Thursday, May 08, 2003

 

Email Newsletter Tips


I ran across an interesting article on the Microsoft Office site this morning...it's about preparing and sending email newsletters. Of course, I do this regularly for various clients and am a firm believer in staying in touch with everybody possible. :) You can simply create your newsletter in Word and then use File > Send To to send it to everyone on your distribution list; or you can follow the instructions in this article (Create an E-mail Newsletter in Word) and do it from scratch. Just a couple of communication tips, though: (1) Have something worthwhile to offer your readers. We all get too much email to want a newsletter stuffed with jokes or pithy sayings that don't offer anything concrete. Maybe it's just me, but I don't want people to to solicit my business by hiding their requests inside funny stories. Just ask me, straight out, and I'll answer you honestly. Direct communication is always the fastest, cleanest route, imo. (2) Always give your readers an opt-out clause. At the end of the newsletter, add a direct link so that resistant readers can click it to get themselves off your distribution list. Giving people the chance to opt out is the best way to ensure they opt in.

One more note: Bloglet seems to be dead these days. I've been posting to my various blogs but I haven't been receiving the distributed notes. Have any of you? I can't seem to raise anyone at Bloglet to answer my questions or find out when this might be fixed. I'll probably need to email each of you directly and let you know about the distribution melt-down. Hopefully things will be fixed soon. I love Bloglet and have been using it for all my blogs.

Comments: Post a Comment

Subscribe to Post Comments [Atom]





<< Home

This page is powered by Blogger. Isn't yours?

Subscribe to Posts [Atom]