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The Quick Guide to Creating Email Newsletters

dotBiz logo You know what it's like: when you're writing those cards every Christmas, you make a promise that you must keep in touch more often. A good sentiment - and a vital one in business. As they say, it's much easier to sell to someone who has already bought from you compared to attracting new customers. How do you go about that?

Email newsletters are an ideal way of keeping in touch with your existing customers. It is one of the least expensive - and most effective - public relations tools available to you. By sending out a high-quality newsletter on a regular basis, you can keep your clients and potential clients up to date with your business.

Always keep your audience in mind - what is relevant to them, what is important? Are you keeping readers abreast of the latest developments in your industry? Are you letting them know that you have a 50% off sale on last season's stock? Whatever the content, it has to make the reader want to read it, act on it, and look forward to your next issue.

Learn from the papers. Take another look through this edition, for instance. Notice how copy is written to entice you in to read the rest of the article. Be clear and concise, while also trying to get across the personality of your business. For example, a newsletter from "Smithers and Smythe Solicitors" would be more formal than one from "Dave's Discount DVDs". So, make sure you know who your audience is, and write accordingly.

Now, I know this is obvious, but make sure that you read, re-read, and re-read again every newsletter before you send it out, checking grammar and spelling. Thre's noting wurse thn a noosleter littterd with mistooks. Get someone else to check it over, too, if possible.

Nobody likes having there inbox full to bursting with emails they don't want. Unsolicited emails are also known as spam, and since 2003 sending spam in the UK has been a criminal offence. You have to let people 'opt in' to your newsletter. This means that you can only send emails to people who have expressly asked to receive them. You must also give subscribers the option of unsubscribing easily.

This may all sound a bit daunting, but there are loads of applications out there to help you manage your newsletters and subscribers. If you already have a website, they can be integrated quite easily, providing you with an ideal way to entice people back to your site.

If you have an ecommerce site, you should be building up a database of customers. Do you have a newsletter facility on the software you use? If you do, are you sending subscribers regular emails with your latest offers and new season arrivals?

Most people are happy to receive newsletters every month, so try to avoid sending more often than that. During the peak Christmas season, sales newsletters arrived in my inbox by the bucket load, so you have to make sure that yours stand out from the crowd. Oh, and try to avoid words like "free" and "offer" from the subject line, as spam filters might reject your email before it reaches your customer.

So, that's your quick start guide to creating newsletters.

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