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E-Newsletters involve many moving parts, and to be done professionally they requires both a big picture view, as well as a tactical understanding of how the pieces fit together.

Michael J. Katz, of BluePenguinDevelopment, brings his e-newsletter expertise to NewsletterIndustry.

Do you have e-newsletter questions? Would you like Michael to address a particular topic in an upcoming issue? Would you like to discuss the industry?

Contact Michael here: Questions@BluePenguinDevelopment.com.

By Michael J. Katz

Building an email list can be an involved process. This reader wrote in to Michael Katz, e-newsletter expert, asking about the best ways to build the list for her stress relief site. Michael's suggestions will work for your site too.

Thanks,
Sandra Streb
sstreb@peoplepc.com

Michael:
Thanks for your email. In terms of who to send your newsletter to, I recommend two things:

Start with your organization’s list of contacts (not just customers, everybody you have a business relationship with). These are the best prospects/referrers for your service, and the ones most likely to be interested in what you say. Unfortunately, at this point in the evolution of email, sending emails to people you don’t know is almost entirely ineffective (and already illegal in some states), so best to stick with those you do.

Look for other complimentary organizations that send newsletters out and see if they’ll do a deal with you to promote each other’s offerings. Your respective audiences will likely have an interest in what a related service might have to say, and this is a good way to build lists fast.

Best of luck with growing your list!

Michael

Judith Elaine

Hi Judith:
Thanks for your email. My recommendation is that you go with an outsourcer for the delivery and list management of your newsletter. It's very cheap (like $15 a thousand names per month), and in addition to giving you all kinds of tracking data and automation of the process, it eliminates the problem you mention.

Rather then sending the newsletter as an attachment (which can be large, particularly if you use a PDF), an outsourced solution sends an email that REFERENCES the images within. That way, the email itself stay small, has no attachment associated with it (which many people won't open anyway as a virus precaution), and still looks beautiful and graphical for you.

Hope that's helpful and all the best,

Michael