Email newsletters

We can help plan, write, edit, design and/or send your email newsletters

Many businesses include email newsletters and social media accounts and pages in their range of communication tools to keep existing customers coming back. These mediums should be part of your overall marketing plan, which would include things like your website, the frontage of your business, local signage, advertising to get new customers, direct mail to retain customers and expose your brand to new potential customers. For some very small businesses, social media and email marketing may be the only feature of their marketing plan! How email and social media fit into your marketing plan depends on your business. For a free conversation about the steps and costs involved in hiring professionals to look after this for you, contact us.

Benefits of using email/social media

There are over 17 million Internet users in Australia, constituting 78.3% of the population (Nielsen). Most people have email addresses and social media accounts. With irrelevant junk mail pouring into our mailboxes and the impersonal world of television and print advertising, email newsletters and social media are the medium of choice for many consumers to hear from their favourite brands.

Email and social media marketing is better for the environment than printed communications as it generates less rubbish and uses less trees in production.

It is very cheap to send emails and social media updates or even free*. Both print and electronic marketing take time to plan, write and send out, but with email and social media marketing the production costs are minimal and there are no professional printing or advertising fees.

With a balanced, value-based approach to sending email, you can enhance your brand and product or service awareness, while at the same time supporting your customers in their quest to have the information they need when they need it.

Why send email newsletters?

Email marketing brings customer loyalty. Regular email newsletters remind your customers about your business. Including useful information for your target market adds value to your email newsletters, encouraging customers to stay subscribed and forward the newsletter to friends.

What if you could work with just one person to write, edit, design, host and/or send emails to your list?

Email newsletters are very effective for driving traffic to a website where recipients can find further information or make purchases, but you can also use them to generate activity in‐store or by telephone, mail or email. They work especially well for service‐based businesses, membership organisations and facilities that a customer is likely to use many times throughout the year.

I can assist you with writing, editing, designing and sending your company’s email newsletters. Automated subscription/unsubscription, list maintenance and analysis is part of the deal.

Who needs to send email newsletters?

Most of us send personal updates to a group of family and friends, sometimes up to 50 people, but we generally use our own email program for that. Putting people’s email addresses into the BCC field ensures a measure of privacy when not all of them already know each other, however it may result in some of the emails being filtered to spam folders. If your personal contacts have your email address saved in their address book and/or their safe sender’s list (white list), then they will more than likely receive your message fine. Business owners often do not have this peace of mind, so that is part of the reason for using a professional email marketing service like mine. The software I use sends emails one by one, making them unlikely to be perceived as bulk mail. Some other reasons are:

• Branded, professional layout that works in most email software

• Format images, text and links properly and nicely

• Automated subscribe/unsubscribe and bouncing email address features

• Statistics enabling you to time the sending of your emails and track the most popular links

Any business with a customer database of 250 or more, where customers are likely to need their products and services on a regular basis, is advised to consider an email marketing campaign. You do not want to spam your customers unecessarily, but you do want to make available certain information for free and certain value-adding promotions that will help your customers save money. Both of these tactics may sound like a loss on your part, but actually the increase in your volume of business will more than make up for the time and money you have spent.

The role of email marketing for different kinds of businesses

Type of business or organisation	Email marketing strategy (ideas)	Benefits of email marketing
Clubs and churches	One newsletter per week with an amalgamation of information	Keep members up to date, invite them to events, help to maintain a sense of community and loyalty
Publisher or author	One newsletter per month to reviewers and media and one per month to readers	Fastest way to explode information about new books to those who want it and can communicate it to others
Retailer	Send emails to customers as frequently as deemed appropriate with special offers, new stock etc.	Increase sales and customer loyalty
Service provider	Determine frequency based on how often the service is required again (eg. one every two or three months) and include timely information and special value-adding promotions, incentives for referrals etc.	Increase sales and customer loyalty
Franchisor	Send one or two per month to franchise owners with the latest information	Ensure franchise owners are working towards the company goals as a team
Webzines, social networks and other online-only organisations	Announce new issues, articles, events or anything else of relevance to the online community	Increase website traffic, community involvement, encourage email forwarding to attract new visitors etc.
Media	Send daily, weekly or monthly depending on your focus	Build brand loyalty, increase website hits, establish a new platform for advertisers

How to send email newsletters

The steps involved in setting up an email newsletter are:

1. Amanda sets up an email newsletter template or templates for you in HTML, using skills and experience as well as testing the design in a number of different email inboxes to ensure compatibility as much as possible. The quickest templates involve one column with a header and footer (made up of graphics and text). It may take anything from one to four hours for the initial template design.
2. You nominate an email address to send your emails from and this is set up and verified by Amanda’s email marketing system.
3. You send your database to Amanda, in *.csv format with First Names, Last Names and Email Addresses and she imports this to her secure, spam and advertisement‐free email system.

The ongoing steps in email newsletter creation and sending are:

1. You email Amanda the text and pictures for your newsletter.
2. Amanda sets up the email newsletter for your list and sends you back a test email.
3. You correct any mistakes Amanda introduces, make your one free revision or approve as is.
4. Once it is approved, Amanda schedules the email for sending on the specified day.

The ongoing process may take up to a week so please allow sufficient time when planning your communications.

What costs are involved in sending email newsletters?

1. Content service: I charge my hourly rate to copywrite and edit your content from eg. bullet points, a phone conversation, website updates etc.
2. Design service: I charge my hourly rate to design and code your email newsletter, check links, test the email etc.
3. Sending service: Unless your website has a comprehensive email marketing component built in, it is a good idea to use a dedicated email list service. This sends emails one by one (less likely to be seen as spam) and manages unsubscribes, bounces and statistics automatically.
4. Statistical reporting: If you are utilising my other email newsletter services, I will often give you statistical reports free of charge.

If you would prefer to design and send your email newsletters in-house, I am happy to recommend StreamSend or Aweber. If you are looking after your own email campaign, here are a few free tips for email newsletter design that I have found useful over the past four years:

• Why use an email newsletter service instead of just sending them myself?
• How to ensure symbols display correctly in email newsletters (entity codes)
• How to ensure images display properly in email newsletters

* It is free to send emails if you ignore the cost of your Internet service, however most ISPs limit the number of recipients that you can include on one email to between 5 and 20. To avoid all the wasted time of forwarding your email and sending it to chunks of your database, use a professional email service. See this article for more information.

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