How to start your own newsletter or ezine
If you have your own website, creating a newsletter, ezine, or mailing list is a great way to promote your site. First of all, it is a good way to get information to your readers that you want them to read. It is also a good way to keep your visitors in the loop about any announcements about your products or updates to your site.
Possibly the best benefit of creating a newsletter or ezine is that it gives people a reason to continue to visit your site. You get the opportunity to provide your audience with your information, and it gives them a chance to get the information they wanted, which is probably why they subscribed to the newsletter in the first place.
First steps for creating an electronic newsletter or ezine
In order to run a newsletter, you first need a way for visitors to sign up or leave your mailing list. Then you need a method to post the newsletter to your mailing list. I will describe how to do just that in this article.
Use a third party mailing list service
Probably the easiest way to run your newsletter is to use a third party mailing list service. Both commercial and free mailing list hosting services are available. If you are interested in the free mailing list hosts, you can find a list of them with brief reviews on the Free mailing list hosts page.
There are some definite advantages of using a third party service:
- You don’t need to manage the list yourself. These services will handle the subscriptions, unsubscribing, bounced mail, etc. Some of the services also have the ability to archive your old newsletters, as well.
- They will handle subscription confirmations. These mailing list services will automatically send your subscribers an email requiring them to confirm before they are added to the list. This is a good perk because it will ensure that someone’s email address is not used without their permission. It also makes your newsletter seem more official.
- Free promotion. Most of the mailing list hosts will show a list of ezines or newsletters people can subscribe to on their website. It is another way to get new visitors to your site.
- You don’t need any extra software to get started.
There are some disadvantages to using a third party mailing list services:
- Commercial mailing list hosts will generally charge a monthly or yearly fee. The price is normally based on how many subscribers you have, how many messages you send, and the amount of bandwidth you use.
- Free mailing list hosts will generally utilize some form of advertising. They normally do this by placing an advertisement in your newsletter or ezine with each issue. As they say, “there is no such thing as a free lunch.”
- You won’t have the flexibility to have things run exactly the way you want. You also do not have any control over the reliability of your mailing list host.
Use your web host’s mailing list software
Depending on who you have as a web host, you might be able to use their mailing list services. Some are obviously better than others, and some have most (if not all) of the features of any of the third party mailing list services, including handling subscriptions, confirmation, archiving, and so on.
Since it is part of the web hosting package you already pay for, there are no added costs and you probably don’t need to worry about them placing any advertisements. You probably also have more control over your subscriptions and confirmation messages. But web hosts tend to be stricter about the number of subscribers they will allow in your list, so make sure you look into that first.
Run your own mailing list script
If your web host doesn’t have a mailing list service and you want to take the initiative, you could also create it yourself using one of the free mailing list CGI or PHP scripts. It takes a little more work to set up, but it can give you more flexibility in making it function the way you want. A list of free Perl and PHP mailing list scripts are listed below.
Free Perl Mailing List Scripts
Free PHP Mailing List Scripts
Use your email software
Most email programs actually have pretty comprehensive mailing list capabilities. This is probably the easiest method because you don’t even need to sign up for anything, but it only makes real sense if you have a small mailing list.
The main disadvantage of using your email for the mailing list is that it is more manual on your part. You will need to keep track of your subscribers and respond to them individually and need to manually delete subscribers for bounced messages. You also need to hang around to make sure the newsletter has been sent out just in case of any issues.
What, when, and how should you send your newsletter?
There is no set rule on what to write or how often to send your newsletter since it largely depends on your particular website. One way is to use your newsletter to make product announcements or to notify your subscribers of something you feel is important.
Generally what people do is send issues of their newsletter at specific time periods like once a month, bi-weekly, weekly, etc. providing them with the information you feel was important during that time period. Or, to treat them as valued subscribers, you could even send them articles and information before you post it on your site or give them coupons, discounts, etc.
What you say is really your choice. You could create new articles, summaries of previous articles, or just fun stuff they might enjoy that is related to the information on your site.
Please don’t just send them a bunch of advertisements! People can see right through that and makes them more likely to stop going to your site. Keep in mind that your readers do not want a newsletter if you don’t have anything important to say. The newsletter is supposed to be meant for them, so make sure it is something worth their while. Give them a reason to keep visiting your site.
How to format your newsletter
You can publish your newsletter in two ways: with HTML or in plain text.
HTML is the prettier version to send your newsletter. HTML allows you to use different fonts, colors, pictures and other formatting options. HTML obviously looks better, but some people filter out HTML emails to avoid possible spam messages. People also may not want HTML because it is larger than plain text messages and takes up more room. Size might also matter to you if you are paying for your mailing list provider based on how much bandwidth you use.
If you decide to send your newsletters in plain text, here are some tips to help you get the maximum effect from your newsletter:
- Instead of using bold, italics, or underlining, you can place emphasis on words by using “quotes”, *asterisks*, or ALL CAPS.
- Try to write your plain-text messages with a maximum of 65 characters to a line. The reason for this is that some email programs your subscribers might use will wrap the line at the 66th character, which does not look good.
- Put space between each paragraph.
- If you want to use links, don’t include it within a phrase and simply paste the entire link like this: http://www.siteforstarters.com/
- When you give email addresses, always begin it with a “mailto:” tag, like this: mailto: contact@website.com
Finally
I hope this gives you enough information to get a running start with your newsletter. Feel free to contact me if you have any problems, suggestions, or are interested in joining my mailing list. It’s sad to say, but I don’t have a mailing list of my own at the moment because I just don’t have the time. At least I follow my own advice and don’t just send a junky newsletter because it looks good!
