E-Mail
Newsletter Marketing Essentials
by: Lee Traupel
If
Gutenberg were alive today he would be in publishing
heaven! Forget the printing press, the web has fast-forwarded
self-publishing in ways that are evolving so rapidly
it's becoming difficult to integrate technology and
process to leverage the opportunities. Any company,
regardless of their size and marketing resources should
be publishing an opt-in e-mail newsletter - it's a
very low cost way to build community with customers,
keep suppliers/partners/other informed and generate
new business.
How do you get started? You must decide up front if
you have the marketing expertise to develop your "newsletter
creative" in-house and how you want to manage
the distribution of your newsletters. Many companies
turn to agencies/marketing services firms to help
them develop the actual newsletter creative and also
outsource part of the process to ASP (Application
Service Providers), who handle all facets of the list
distribution, signup and ongoing management.
Content format can be critical to the effectiveness
of your newsletter - we typically don't recommend
HTML (text with images/graphics embedded) format unless
our client's product or service is very consumer-focused
Plain old text is not as glamorous as HTML but it's
a lot more effective in most cases - people want information,
not fancy eye candy that's appealing to marketing
geeks - keep your message, simple, to the point and
with customer success stories or references when/where
you can to drive credibility.
It's relatively simple to use a Word processor with
a mail merge program to integrate the addresses (depending
on the volume) with your message and then send out
via your ISP. But, doing it in house can be very time
consuming - you have to deal with inbound requests
for people who want to be added to your list, "unsubscribes"
(people who want to be deleted) and integrate your
web site into the process, so people can automatically
sign up with a back end auto-responder (automatic
message) that confirms their sign up.
Most companies utilize an Application Service Provider
("ASP") to outsource the list hosting, signup
and unsubscribe management processes and web site
integration - typical costs are under $50. per month
based upon your number of subscribers (on average
up to 10-30K), frequency of your newsletter mailing
(rule of thumb would be 2-4 times per month) and other
specialized features, such as bounce back deletions
(deleting any e-mails that have a "bad address")
and making the HTML code available with a graphic
to sign up people directly from your web site. Be
forewarned, most list hosting providers tell you up
front they reserve the right to delete your account
if they catch you spamming thousands of people whose
e-mail addresses were not "opted in" (given
to you with permission to market to them).
What do you want to look for in an ASP List Hosting
Provider? You want great customer service, an online
interface that enables you to easily manage the process,
the ability to easily to cut and paste your text (newsletter
copy), instant distribution of your newsletter and
the ability to know at a glance how many subscribers
you have on an ongoing basis and the number of new
subscribers and unsubscribers.
There are lots of list hosting companies out there
- I'd recommend including two on your short list.
One of the oldest, most well established companies
that has consistently won rave reviews for excellence
in customer service is Sling Shot Media, LLC www.listhost.net
- they've been hosting since 1998 (ancient in web
time) and offer a wide range of consulting services
related to all aspects of newsletter marketing. The
other company to check out would be Microsoft's bCentral
Services www.bcentral.com which offers list hosting
as one of its services. I can't give them rave reviews
for customer service, as they make you pay extra for
anything more than e-mail support which can be a hassle
at times. But, their list hosting interface is easy
to use, works well most of the time and they are price
competitive.
Finally, one of the biggest marketing challenges facing
many small to medium sized companies is generating
a newsletter subscriber list. I don't have sufficient
space in this column to address this challenge - but,
it's a classic go/no go situation; the longer you
put it off the harder it becomes, so get started,
the upside rewards are too significant to delay!
About The Author
Lee Traupel has 20 plus years of business development
and marketing experience - he is the founder of Intelective
Communications, Inc., http://www.intelective.com,
a results-driven marketing services company providing
proprietary services to clients encompassing startups
to public companies. Lee@intelective.com
Lee@intelective.com
