"I have almost 500 people sigend up to receive my newsletter but each time I send it 8-9 open it and 1 =3 click onto website. Now what do I do?"

Honestly, there could a lot of factors involved in low open rate. If 8 or 9 actually open it and then you get 1-3 click...that's pretty good. But problem here, seems to be with getting people to open darned email.

Here's a couple things to think about:

1. How much of your email is getting through? Could your email or service you're using be blacklisted by certain ISPs? I would check and see if you can see how many of your emails are actually going through.

2. How about a compelling subject line? Test out different subject lines to see what grabs your subscribers interest. If you're still writing:

"MyDomain.com Newsletter Issue 1 Vol 14"

Then cut it out!:) That's not going to get people to open it. Try to give them a quick glimpse of what's inside and make it interesting. You'll probably find certain things grab your subscriber's attention than others.

3. What are contents of your newsletter like? Is there a reason for people to open it if they don't have their wallet ready to buy something? I know that many people who sell products only place information about product specials, etc....but if your subscriber is not in a buying mood, they may not open your email.

On June 1, 2005, a new provision of FACTA goes into effect. It says that any employer (even if you only employ one person, and you have their personal information so that you can pay social security taxes,) whose action or inaction results in loss of employee information, can be fined by federal and state government, and sued in civil court.

A USA Today article on FACTA from Jan. 14. 2005, stated “Bet you didn't know that.” But you need to know, and need to know what you can do to protect yourself.

Small Businesses affected most ‘"A small businessman who makes a mistake could bear brunt of a regulation like this," says James Plummer, policy analyst at Consumer Alert, a non-profit group that focuses on a free-market approach to consumer regulations.’

The USA Today article goes on to say that “if you don't shred and information gets out, there are penalties.” But what if you do shred all potential employee information, and take all necessary precautions to protect your past, current, and future employees’ identities, and information still gets out somehow? Under FACTA, you could still be held responsible.

You may not think information theft could happen to you, but neither did this short list of companies, universities, government institutions, and businesses that have had employee or customer information stolen from them:

DSW Shoe Warehouse

Lexis Nexis

University of Northern Colorado

California State University (Chico)

University of California – Berkeley

University of Maryland

Las Vegas Department of Motor Vehicles

Bank of America

Choice Point

Weld County (CO) Employees (information stolen by an inmate while in jail)

How can you, as an employer, minimize your liability? There are hundreds of things you can do to minimize liability, which are probably things you already do. Document shredding, redaction of electronically stored information, careful screening of employees who will be coming into contact with personal information of customers and employees, physically locking file drawers with sensitive information, and setting up firewalls on computer equipment connected to Internet, among hundreds of other solutions, are all good ideas. The old saying that an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure is definitely case when it comes to securing personal information. However, no matter what prevention steps you take, there is no 100% effective way to be sure that employee’s information won’t be compromised. Even if information doesn’t get out from your company, an employee can claim that it did.