Australian Web Hosting

Sending Profitable Newsletters to your Customers

These days I think nearly everyone is familiar with receiving spam emails for online pharmaceuticals, software, and other junk, not to mention Nigerian and other scams.

Most of us compromise these spam emails by setting our spam-filters higher, and in the process we also miss out on a lot of important mailings and newsletters that we have actually subscribed to.

Unfortunately, the same applies to your eStore newsletters that you send out to your customers, advising them of the latest specials, pricing updates and new items etc etc. Too often, your customer never sees the newsletter as it is gobbled up by your anti-spam filters as junk mail.

There-fore, it is very important to consider the layout of your newsletter just as much as the content you put into it.

1. Ensure that your eStores “from” email address is a valid one for a starter.

2. The title of your newsletter will appear as the email’s subject, so make sure it reads like “Freds Online Shop Newsletter for Dec 2008″ rather than “Doohickeys are only $19.95 this month”.

3. Make sure you have a clear opening statement in font-size 10px and not 6px, that states that this is the “Freds Online Shop Newsletter for Dec 2008″ that you are subscribed to.

4. Ensure that you have an unsubscribe option clearly positioned at least at the bottom of your newsletter, or better at the top and bottom, with a direct link to your http://www.yourshop.com/login.php. Make sure you include instructions on how to unsubscribe.

You must ensure that your newsletter complies with the regulations found here at The Department of Broadband, Communications and the Digital Economy .

The three key steps involved are:

1. Consent - you need to have consent from the person to whom you are sending your message.
2. Identify - you should clearly identify who is responsible for sending the message and how to contact them.
3. Unsubscribe - your messages should contain an unsubscribe facility to enable the recipient to unsubscribe.

Notify your customers that they should check their “junk mail” box for your newsletter, and to include your sending address in the “white-list” of allowed addresses in their spam filters.

Try to make your content exciting, new, interesting and brief. If you have a new product to shout about then, run a dynamic heading for it, perhaps with a single image, a special or introductory price, and have it link to your products description page. Do NOT over elaborate in the newsletter, let them get the main story and the features list from your site.

Kepp that newsletter short and to the point, not a 1000 word boring essay!
Good Luck.