Try not to let the office dullard cramp your style, as you create your newsletter

So it’s an exciting day in the office for us nerds, as Glee is returning tonight after a terribly long hiatus- our squeeees! can be heard for miles.   I will try, however, to focus on the business at hand, which is Part 2 of this weeks email marketing tutorial.  Here goes. . .

Part 2:

1. Check It, Y’all

So you’ve written and designed a fabulous html email marketing newsletter or fundraising manifesto (or whatever it is you crazy kids are working on these days) and you think you’re ready to send it out.  Well, bad news: you’re not.  You have to test this thing before you send it out, so you don’t flood your entire list’s inbox with incorrect usages of their, there and they’re, dead links, inappropriate exclamation points and spellings of the word ‘definitely’ that somehow use an ‘a’.

As you are checking your email, make sure:

-your spelling, grammar and flow are impeccable and in keeping with the tone you will use in future emails.

-the content of your email matches the subject line.

-your organizations contact info is in two (2) different places in the email, but usually not more.  A link at the top and a link at the bottom of the page will do just fine.

- An opt-out message is included at the bottom of the page.   With a good, content-rich, engaging e-newsletter you won’t lose many subscribers, so don’t sweat it; an unsubscribe link at the bottom of the page is just good form and also a lot of services you might use for this project actually require it.

- you’ve checked EVERY link in your email and made sure it goes where it needs to go, not to anywhere inappropriate, of course, and not to a ‘Page Not Found’ purgatory.

- your email is written as if it is to one person only.  No ‘all of you’ or ‘you guys’- just ‘you’ and ‘your’ and other singular statements.  If you’ve written your email as you would address a speech to a crowd, please change it now to address the individual reader.  I’ll wait.

2.) Test It

Now that you’ve checked your email for errors in tone, grammar and content, it’s time to test it out.

-check the look of your email in as many different email and browser platforms as you can.  Create test email addresses at all the free sites (gmail, hotmail, yahoo etc.), so you can test every newsletter in this way.  You want to be sure that all your images work, the layout of your page is not radically altered, and that every relevant piece of information is visible.

-Spam-check.  Send copies out to ten people you know personally and find out if the email went to their spam folders.

-get notes on the effectiveness of the message, the aesthetic and the content of the email, maybe from your spam-test folks.

3.) Send It Out

This part should be extremely self-explanatory, especially if you’re using a service that makes this step even easier.  However, timing is important here: consider the demographic of your audience.  If you’re sending out a volunteer recruitment newsletter aimed mostly at high school kids, avoid sending it during school hours.  If most of your readers will be working standard hours (Monday-Friday, 9-5), don’t send it on Monday morning, when it will blend in with the beginning-of-the-week spam influx.  Best practice for a normal, working adult demographic is to send marketing emails on Tuesday or no later than Wednesday morning.

Tomorrow: tracking and follow up in Part 3!

Have a great Tuesday, everyone.

-A.J.

Filed under: How-To's, Marketing, Online Fundraising by AJ