Call them what you will: email newsletters, electronic newsletters, ezines. Whatever their name, we’ve all witnessed their routine arrival in our email boxes. Sometimes they appear because we’ve subscribed to them, but often they arrive unbidden. Some are helpful or interesting, but many are not.

The primary (though not only) reason such newsletters abound is simple: they increase traffic to, and perhaps sales on, the sender’s website. Take a look at these survey statistics, which were compiled by EmailStatCenter:

• 89% of retailers surveyed named email as the most successful tactic overall. — Forrester Research and Shop.org, Retailing Online 2009: Marketing Report
• 67% of subscribers say they’ve purchased products offline as a direct result of receiving an email from a retail company. — Epsilon (2009)
• As a direct result of receiving email, 71% of respondents researched a specific offer online. — Epsilon (2008)
• 24% of marketers said that sending one newsletter to customers and another to prospects was “very effective.” – MarketingSherpa: 2009 Email Marketing Benchmark Guide
• 49% of email marketers said newsletters routinely justified themselves. –MarketingSherpa: 2008 Email Marketing Benchmark Guide
• Consumers who subscribed to email newsletters generated 34.25% more product sales. — ConAgra Foods case study in association with MarketingSherpa (2007)
• 30% of small businesses execs say they had an improved image of a vendor from the email newsletter they received. – Bredin Business Information (2007)

Tips to Make Your Email Newsletter Shine

If you own or manage a website and are considering sending out periodic newsletters, here are a few things to consider:

Let Content Rule. If you give readers relevant, helpful, and fresh information, they will continue to read the publication; you’ll also stand a better chance of getting them to your site. A 2007 study by Bredin Business Information determined that 40% of small business executives prefer to see “how-to” content in email newsletters, and 26% want topics about strategy and leadership.

Keep it short and simple. Don’t put entire articles in the newsletter. Instead, offer the first paragraph of each article (or a short summary) and provide a link so readers can click through to the site. Not only does this increase traffic, but it’s a convenience to busy readers, who can quickly scan article leads and determine which articles they want to read further. A 2006 Jakob Nielsen study found that the average amount of time spent reading a newsletter after opening it was only 51 seconds. In other words, if you want readers to read and interact (i.e., click links) with your newsletter, make sure it has something worthwhile to say.

Make the newsletter interactive: One way to do this is to conduct periodic polls on a question relevant to your subject area. People love to give their opinion and see how it matches up to the opinions of others. Or run a contest each issue (the winner might get space for an opinion piece in the next issue). You can easily set up polls for your site on a service like PollDaddy, which offers free polls (or, for a fee, more sophisticated polls). SnapPoll poll provides a similar free service.

Establish a schedule. Be realistic about how often you can afford the time to produce a newsletter. Should it be weekly, monthly, or quarterly? Whatever you decide, stick to it. If you don’t, you run the risk of coming across as an amateur.  According to a 2007 study by Bredin Business Information, 45% of small businesses execs want to receive an emailed newsletter weekly, while 34% prefer to receive it monthly.

Provide Contact Info: Readers should always be aware of who sent the newsletter, so make sure a URL, email address, and perhaps a phone number are always visible (footers and headers are good for this).

Make it Easy to Unsubscribe. Provide a fast and easy way for readers to unsubscribe from the newsletter.  For one thing, the law requires that you do so. For another, why on earth would you want subscribers who hate getting your newsletter? Talk about bad karma!

Offer an RSS feed for your newsletter.  Why? Because many readers prefer receiving it that way. This article in lifehacker.com shows how to set up an RSS feed.

Distribute your newsletter through a professional. Unless you have a high-level ITT department managing your company website, use a reliable hosted email service such as Vertical Response or Constant Contact.  Why? Because the service can take care of time-consuming details like subscribing, unsubscribing, email bounce, CAN-SPAM compliance, and management of email lists. They also provide a huge variety of templates to create attractive email newsletters. Not least, these services offer subscribers a choice between HTML and plain text delivery.

Spelling, Fact-Checking, Writing: If you can afford the services of a professional writer and editor, go for it. If not, be sure to read through a few times looking for mistakes, and absolutely use your word processor’s SpellCheck program. Some people never notice mis-spelled words or grammatical faux pas. Others abhor them and will automatically view your newsletter (and website) as inferior.

Use a Snappy Subject Line: Please don’t put everybody to sleep with a subject line such as “Here’s the Latest Issue of My Boring Newsletter.” Instead, pique interest by teasing with the most interesting contents: “Fourteen Ways to Write an Exciting Subject Line,” for example.

I’ll be interested in hearing how these tips work out for you. Good luck!

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© Suzanne Rodriguez
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