Email Newsletter

Posted on March 5th, 2010

Email Newsletter

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Delivering Your Email Newsletter

After creating your email newsletter, you face the challenge of
delivery. With a printed newsletter, there’s usually only one
method of widespread distribution: the post office.

Fortunately, though, publishers of email newsletters have
several choices. Let’s now work our way through this small
jungle, and try to remember that although these choices force us
to do extra research, they also give us many more options than
we have with printed newsletters.

The first choice is between manual and automated mail
management. The manual approach is how many, if not most, email
newsletters get started. And, it’s a good system as long as the
mailing list remains small, say something less than 100 or 200
names (depending on how efficient you are at managing your email
program). You can do this with an email program like Outlook
Express or Eudora.

But, if your list is growing, you’ll soon grow impatient with
the amount of time it takes to manually add and remove
subscribers, as well as to send the newsletter. For example, you
might need to divide your list into parts, and send out a series
of mailings rather than just one, to keep the size down.

That’s when it’s time to check out the automated approach, using
mailing list managers. These programs and services come in
several forms. By the way — and you’ll need to know this when
you go looking for an automated service — the difference
between an announcement list and a discussion list.

An announcement list is essentially one way, which takes in most
regular newsletters, or ezines. You are the only person allowed
to send a message to the people who have subscribed. You’re also
probably the only person who knows the email addresses of the
subscribers.

However, if you want to make it interactive, with recipients
allowed to post contributions, as well as receive them, then you
need a discussion list. For most of us, though, an announcement
list is the best starting point for a newsletter.

Now, if you have chosen to automate, you need to decide whether
you want to do it yourself, or have someone else do it for you.
If you plan to do it yourself, then you need a dedicated mailing
list program. A couple of well-known providers are Dada Mail and
MailLoop. To find other mailing programs, enter the phrase
“mailing software” (with or without the quotation marks) in a
search engine.

Of course, it’s much easier to have someone else do the mailing
for you, and that’s where we’re going next, since few of us have
the expertise or time to do it ourselves.

Full service providers take care of all, or almost all the work
for you. You fill in a few forms, make a few choices, and then
they take over and do the rest. Those duties include adding and
removing names, sending the mail, and handling mail that can’t
be delivered (expect as many as 5% of messages to ‘bounce’ back
after each mailing, once your list begins to grow).

So, if you’ve decided to use a full service provider, you next
have to decide whether to use a free service or pay-for-service
provider. Again, free generally works well when your list is
small, and grows more problematic as the number of subscribers
increases.

Free services offer many of the same services as the commercial
services, but don’t charge a fee. The catch? They place an ad in
your e-mail newsletter. If you sell advertising the free service
takes away a revenue spot. Or they restrict the number of
subscribers or the number of mailouts. Services I’ve used
include Topica, MailerMailer, and at the moment, I use
ResponseBot. Again, you can find other services by using a
search engine or directory.

One of the great advantages of using free services is the
opportunity to try out different services before making a
commitment. Test drive each one for a few issues to find out
whether or not you like it, then make your choice.

Summing up, finding your way through the delivery choices can be
a big job. But, be grateful for the choices, and use free
versions to find out which works best for you.

Robert F. Abbott, the author of A Manager’s Guide to
Newsletters: Communicating for Results, writes and publishes
Abbott’s Communication Letter. Read more articles about Internet
communication, as well as email and printed newsletters at:

http://www.communication-newsletter.com/ic.html

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