What is a newsletter?

A newsletter is an email message that is sent out regularly to a subscriber list. It can be in plain text or html format (or both). It will contain news an information designed to promote your business, but may also contain additional content that may be of interest to subscribers.

Why use newsletters for marketing?

Newsletters have one important advantage over other forms of advertising in that they are targeted to a group who are likely to be receptiveIn most cases people voluntarily subscribe to newsletters which indicates a certain amount of interest. It follows that response rates from newsletters are much higher than other forms of Internet advertising.

How do I produce the newsletter?

You produce it the same way you would produce any other email message. If you are producing a lot of text it may be easier to work in a Word Processing program such as Microsoft Word to make use of the spelling and grammar checker, before cutting and pasting your newsletter into your email client. If you are producing an HTML newsletter you may find it easier to work in a WYSYWIG editor such as Microsoft FrontPage.

What should I put in my newsletter?

Anything you like. News about your business, special offers, product reviews. You might also want to include industry news or gossip or additional content that will appeal to your readers. You can also get more sophisticated and include some general off-topic articles - to in effect produce a mini e-magazine.

Where can I find free content for my newsletter?

There's a surprising amount of high quality content available for you to can include in your newsletters. Generally you only have to credit the authors, and perhaps include a link to the author's home page. It isn't hard to find either. Check out the excellent FreeSticky.com

Text or HTML?

Research tends to suggest the HTML newsletters are more effective at getting your message across and that most users prefer them. However there is still a lot of resistance to html newsletters from Internet old-timers. It makes sense, therefore, to at least give users the option of receiving a text-only copy of your newsletter, even if this means maintaining separate mailing lists.

How do I get people to sign up for it?>

The normal way is to place a button on your Web site, which links to a sign-up form. You should also give customers the option to sign up at every opportunity. This means having a link in every email, invoice, receipt and advert. It helps a lot if you expand on the basic "Sign up for our Newsletter" and suggest reasons why customers just have to sign up. i.e. how they will benefit from it