By the traditional meaning, a newsletter is a regularly distributed publication. Email Newsletters are basically a similar form of the traditional newsletter however in electronic format. Email Newsletters can be designed to target a specific audience (permission marketing) or a non-specific audience (interruption marketing).
An Email Newsletter is a great way to stay in touch with current customers, or gain the interest of potential future customers. The newsletters should be kept short so as to not over-whelm the reader with a large amount of information, however contain the right level of information and presentation to engage the reader such as:
- Summary of recent changes/developments
- New products
- Important information
- Contact details
A major drawback of this method is that mass Email Newsletters can sometimes be seen as spam by many Internet Service Providers (ISPs) and/or email clients and software. There has been a massive increase in the spamming phenomenon and as a result ISPs have been forced to develop E-Mail Filtering programs in an effort to control the flow of spam emails to the end user. These filters can interfere with the delivery of email marketing campaigns due to the filters inability to differentiate between legitimate Email Newsletters and spam emails.
A very important feature that should be included in all Email Newsletters is the use of an ‘opt-in opt-out’ approach. Subscriber to your newsletter are required to enter their email address and then have to validate the address after receiving a link to click in their email (i.e. Usually like most online subscription services) – opt-in. The second part of this is to ensure that a link is made available in the newsletter for readers to unsubscribe when they wish to no longer receive any future newsletters – opt-in.
