Getting your email newsletter right

aking the time to craft a quality, well thought out email newsletter is important. But even a top notch newsletter can fall flat if one does not get two other factors right – frequency and timing.

Sending a newsletter too frequently will wear out your readers, is likely to see your emails flagged as spam and may lead to growing numbers of un-subscriptions. Conversely, having a long time lapse between consecutive newsletters will see recipients’ interest decline – in a sense, you will have to reconnect with your readership from scratch each time you send the newsletter. That will not augur well especially if your goal is to grow product sales.

The ideal frequency for an email newsletter is anywhere between once every 2 weeks and once a month. A general rule of thumb is that the longer the newsletter, the longer the duration between each issue ought to be.

That said, keeping the content rich, informative, precise, fresh and interesting is key. Do not extend the newsletter’s content solely to achieve a word count that is similar to that of your previous newsletter issue.

If you find yourself running into a writer’s block, do not hesitate to engage the services of a ghost writer or a guest writer. Brief the person on what your objectives are and let them read your past emails so they can better appreciate your writing style and tone.

Unlike frequency, there is really no standard time that would work best in all circumstances. It all has to do with the demographics of your newsletter’s audience. For instance, if your audience is the 8 to 5 crowd, then they are likely to read your email in the evening or early in the morning. On the other hand, if your audience comprises retiree seniors, such timing will not apply.

Is every person on your email list in the same time zone? If they are not, then you might need to factor this disparity. There are email newsletter services that will automatically release the email at the same time in the different time zones. For instance, you can set the email to be sent at 1700 EST for recipients on the Eastern Coast of the US and 1700 UTC for recipients that reside in the UK.

At all times, keep track of the statistics that can help you better the frequency, timing and overall effectiveness of your newsletter. Always monitor the number of un-subscriptions each week especially those that come a few hours after you send the newsletter.

How many people actually open and click on the links in the newsletter? Ultimately, your newsletter is a means to drive traffic to your website and increase sales. If there are few or no clicks to your site, chances are that you need to reassess the frequency, timing and content of the newsletter.

Opinion polls can come in handy. Use the polls to find out from your audience the areas that they would want improved. Make it short but also include some open ended questions where your audience can vent. You will be amazed at the amount of intelligence you can gather from such polls and how it the feedback can prove vital in improving future newsletters.


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