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capture it into a database file. Then you can append or merge the email addresses into
your database.
Most email harvesting is done to send bulk unsolicited email therefore, as was
mentioned in a previous section of this e-book, harvesting is prohibited under the CAN-
SPAM Act 2003. Keep in mind that regardless of its prohibition under CAN-SPAM,
email address harvesting is not a good business practice. The use of email harvesting
techniques means that some part of your database of “subscribers” will have not had a
prior relationship with your or your organization. In this case, prior relationship means
any previous correspondence, transaction, third party permission use, or offline contact
(like a store visit). If you are foolish enough to use harvesting methods to build your
email list, your email newsletter will be perceived as spam and your web site will likely
be shut down. That’s the last thing you want!
Timing of Distribution
One advantage of email newsletters is that they give you the ultimate flexibility when
timing a delivery. When do you want readers to receive your email newsletter? This is a
question that e-marketers also study. Think about the best time to catch people’s
attention. The time and day of appropriate distribution of your email newsletter may
vary with the needs of your target audience. There maybe some group that enjoy
receiving your email newsletter on the weekend, while others can’t be bothered with
email on the weekend because they are busy with recreational activities. Some editors
believe that mid-day and mid-week are the best times to catch people's attention. Many
studies reveal that email marketers think that the best time to send an email marketing
campaign is between 8:00 am and 1:00 pm and that the best days of the week are
Tuesday, Wednesday or Thursday.
Monday mornings are tough for many people as they try to get back into the swing of
things and emails received late Friday, over the weekend, and early on Monday will
stack up and compete for attention with your Monday morning email newsletter.
Fridays may not be a good delivery day because people are trying to wrap up their
work, and look forward to rest, relaxation, and recreation for the weekend. Some
newspaper editors save their best stories for mid week when they believe readership is
up. Weekend reading habits are difficult to predict. Many people like to relax with their
Sunday newspaper as they religiously cull through just about every interesting article on
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Sunday morning or Sunday evening. There are sports fans who like to spend Saturday
morning with the sports page. The point is that only you can answer the timing question
after studying the wants and needs of your subscribers. For example, one of the most
popular ecommerce sites, Circuit City (www.circuitcity.com
), sends their emails
during the day on Sunday. This time obviously works for them based on their results.
Identifying the best time to send out your email newsletter may not be easy. Rules of
thumb (between 8:00 am and 1 pm and Tuesday, Wednesday or Thursday) may be the
best times to satisfy your readers needs, provide optimal open rates (the percentage of
emails received that are read), and help to maximize your revenues. Every target market
has different needs and therefore you must think about the best timing (day and time)
for the distribution of your email newsletter. One idea is to experiment. That’s another
advantage of email newsletters. They are so cost effective that you can experiment with
different timing plans. Try different days and times and track some relevant metric
(responses, new subscriptions, orders, request for information, contest entries etc.).
Eventually, you should arrive at an optimal time and delivery day.
Ready to Launch
When you are ready to launch an issue, there are a variety of quality issues to consider.
A check list can help you resolve many quality issues before you click the send button.
The check list below is a starting point. Revise it to meet your specific needs. A copy
of this checklist is also included in the appendix of this book.
Proofread one last time. (see the next section on proofreading)
ɸ
The "From:" line includes your company name, brand name, and
preferably the name or a real person (such as the editor).
ɸ
The "Subject:" line is the right length. It is 5-8 words, and no more than
40 characters including spaces.
ɸ
The "Subject:" line incorporates a specific benefit that will interest
subscribers and motivate them to open the issue.
ɸ
The "Subject:" line includes your brand name if for some reason your
"From:" line does not.
ɸ
The "Subject:" line accurately reflects the theme or basic message of the
issue
ɸ
If possible, the email newsletter body is personalized with the recipient's
first name last name or both, if appropriate.
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ɸ
The email newsletter copy is well written, clear and concise.
ɸ
The email newsletter copy balances information and promotion (80/20
mix).
ɸ
The promotional copy of the email newsletter contains a strong or at
least effective call to action.
ɸ
The issue focuses on benefits or value-added information.
ɸ
Appropriate graphics and a good use of white space.
ɸ
The issue has been effectively proofread including the body of the email
newsletter, the "From:" line, and the "Subject:" line.
ɸ
Links have been double-checked to assure they work properly.
ɸ
The issue has been previewed and you have sent a test copy (to
yourself) in HTML and text.
Proofreading Your Newsletter
Be sure to properly proofread your email newsletter by getting someone else to ensure
the quality of your newsletter. Mistakes in your email newsletter will destroy your
credibility and the effectiveness of your message.
It’s always better to have someone else proofread your work because your own errors
can often “fool your eye”. However, even if you pass your work on to someone else to
proof you should always do your best to proofread your own work. In general, your
proofreading should be more than just re-reading your newsletter. You should ask
yourself:
ɸ
Does the newsletter look right?
ɸ
Is it effective and complete?
ɸ
Does it sound right?
ɸ
Is it correct?
Proofreading needs to be done in multiple stages. Some experts believe that at least
four rounds of proofreading are necessary. The first pass should involve a general read
— simply looking to see if the newsletter “looks” right. Here’s where you may catch
mistakes such as lengthy paragraphs, poorly positioned graphics, and poorly placed
hyperlinks. You may want to read the first pass aloud to let your ear catch grammar or
awkward sentence construction. The “sound” of your newsletter is important. If it
sounds stuffy or forced, people aren’t going to read it. A subsequent pass should involve
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reading one sentence at a time. Some experts also suggest you should do one pass from
the end of the newsletter to the beginning.
Each proofreading pass brings the newsletter closer to perfection. In addition, a
proofreading checklist is always a good idea. Here’s one you may find helpful
Proofreading Checklist
ɸ
Newsletter has been spellchecked.
ɸ
Read the newsletter aloud to check for complete sentences and flow of
thoughts. This also helps you find missing words.
ɸ
Ideas are organized in a logical order.
ɸ
Every sentence begins with a capital letter and ends with the correct
punctuation mark.
ɸ
Periods and commas are used correctly.
ɸ
Apostrophes are used correctly for contractions.
ɸ
Quotations are punctuated correctly.
ɸ
Names of people and places have been capitalized.
ɸ
Each word in a title have been capitalized except: and, but, or, a, an, the,
and prepositions that are less than five letters long (from, to, in, out, on,
over, etc.).
ɸ
First word of a title is always capitalized.
ɸ
Use of common homonyms (there, their, they're; to, too, two, your,
you're) is correct.
ɸ
Checked accuracy of numbers used in newsletter articles.
ɸ
The numbers one through ten are spelled with letters. Numbers over ten
are written with numbers unless they begin a sentence.
ɸ
Accurate abbreviations and acronyms.
ɸ
Book titles are italicized.
ɸ
Quotes are in quotation marks or italicized.
ɸ
Eliminate the use of jargon and clichés.
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Promoting Your Email Newsletter
Contacting Existing Customers
How do you get the word out that you have an email newsletter? The first obvious step
is to let all your current customers know about the launch of your newsletter and how
they can subscribe to it. With every correspondence that you send to your current base
of customers, invoices, confirmations, invitations, thank you notes, etc., you need to
include information about your email newsletter.
Some tactics are obvious. Have you offered your existing customers a subscription to
your newsletter? If you haven't, you should email them an offer to subscribe. In addition
to trying to motivate your current customers to subscribe by explaining the benefits of
the email newsletter, consider a "special gift" like a free report, white paper, article or
book if they subscribe. Perhaps you can do the same if a current subscriber refers a
friend who registers as a subscriber.
Promoting Your Email Newsletter on Your Site
You should also promote your newsletter on your Web site. When you promote the
email newsletter on your web site (and this is true in all your newsletter promotional
pieces) you must give your prospective subscriber a reason to subscribe. Don’t just put
a banner on the site that says something like: "Click Here to Subscribe to our Free email
newsletter". Find a way to communicate why they should subscribe. Answer the
question: How will they benefit from subscribing and reading your email newsletter?
The idea that your email newsletter is free is not enough to get someone to subscribe.
Unless you can persuade people to believe otherwise, for the most part, “free” means
worthless. As a motivation to sign up, people must believe that they will get something
of value from the free newsletter. There are thousands of free newsletters out there; how
many of them offer really valuable information? What makes yours different or special
from all the thousands of other free email newsletters?
You really need to "sell" your free newsletter to potential subscribers. In one or two
sentences, make the benefits of subscribing clear. If your newsletter is about a coaching
11
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girl’s basketball, say something like "Subscribe to the Ultimate Coaching Girls
Basketball email newsletter. Receive monthly tips and advice from the best girls’
basketball coaches in the U.S. - from youth, high school, and college.” Doesn’t that
sound much more interesting and valuable than "Subscribe to my free newsletter"?
Another strategy for the web site is the positioning of the email newsletter subscription
box on your site. Make sure it is above the “fold” – immediately visible in the first
window.
25
In other words, don't make it difficult to find. If you believe that your email
newsletter is an important tool in your marketing mix, make sure everyone who visits
the site has an easy time finding the subscription box.
Promoting Email Newsletter in Everyday Emails
You probably write lots of emails in the course of your everyday business dealings.
Each email is an opportunity to promote your email newsletter. One simple and almost
effortless way (and potentially a viral way) is to add some type of tagline in your email
signatures. An email signature (in an email message) is a three- to six-line message or
footer that you can attach to the bottom of every one of your email messages. This is
“free” digital real estate that you should use to plug your email newsletter.
Most people are not offended by email signatures so you should take advantage of this
opportunity.
Here’s an example of an email signature that encourages the reader to sign-up for the
company’s email newsletter.
James Kinlan
President
TemplateZone.com
Subscribe to our Office Expert email newsletter
Post to Publicize
You should actively promote your email newsletter in every appropriate electronic
venue you can find. What better place to do that than in online resources that already
have an audience. Think about the newsgroups, discussion lists and forum postings you
25
Web site writers refer to the area your first see when a web site opens as "above the scroll". This is a
new twist on the term "above the fold" in a newspaper, which is what you see when the newspaper sits
folded on your desk or at the newsstand.
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can join to publicize your email newsletter. An editor who started up an email
newsletter on the topic of personal finance, received thousands of new subscribers by
posting helpful information on finance related newsgroups. He would give advice, tips,
make comments, and contribute to discussion threads and he always informed the
readers that he was the editor of a free personal finance newsletter.
If you can identify newsgroups, discussion lists and forums that relate directly to your
industry, profession, and business niche, it makes sense to contribute to the dialog of
those groups and to gently plug your email newsletter. Gently is the key word. Be
careful not to blatantly advertise the newsletter within these forums. Like spam, blatant
advertising in many of these venues annoys people. However, if you offer valuable
advice or make good contributions to the dialog, you can also mention that you are the
editor of a newsletter and how interested parties can subscribe.
You should also offer to write articles for local newspapers, trade journals, ezines and
other periodicals. Writing articles will become more efficient for you once you start
producing a few issues of your newsletter. You will have a “library” of good content
that you can spin out into an article. Be sure to promote your newsletter in the article
and include your web site address and email address in a tag line at the bottom of the
piece.
When you launch your first issue, be sure to also issue a press release to the local papers
and post the press release on the web – it’s inexpensive. See how you can do this online
at www.prweb.com
. Some people who are familiar with your company or who have an
interest in the types of products and services you offer will take the time to surf to your
web site or email you for information on how to subscribe.
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Documents you may be interested
Documents you may be interested
