The Importance of Newsletter Marketing

By Doug Kaye

From Web Hosting Monthly, August 2003 Edition

August 29, 2003 -- (WEB HOST INDUSTRY REVIEW) -- Email newsletters are one of the great bargains in marketing. They keep your company in front of your customers on a regular basis for very little cost. Newsletters aren't right for every audience-I wouldn't recommend them when targeting the nursing home crowd-but if you're in the Web hosting business, there's a good chance that 100% of your customers and prospects use email, making newsletters a good medium.

I've been publishing my own newsletter-the IT Strategy Newsletter (rds.com/newsletter) - for the past 16 months, and in that time I've built up a valuable list of subscribers with whom I communicate weekly. The list grows steadily, and the more people who subscribe, the more friends they tell. My effort remains constant, but the value of my work increases every week.

To get expert insight into email newsletters, I called my personal guru, Steve Webster, the president of iPost (ipost.com), my email-service provider (ESP). Right away, that brings up the first question: Why not do it yourself? You'd think that if anyone could deliver their own email newsletter, it would be the Web hosting crowd. Believe me: I've run a Web hosting business, too, and this isn't something you want to do yourself. It's the classic opportunity to outsource. There's a lot of technology involved-much more than just running Majordomo or Listserv. Consider all that you have to deal with: handling bounces, automatic detection of HTML versus text, and what about those AOL users with an email format all their own? You'll also want extensive analysis of your click-through data, or you'll be ignoring half the value of your newsletter. HTTPD log files aren't enough.

Here are some of Steve's tips:

Content

Above all deliver content with real value. We're all deluged by email, and if your users don't perceive your newsletter to be worthwhile, they'll just delete it and move to the next message in their inbox. That's why it's important to track your click-through rates: they're proof that your messages are being read-not just your message views.

You might think, "I'm just a Web hosting company. What do I have that's valuable enough for a newsletter?" All sorts of information, in fact. Depending upon the profile of your clients, you can deliver tips on web-site content, performance, log-file analysis, and so on. Give it some thought. You'll find an endless supply of topics about which you can write.

I send out a fairly long newsletter, and by studying the click-through rates, I see a remarkable correlation with page position. Items at the beginning of the message (particularly above the "fold" where scrolling isn't required), receive far more traffic. Apparently few readers get deep into the text. When I have copy I want everyone to see and read, I keep it short and place it as close to the top as possible. Position is more important than using a large font or graphics. Top and center gets the attention.

If you have a newsletter that covers many topics and starts to get too long, break it into separate newsletters. A good ESP will support multiple-subscription options, allowing a reader to manage them all within a single profile. You can also just email a shorter précis-a summary of your lengthy articles-with links back to the full text on your Web site. At the very least, and something I really ought to do myself, put one-line links in a "table of contents" format at the top of your HTML newsletters linking to content farther down the page. Again, try to make the before-scrolling view as complete and compelling as possible.

Privacy

You must have a formal privacy policy. Your readers, your ESP, and their ISP will expect this. Make it simple, clear, complete, and honest. Sure, copy some of the other policies you find, but don't get fancy with the legalese. Plain English (or whatever) is best.

It is absolutely imperative that you never share, sell, or rent your subscribers' information without their explicit permission. I'd even go so far as to say you should never do it under any circumstances, even with the approval of your subscribers. Your relationship with your subscribers is too valuable to risk incurring their wrath, and a great way to lose customers is to expose them to spam. ESPs like iPost go to extraordinary lengths to ensure they, their systems, and their ISPs aren't on the spam blacklists. You need to know that your well-intentioned newsletter isn't taken for spam merely because of its association with a bad ESP or ISP. You'd be amazed at how many of the big names in email marketing are on the spam blacklists because they don't police their own customers. And if your ESP or ISP is on the blacklists, subscribers with filters will never receive your email. Furthermore, you probably won't even know. When evaluating an ESP, take a look at, cluelessmailers.org (cluelessmailers.org), the forums at spamcop.net (spamcop.net), and the NNTP newsgroup news.admin.net-abuse.sightings for complaints about those who spam.

Registration

When soliciting subscribers, ask only for the information you need-perhaps just the email address. Every additional bit of data you collect is another deterrent to customer signup. If you do request more information, make sure it's worth the sacrifice. If your signup page requires scrolling, you've gone too far.

Allow subscribers to view and edit their profiles. Don't hide what you know about them. Profile attributes might contain preferences for HTML versus text, and the right to opt in to a variety of lists or categories.

Make it easy for subscribers to share your newsletter with others. They can simply forward the message, of course, but if you include an explicit forward-to-a-friend link you'll also be able to track the source of such referrals.

Publishing a newsletter isn't a trivial exercise, but you won't find many tools that strengthen your relationship with your customers as inexpensively. Invest the effort to do it right, and you'll receive an ever-increasing return.