Of course, it’s much easier to have someone else do mailing for you, and that’s where we’re going next, since few of us have expertise or time to do it ourselves.

Full service providers take care of all, or almost all work for you. You fill in a few forms, make a few choices, and then they take over and do rest. Those duties include adding and removing names, sending mail, and handling mail that can’t be delivered (expect as many as 5% of messages to ‘bounce’ back after each mailing, once your list begins to grow).

So, if you’ve decided to use a full service provider, you next have to decide whether to use a free service or pay-for-service provider. Again, free generally works well when your list is small, and grows more problematic as number of subscribers increases.

Free services offer many of same services as commercial services, but don’t charge a fee. The catch? They place an ad in your e-mail newsletter. If you sell advertising free service takes away a revenue spot. Or they restrict number of subscribers or number of mailouts. Services I’ve used include Topica, MailerMailer, and at moment, I use ResponseBot. Again, you can find other services by using a search engine or directory.

One of great advantages of using free services is opportunity to try out different services before making a commitment. Test drive each one for a few issues to find out whether or not you like it, then make your choice.

Summing up, finding your way through delivery choices can be a big job. But, be grateful for choices, and use free versions to find out which works best for you.

Robert F. Abbott, author of A Manager’s Guide to Newsletters: Communicating for Results, writes and publishes Abbott’s Communication Letter. Read more articles about Internet communication, as well as email and printed newsletters at: http://www.communication-newsletter.com/ic.html

Turning to email addresses, put word “mailto” plus a colon before address. For example, mailto:info@yoururl.com rather than simply info@yoururl.com . When readers click on an address with a mailto: before it, a new message automatically pops up in their email programs, with your address already in TO field. That also has advantage of reducing errors in transcribing or copying and pasting.

Also, be wary of URLs that split at end of a line. While URL may not split in your email program, it may do so in subscriber’s. I usually try to set up so URLs fall at end of a paragraph, and then put in a return before them, so they are on a line by themselves.

Finally, after you’ve emailed a test copy of your newsletter to yourself, test links on copy that arrived at your IN box. Click each link to ensure your readers can get to your page or to their email program with just one click. No copying,. no pasting, no transcribing - just one click.

In summary, by taking these few simple steps, you can make your newsletter more readable. And if it’s more readable, it’s more likely to get response you want.