Constructing Effective Newsletters

Here we discuss the various aspects of Internet Marketing as it applies to the design of web sites, what it is, why you should be actively engaged in it and some tips on how you might be able to go about developing and implementing your own internet marketing strategy when designing your website.

Constructing Effective Newsletters

22Jun
2011

We all get them and many of us send them (not as regularly as we should).

Newsletters via email are a proven and effective marketing tool for many businesses and with the correct approach you will see positive results.

There are however a few things you need to understand before running off to the keyboard and creating your newsletter.

You have to have something meaningful to say
What you have to say must be relevant to your target audience
You need to use the right tools for broadcasting your newsletter
You need the means for measuring the results

If you are unable to see that you satisfy the above criteria then don’t bother.

At best you are wasting your time and at worst, you are wasting the time of your recipients and this you do not want to be seem as doing.

With regards to the first 2 points, that is going to be up to you. On the second 2 points you will need to use a commercial email marketing package.

Our websites include email marketing as an integrated feature complete with performance reporting enabling you to see who opened the emails, who clicked on links and whose email addresses are being rejected. All of this is important as it helps you manage your marketing campaigns and your mail list. Another important aspect is management of your subscription list. You must provide an “unsubscribe” link in all newsletters. Our e-mail marketing system manages this for you automatically. If you’re not a Business Catalyst user then there are a number of 3^rd party email marketing systems available which you can readily locate on Google including the likes of iContact, Constantcontact and Vision6.

The next step is how to construct your newsletter! There are some key elements that you must have being:

Unsubscribe link
Name and contact details of sender
Meaningful content in the body of your newsletter
Links to content in your website
Attention grabbing subject(s)

In writing your content, do not write the full story. Instead give it a heading and then simply write an introductory paragraph leading them to read the full story by clicking on a link.

Why do we do this? Everyone is busy, not everyone wants to read every story and most importantly, you want traffic to your website.

With your tracking and performance reporting you will also be able to see who has clicked on these links. This is important because it is giving you feedback on what is of interest to your market.

So in summary, we have determined;