/Best Practice for Sending Email Newsletters         Email newsletters are a low cost and convenient way to contact your existing customers, but due to the quantities of email being sent and the increasing problems with spam emails and unsolicited mail, you must be aware of these issues to ensure that subscribers who receive your newsletter have a positive experience. As with all marketing, you are pushing the brand of your company. This means that annoying your subscribers and getting it wrong may tarnish your brand as well as the reputation of you company. Unsolicited email Unsolicited email is simply email from a business which the recipient has not requested. A previous business relationship must exist with the customer, or they must have opted into the email newsletter you are planning to send. The most important step with any newsletter is to ensure that it is not unsolicited. By Law, you cannot send unsolicited email unless they have consented to receive them, and if the identity of the sender has been disguised or concealed, or an unsubscribe feature has not been provided. Handling your email list The best practices for when trying to attract new subscribers are: Make it easy to find where to subscribe Tell subscribers how you are going to use their email address How often will subscribers receive email newsletters Describing what kind of content the newsletters will contain Informing them of how they would remove themselves from your newsletter, which lets them know that they have an option if they decide that the newsletter is not useful to them Publish an example of a previous email newsletter on your website This means that as well as choosing to subscribe to your newsletter, they will be informed as to the frequency and content to expect, giving them a chance to review their decision and gives them a good indication of what they will receive. For people who have subscribed to your mailing list, there are two main considerations: Ensure they wanted to be there – if your website simply takes an email address and then starts a subscription it can be possible for other people to subscribe your email address, or to mistype their own email address and pass in yours. Without a secondary check, you would be sending newsletters to customers who do not want them. The best way to circumvent this problem is to email the address which has subscribed and state that they have requested to join your mailing list, if this is correct they can complete the subscription, if it is incorrect then the subscription can be cancelled Make updating a subscribers details easy – so that if they move email address they can easily update this, sending email to an old address does you no good. Allowing subscribers to remove themselves from your list at any time is good practice, as it shows that they are in control and that you respect their choices. It also means that if they no longer require your newsletters they can remove themselves immediately. It is good practice to include a way of unsubscribing or linking to a web page about unsubscribing in every newsletter you send. Sending an email newsletter There are several key points to consider when creating the email: Use a descriptive subject – your subject should be an indication of what is inside your newsletter, many people now will delete emails from an unknown address if the subject does not make sense (as this is a common clue to the message being spam) Use familiar branding – if someone has been to your website then they recognise your email newsletter if it looks familiar, also the consistency will reinforce your brand Personalise the email – some email recipients look for the email to be to directed to them personally by name, but also it can be beneficial if users can select the categories of content they want, so that they receive newsletters containing only pertinent information to them Avoid overwhelming the reader with too much content, it is best to focus on a few key points in your email and point the interested reader back to your website than create a lengthy newsletter which they need to trawl through Avoid attachments to your email messages, as well as keeping the size of your email down, many attachments may be blocked Provide an easy way to update a subscribers details Provide a link to allow them to remove themselves from the newsletter Provide a link to your privacy policy Analyse when to send the messages for greatest impact, this will affect some businesses more than others, for example if you advertise performances, you will want to publicise them at the most appropriate time, also if your customers are high street shoppers, it may be best to email them at the end of the week in time for them to be aware of your offer before the weekend Ensure that your email newsletter appears correctly in different email clients (e.g. Outlook, Hotmail, Eudora etc.) Test your newsletter by sending it to yourself first If possible test your newsletter against some spam filters and email packages to ensure that it is not being erroneously treated as spam. 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