4 Ways to Wreck a Good Newsletter – Part 1

With blogs popping up all over the place you could be forgiven for thinking that the good ‘ole email based newsletter is dead. Don’t be so hasty to jump to conclusions like that. Email newsletters, especially HTML based ones, are alive and kicking. But not all newsletters are good ones. Over the next week I’m going to share a few examples on how to wreck your newsletter campaigns.

Wrecking Ball #1 – Getting branded a Spammer

You did the right thing and got explicit permission to email people your newsletter … that’s all you needed to do in order to not be a spammer? Yes but no but yes! The great guys at Campaign Monitor recently quoted a recent survey by Q Interactive and MarketingSherpa that had some numbers that really got my attention.

“underscoring consumers’ varying definitions of spam, respondents cited a variety of non-permission-based reasons for hitting the spam button, including “the email was not of interest to me” (41 percent); “I receive too much email from the sender” (25 percent); and “I receive too much email from all senders” (20 percent).”

20% hit the “report spam” button if they feel they’re getting too much email in general??? Wow, what’s a poor business to do when all they’re trying to do is some basic?

Well the first, and most important, thing that you can do is be relevant. Put yourself in your subscribers shoes and ask “what is it about this newsletter that is useful for the reader?” Unless you are writing from their perspective and making it relevant to them you may as well save your time.

In the Campaign Monitor post, Mathew Patterson makes another good suggestion to avoid being caught in the spam trap -

“Finally, a clear permission reminder and prominent unsubscribe link will make it easier for a subscriber who is no longer interested to unsubscribe rather than reach for that spam button.”

Unless you are relevant your readers won’t open your newsletter, will unsubscribe or at worst they’ll the hit the dreaded spam button. So what are you doing so you aren’t compared to processed meat?