Top Tips for Creating an E-Newsletter

Hi Deborah
How do you create newsletters and marketing flyers?
Louise Berger, Utopia Salons

Hi Louise

Your question is an incredibly valuable and vital question when it comes to Internet Marketing.   When done correctly, email marketing is a very effective and relatively low-cost medium (in comparison with direct marketing and online advertising, for example).

Email Marketing is a broad subject and takes practice and time to get right.  I’ll share with you a few preliminary but critical tips from own experience just to get you started

1. Email Marketing Solution
   You need to find an appropriate email marketing solution. There are a few online that offer trail accounts, and some have ready-made templates. You need to make sure that your choice is easy to use and allows you to track open and click through rates. It should have the facility to allow your users to register and unsubscribe, and above all, it must be reliable.
   
   
2. The Email Subject
   How many of us file our newsletters for later?
   Make sure that your newsletter or flyer grabs the attention of the reader. I find that placing the main subject you wish to discuss in the headline works.  Simply having Utopia Newsletter June 08 may not entice the reader to open it
   
   Try to avoid sales type words such as sale, special offer, discount, as many spam filters will reject your email.

1. Avoiding the Spam Filters
   Just in case your web address gets blacklisted by the spam filters, it's best to use another domain.  For example, I send my emails from my name at learnebusiness.co.uk rather than myname at learnebusiness.com. 

It's also better from a marketing perspective, to personalise your emails and send them from a real person rather than, lets say newsletter@mywebsite.com

• Make the content interesting and engaging.
  If you do not make the content valuable to your readership they are likely to unsubscribe.

1. A newsletter or flyer is a brand building exercise.
   Make sure that the visual identity of you newsletter matches your web site. E.g. The colours, the slogans and graphics. Have a look at our latest learnebusiness.com newsletter.

1. Some more about flyers.
   You have couple of choices: Attachments can be awkward with newsletter facilities, as can sending large JPEGs.  My advice - don't do it. You can create an online flyer, either through an Adobe PDF, or a web site page, and then send an email highlighting and then linking to it.  You can also create a textual email with a few graphics that forms a flyer style or more personal invitation.