Creating Your Email Newsletter

If you've never done one before, creating an entire email newsletter can seem like a daunting task – and more so when you think about putting one together as a regular thing. But it's not that hard. Here are some guidelines to follow.

1. Don't expect more than five minutes from your customer. He's busy: running a business, surfing the Internet, changing diapers, checking out new ringtones. A newsletter of between 500 and 1000 words per issue is ideal for most, especially if you include click-throughs for your website, where they'll find more content.

2. Keep it simple and short. Subdivide that short newsletter into bite-sized bits, smaller articles of 200-500 words. Use short paragraphs and lots of bullets.

3. A picture really is worth a thousand words, but only if your customer accepts HTML. If your customers accept HTML in their inbox, you can include images of your products in your newsletter. You should always be ready with a text version, just in case they can't accept HTML.

4. Your newsletter should be supplementary to what's on your website. Your primary goal for your newsletter is to get your customer to your website, where they will buy products. Always keep that in mind when composing your newsletter.

5. To maintain a high level of presence in your customer's mind, you should send out a newsletter every four weeks. More frequently can get annoying, and less frequently may cause your sales to drop off. With a short newsletter, this can be very doable.

6. Content can be anything useful and entertaining. If you run an online bookstore and want to have short stories and book reviews for your content, that's fine; if you sell genetic engineering products and wnt the latest technology news, that's good too. The key is that it must captivate your customer and get them to your website.

7. Use email newsletters to communicate information about sales. Remember, this is a marketing tool. If you have a hot buy, write an article about it in the newsletter; for instance, if you're trying to get rid of H-scale train track, write an article about H-scale trains and advertise after the article that your track is on sale, with a click-through to the site.

8. Use email newsletters to reward your most loyal customers. With good email newsletter programs, you can subdivide your newsletter so that you can target your most loyal customers with coupons and discounts just for them. The corporate marketers do it; you can, too.

9. Use email newsletters to instigate that first sale from new customers. Have a special newsletter in reserve that introduces new customers to your site, and include a nice coupon in it to encourage the first sale. It's much easer to get the second and subsequent, once they're in the habit of buying from you online.

10. Keep good statistics on your email click-throughs. Again, with good email newsletter programs, your click-throughs – the times your customers click on links in the newsletter to go to your website – are recorded. If you know what customers click on and what they ignore, you can set up subsequent emails accordingly to maximize click-through.

11. If you can, find out more about your customers. The more you know about your customers, the better you can target your newsletter. Run surveys from your site, or simply ask for more, optional information when your customer signs up for your newsletter.

12. Use your newsletter to sell advertising to your vendors and affiliates. With a good customer base and proven sales from your newsletter, you can sell advertising space to related businesses, or even to your vendors when they want to push a product. Don't overlook the eventual money-making potential of your newsletter!