Cre­at­ing Your Own Email Newsletter

Do you have a sys­tem to col­lect prospect infor­ma­tion and a method of com­mu­ni­cat­ing with these poten­tial cus­tomers? If not, then you need one. If you do, how effec­tive is your sys­tem in turn­ing your prospects into cus­tomers?           

Hav­ing an email newslet­ter is a very effec­tive method of col­lect­ing infor­ma­tion from your prospects. If you do not have an email newslet­ter then you are miss­ing out on a very effec­tive medium for turn­ing your prospects into cus­tomers and your cus­tomers into life­time prospects. No mat­ter whether you sell a prod­uct, a ser­vice, or earn rev­enue through adver­tis­ing, and no mat­ter what topic your web site is on, you can ben­e­fit by hav­ing a newslet­ter.           

So how do you cre­ate a newslet­ter? First, we will talk about how to set up a newslet­ter for a small list. Skip below to “Automat­ing your sub­scribe and unsub­scribe requests” if you have a list with more than one hun­dred sub­scribers or you would like to use fea­tures such as auto­matic sub­scriber man­age­ment, mul­ti­ple lists, mail merge per­son­al­iza­tion, bounce­back han­dling, or HTML email.           

Cre­at­ing a small email newslet­ter for free           

If you have a very small list (less than 100 sub­scribers) you can set things up with­out pay­ing a dime. Here’s what you’ll need:           

1. A form on your web­site to col­lect the prospects’ names and email addresses.
2. The FormMail.cgi script in your cgi-bin to covert the sub­mit­ted infor­ma­tion into a read­able format.
3. An email pro­gram such as Eudora or Out­look that allows you to cre­ate a mail­ing list or send blind car­bon copy (BCC) emails. If you have a com­puter run­ning Win­dows, you will most likely have a copy of the email client Out­look Express already on your com­puter. You can down­load a free copy of Eudora from http://www.eudora.com.

      

First, check to make sure your host­ing com­pany has pro­vided you with FormMail.cgi. Almost all do. Use a pro­gram such as WS_FTP or Cute FTP to log in to your domain via file trans­fer pro­to­col (FTP) and open up the folder called cgi-bin. Inside should be FormMail.cgi. If you can­not find the file, email your host to inquire or search for a copy online.           

If it is there, then you can pro­ceed to adding the form to your web­site that will col­lect the name and email address of each prospect. Open up your web page edi­tor (such as Dreamweaver or Front­Page) and add the fol­low­ing HTML code in the loca­tion you want the form to be.           

   

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Now, save the page and upload it to your server via your FTP program.           

When­ever some­one vis­its your page and puts in their name and email and hits sub­mit an email will be sent to you (or what­ever address you put for the recip­i­ent value) with their details.           

When you receive these emails, sim­ply add this per­son to your list. You can keep your list using the mail­ing list fea­ture of Out­look or Eudora email clients.           

To send out your newslet­ter sim­ply write it in your email client and select your list as the recip­i­ent. The exact method will vary slightly depend­ing on which email pro­gram you are using. If you run into any prob­lems check the help file.           

In each email you send be sure to have a way for recip­i­ents to unsub­scribe. You can sim­ply put in the fol­low­ing text:           

“To unsub­scribe send an email to y…@yourdomain.com with the word “Remove” in the subject.”           

You could also send sub­scribers to an unsub­scribe form on your web­site if you wished. Do remem­ber, how­ever, you will have to man­age all your unsub­scribe requests by hand.           

Automat­ing your sub­scribe and unsub­scribe requests           

Soon, how­ever, man­ag­ing your sub­scribe and unsub­scribe requests by hand will start to take quite a bit of your time. Your time is much bet­ter spent grow­ing your newslet­ter and mar­ket­ing your busi­ness than man­u­ally adding and sub­tract­ing emails from your list. Once your list grows to be big­ger than about one hun­dred sub­scribers, hav­ing an auto­matic sys­tem in place is a neces­sity.           

So how can you set things up so every­thing is han­dled auto­mat­i­cally? Well, you need to use email list man­age­ment soft­ware.           

Email list man­age­ment soft­ware is able to han­dle sub­scribe and unsub­scribe requests auto­mat­i­cally and send out your emails to your each of your sub­scribers at the touch of one but­ton. This will save you many hours of your time.           

Choos­ing an Email list man­age­ment Pro­gram           

Besides han­dling subscribe/unsubscribe requests and send­ing out emails, what other fea­tures should you look for in email list man­age­ment software?           

Web based ver­sus PC Based           

Some email list man­age­ment pro­grams are PC based, mean­ing they are pro­grams that you must down­load and install on your com­puter, and some are web based. Web based soft­ware enables you to access your lists and send out newslet­ters from any com­puter and runs right through your Inter­net browser.           

If you ever travel or want to be able to access your lists from more than one com­puter, say, at home and at the office, then be sure to select soft­ware that is web based.           

Per­son­al­iza­tion of Emails            

Another pow­er­ful fea­ture of many email list man­age­ment pro­grams is the abil­ity to use mail merge capa­bil­i­ties to per­son­al­ize each email that you send. In other words, you could put the fol­low­ing in the sub­ject line:           

[fname], Your June Gar­den Tips Newslet­ter     

and if your subscriber’s first name was Betty she would see in her inbox:     

Betty, Your June Gar­den Tips Newslet­ter     

  I wanted to per­son­ally thank you for your pur­chase of [prod­uct] on [date]. How are you doing with [prod­uct]? Do let me know if I can answer any ques­tions.          

Warm regards,
Bill Jen­ni­son, Pres­i­dent
Gar­den Feeds, Inc.
gar…@growgarden.com
http://www.growgarden.com        

The mail merge fea­ture would insert the proper entry in each field straight from your data­base and send all your emails out in a mat­ter of sec­onds.       

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