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STYLE:
The appearance of your site is one of most important factors in determining success of your newsletter. A professionally written, well-designed, content rich publication will guarantee that your subscribers will return each time your newsletter goes out. Keeping them there is key. Only provide good quality newsletters, with interesting and practical articles.
LAYOUT:
The format of your newsletter should resemble exactly or very similar to layout of your website. This keeps subscribers in familiar territory when they are viewing your newsletter, they are able to pinpoint which website that particular newsletter belongs to. If you do your research, good newsletters are ones that have same format, color theme, and similarity to their websites.
COLOR:
The color should reflect colors of your current website. Always use good taste in selecting colors. You don’t want to use colors that are distracting or not pleasing to eye. Three basic colors within your newsletter is a good guide to go with. Any more colors than three, can make your newsletter appear very over stimulating and cluttered. Take a good look at your website, from there, you should be able to come up with a professional looking newsletter.
TABLE OF CONTENT: Include a table of content at top of newsletter. This will allow readers to scan topics to see if anything in newsletter catches their interests. It just shows a bit of organization as well as a sense of professionalism when you provide a table of content to your newsletter.
OPT-IN AND OPT-OUT:
Always give your subscribers option to opt-in or opt-out to receive your newsletters. If you’re concerned about why they decided to stop subscribing to your newsletter, then by all means, follow up with customer and find out why they no longer want to receive it. By offering them option to receive or not receive, is a good practice of common courtesy behavior that you strongly adhere to. You wouldn’t want to keep receiving newsletters that you politely asked to stop receiving? Put yourself in their shoes by respecting their wishes.
TEST IN DIFFERENT FORMATS:
With nature of Internet and various types of programs that subscribers have, you may need to have several formats for your newsletters for your subscribers to have ability to view them. Test them to your computer to make sure that font, size, and style still comes out attractive looking in various formats. If they are not to your liking, then you may need to tweak them a bit until you are satisfied with look and outcome depending on format. This does seem like a bit of work, but you want to reach those customers who don’t have newer, faster programs.
Having your own newsletter will not only enable you to keep in touch with your visitors, but will only increase your database of targeted customers. Newsletters are cheap, and should be a part of every small business owners’ marketing strategy. It will be one of best marketing decisions you will make.
Joelene Orlando is a Web enthusiast and a staff writer/consultant for eMarketing Answers with a broad knowledge of topics covering Internet marketing and communication strategies for both consumer and small business owners. http://www.emarketinganswers.com is dedicated to providing free, comprehensive emarketing resources and online promotion tools.