Review: Best Practices in Marketing with Email Newsletters. A MarketingSherpa Report.

How to excel at the writing, design and delivery of newsletters online.

MarketingSherpa has published a large number of reports, a few of which I will likely review at some time. I chose this one first as I have a particular interest in newsletters.

To me newsletters represent an opportunity to present a human face to your company or organization. Of course, your company can never truly have a face that is human, but your editor can. And through the voice of your editor and other contributors, you can touch people individually in ways that your Website simply can't match.

Here's a passage from the report that underlines the benefits of being 'human'.

Likewise, Deirdre Straughan used to manage five opt-in newsletters for Adaptec, which makes CD-recordable software.

Once she rushed a message out to about 25,000 subscribers telling them that a long-awaited software patch was finally available. Half an hour later, she had to rush an apologetic second message out to the list - it wasn't ready yet after all.

"That's what I get for believing other people (and for doing email when I have the flu)," she told subscribers. "To my astonishment," she reports, "not only was my screw-up forgiven, I got many messages of condolence and offers of chicken soup.

A couple of people wrote that they were glad to find out I wasn't a robot." Someone else wrote, "I don't know if Deirdre is 'a' person, or 'many' persons, or maybe doesn't exist at all. But 'she' makes me want to stay connected with Adaptec whenever I have a choice of products."

You'll find this report peppered with case histories like this. That's one of the things I admire about the MarketingSherpa approach to all that they do -- they steer away from generalizations and focus instead on specifics, making points they can support with current statistics and case histories.

Anyway, I digress a little.

There are a number of things I like about this report. For one, the pages are not bulked out with promises of "how to explode your subscription list in ten minutes flat". In fact, the section on newsletter promotion is very down to earth, almost conservative. But it covers all the fundamentals, the simple foundations of building a quality list. The emphasis is not on high numbers, but on high quality.

Before you even reach that section, you are taken through dozens of steps to ensure that you are creating your newsletter for the right reasons, are designing and writing it well, and are delivering and tracking it efficiently.

Perhaps the core strength of this report is that it serves as a page-by-page guide -- ensuring you make all the right decisions and choices, and avoid all the bad ones.

You think you know the fundamentals to newsletter marketing? Well, me too.

I've been writing and editing online newsletters for myself and for clients since 1997. But I still learned a lot when reading this report. In addition to the new information I found, a fair amount of it in the case histories, I was also reminded of a lot of important points that I 'knew' but haven't been acting on.

Yes, I can personally recommend that you read this report - whether you are an old hand at this, or are planning your first newsletter. And yes, I'm already planning changes to my own newsletter, based on what I learned.

There is a simple, two-word addition to my newsletter subject line I'll be making. It will be interesting to see if it really does increase subscription rates.

Click here for a more detailed description and a full list of contents

>> eNewsletter Co-Registration Service...

Co-Reg Complete

Co-Reg Complete is a new and very cool service to help automate co-registration for your newsletter. Approach a newsletter publisher who has a list that complements your own, offer to put up a sign-up option for their list on your own 'thank you for subscribing' page, and ask them to do the same.

Automate it with Co-Reg Complete and track the results. More here...

Don't miss out on future issues of the Excess Voice newsletter for copywriters. Sign up now:

(Your email address will be used only for the purpose of sending you this newsletter, and you'll be free to unsubscribe at any time.)

MarketingSherpa Reports on SEO Marketing

New Buyer's Guide to SEO Firms
121 search engine optimization firms profiled - including handy comparison chart and index by clients.

21 Ways to Maximize Your ROI from Google AdWords Select
Optimize your paid Google listings - Updated for 2003

Other MarketingSherpa Reports

The Permission Emailer's Guide to Avoiding Filters: Practical new Handbook details the 10 specific tactics to improve your delivery rate, including AOL and Hotmail delivery.

Top 25 Case Studies on Marketing with Email Newsletters.
Steal proven tactics from your peers & competitors.

Customer Service Email Response Improvement Toolkit
Here's an easy Toolkit to train your customer service reps to write clear, helpful email responses that save you money and improve sales.