Sending email newsletters

As of February 2009, there were 16,926,015 Internet users in Australia, constituting 76% of the population*. With irrelevant junk mail pouring into our mailboxes and the impersonal world of television and print advertising, email is quickly becoming the medium of choice for many consumers to hear from their favourite brands.

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. Click here to read about the email marketing services provided by Greenslade Creations.

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

Perhaps the easiest way to think about this is to visualise how it may help different kinds of businesses. The Greenslade Creations email marketing brochure outlines my packages and gives examples at the end of how an email marketing campaign can help grow a business.

If you would prefer to design and send your email newsletters in-house, I am happy to recommend 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:

Please email
Amanda@GreensladeCreations.com
or call 0403 124 533
to discuss your needs.

For details of all of Amanda's services, including how she can train your staff to maintain your website, email newsletter, image collection and more, please download this Greenslade Creations brochure.

Pricing information is available here.

* Internet World Stats