Using E-Newsletters to Build your Biz – Part One of Four

Fliers in the local coffee shop are great. Getting folks to chat about you to their friends – even better. But once you’ve got that loyal following, how do you keep them coming back?

Starting an e-newsletter is a great way to keep your current students engaged, remind your past students to come back and to give potential students an easy way to learn more about the services you offer.

by Ada Community Library

Baby Steps to Get Started:

If you’re just sending out a few dozen mails (<50) you can start small by keeping a list of e-mail addresses in your personal e-mail program (Outlook, G-mail, etc.). Send out occasional notes to this group with a listing of your new classes, events or promotional offers (i.e. bring a friend to class and you get in free).

Even with this super simple approach, here are a few “must do’s” for good e-mail etiquette:

1. Always BCC (blind carbon copy) all the members of your e-mail list. That way you won’t inadvertently be sharing your students’ e-mail addresses with the rest of the folks on your list.
2. Note, if you’re sending to a large group, break your mailing list up into smaller groups because having a lot of e–mails in the BBC field might cause your mails to be marked as spam.
3. Include a footer or signature at the bottom of our mails that has your complete contact information and a note akin to this: “You’re receiving this update because you’ve taken classes from me in the past or expressed interest in my work. Please feel free to pass this onto others, or contact me if you’d like to be removed from this list.”
4. If folks ask to be removed, always remove them before your next mail.

A More Professional Approach:

Though sending e-mails or e-newsletters from your personal e-mail account may sound easier, if you’re going to get serious about marketing to your students via e-mail, save yourself a lot of time and pain by finding a good e-mail management tool to do your heavy lifting for you.

The benefits of a professional e-mail tool are huge, especially if you have or want an e-mail list of 100+ people. It might take a bit of tinkering to get comfortable with the new technology, but once you are, you’ll probably be happy that you went this route.

A good e-newsletter tool will help you manage your lists (adding, deleting or grouping various e-mails), give you spiffy templates to use and make sure that your e-mails get through spam guards. Most also offer reporting tools so you can see how many of your mails get open etc.

Which to Choose?

There is an abundance of e-mail tools out there (here’s another great overview and this blog is regularly updated with good ideas), so you can be picky as you do your investigations. Pricing for most tools is based on how many e-mails you send per month, so you can certainly find something that fits your budget. There are free options and some for as little as $15/month, but of course you can spend a lot more than that if you want. Also, almost all of the recommendations below offer free trials, so be sure to ask.

A Few Recommendations:

• Dada Mail: a free software program with a web interface (i.e. you must be online to use it)
• Topica: Offers both a free service as well as paid subscription models from $50+/month
• Mail bomber: A basic but flexible tool for managing subscription-based mailing lists
• Emma: Send good looking e-mails without messing with html
• Electric Embers NPO Groups: Similar to Yahoo Groups
• JangoMail: Allows you to send e-mails through their management tool right from your own desktop e-mail client (like Yahoo Mail, gmail or Outlook
• Campaign Monitor: This is intended for folks who can build their own HTML e-mails (b/c they don’t provide any templates) and includes solid reporting tools

Stay tuned for Part Two: How to build your e-mail list.

If you have suggestions about how you’ve used e-newsletters or e-mail to build your business, let us know!