Primer on Sending Email Newsletters by Richard Munter
Looking to connect with your people? Email newsletters are a great way to stay in touch with your community – whoever they may be. It’s funny how email, this ancient technology (in terms of the Internet) remains relevant and useful even with all the innovations we’ve seen online.
You don’t need to be a writer or particularly verbose to have something meaningful and useful to say. For my own newsletter, I think about topics that are relevant and helpful to my clients – people who need websites, graphic design, or video. And email newsletters don’t need to be overly long; I subscribe to Seth Godin’s newsletter which is short, sweet and packed full of thought-provoking goodness.
Two quick tips for getting started:
1. Use an email sending platform – You could send from your own email account. It’s simple and fast. And it’s fine if you’re just sending to a few contacts. But once you want to send to more people, you’ll want a dedicated tool. These platforms let you to manage your list, allow your readers to subscribe/unsubscribe themselves, and enable you to comply with anti-spam laws.
2. Don’t worry about the design – The variety of template options can be paralyzing. You just need to send something out. Don’t worry about perfect or beautiful. And it doesn’t have to be a book. It just needs to get out there and reach your community. There’s a trend of email newsletters with no formatting, that look like regular emails. Unless you’re a designer yourself, or that it otherwise conflicts with your brand, try sending bare bones email messages.
Which newsletter platform should you use? I’ve had the most experience with Campaign Monitor, MailChimp, and Constant Contact so I’ll restrict my comments to those three. I like MailChimp’s free tier as a great way to get started with sending email newsletters. Campaign Monitor has the best interface and design tools. They also have an incredibly useful testing tool to see how emails look in different email applications. I don’t recommend Constant Contact because it’s clunky and awkward. If you’re not sure about this whole newsletter thing and don’t want to spend money, then try Mailchimp. But if you’re in it to win it, then go for Campaign Monitor.
Like so many things, sending an email newsletter is not so scary. It’s just a question of getting going. It doesn’t have to be overly complicated or lengthy. There are some technical details involved but help is out there. You can ramp up what you’re doing over time and with each iteration of your newsletter, you have a fresh chance to improve.
Some additional resources:
Expanded version of this article with additional details
About the author
Richard Munter of Munter Westermann Arts & Media has been amplifying his clients’ communications since 1998. Munter Westermann Arts & Media is a boutique agency that creates websites and powers online presences, designs graphics, and shoots video. We’re entrepreneurs with a passion for the arts, the environment, and making the world a better, brighter, more connected place.