some of the new technology and filters that Internet Service Providers are using to filter out spam.

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Doing an e-Newsletter Do Double Duty with an Online Archive

e-Newsletters are far from dead at this point. We have many clients for whom we provide writing and HTML services for their monthly or quarterly e-newsletters. I still find it surprising that when a new client comes to us that they have not been archiving their previous HTML newsletters on their website.

If you are going to create an e-newsletter in HTML format make sure to archive a copy in a newly created online e-newsletter archive section of your website. This way not only are you sending out a e-newsletter to prospects and clients, but you are also creating new website content for search engines.

If you are blogging, you can even use your best blog posts as e-newsletter content; saving time and money, as the people who will typically read your e-newsletter are usually a different demographic than the ones who will regularly read your blog.

The only time you would not want to archive e-newsletters on your website would be if you had a special price offering or coupon code for use for a certain list segment.

To get an idea of how you can create your own archive here is our own  e-newsletter archive to review for ideas.