Email Newsletters

Many companies send out regular print communications to customers - brochures, new price lists, promotional material, even a Christmas Card. However, these print communications can prove expensive and not always effective. You may well be throwing money away. If your printed material ends up going to the wrong person, or being thrown in the bin, it will not be delivering on the core purpose of the communication - more sales.

An alternative, and more cost-effective method, is to send out an email newsletter, with links to your website to drive traffic to special offers, promotions, new product details, etc. Many agencies offering internet marketing services are also realising that for certain sectors, in particular ecommerce sites, this form of offline marketing is still a key ingredient to the success of an online marketing campaign.

There are several methods for sending out e-mail newsletters, as well as certain rules, or Netiquette.

Firstly, you should not send any emails to anyone who has not specifically requested or subscribed to receive communications from you. This is commercial spam, and there are laws governing this.

It is reasonably simple to add a sign up box to your website so that you can harvest email addresses from interested parties. You can also add a small advert to all your print items to encourage people to sign up - invoices, letters, delivery notes, etc. This will also direct people to visit your website.

Secondly, email newsletters need to be formatted so that they can be easily read in every email client, including webmail. Also, many companies do not like to receive, or cannot read, HTML emails, so you should offer a text option as well as HTML. Text emails should have a maximum of 64 characters per line.

Also, there are known problems with links in emails, particularly for AOL customers, so you need to ensure that all links to your site are 'clickable' for everyone. Additionally, if the URLs to your site are particularly long, use a shortening service such as TinyURL or Make A Shorter Link.

Thirdly, the idea of a newsletter is to:
a) inform customers and potential customers as concisely as possible of new products, special offers, price changes etc;
b) attract people to the website or encourage them to contact you;
c) build a relationship with customers.

The newsletter needs to be short. For instance, each article should have a headline, short description and a link to that particular item, story, article on your website. It should be a simple process to unsubscribe, and it should also include contact details for your business.

It should be sent regularly. This does not necessarily mean daily, weekly or even monthly. It may be a quarterly newsletter, but it should be sent, and expected, regularly.

The beauty of email newsletters is that they can be quick, easy, and cheap to produce and distribute.

They provide an opportunity to attract customers to special deals, remind them of your existence and product range, as well as allowing you to develop relationships, whilst giving your company a "personality" that makes you stand out from your competitors. For an outstanding example of this, check the newsletter of Innocent - one of the fastest growing companies in the UK.

One of the most important effects an e-mail newsletter will have is to encourage you in the discipline of keeping a customer database of email addresses up to date. If you cannot contact your customers, who are you going to sell to?!

Phil Robinson is an experienced online marketing consultant and Founder of ClickThrough Marketing - an international Search Engine Marketing agency providing a range of Internet Marketing Services. Specialists in Search Engine Optimisation, Pay Per Click Marketing Services, Online PR, Social Marketing & Website Conversion Strategies.

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