Are You Sending Your Email Newsletter the Right Way?

So you’ve decided you want to start sending out an email newsletter on a regular basis. You know it will take an investment of time and some money. Now should you pay a monthly fee for a service, or just use your email client or some sort of desktop software to send your email newsletter?

There is software that you can install on your computer that will send out your email newsletters for you. In fact, you really could just send your email newsletter through your normal email client like Outlook, Mac’s Mail, or even AOL.

However, there are more reasons to go with a paid, monthly service than not. Let’s take a look at a few reasons.

Up-time is their responsibility.

If you install software on your own system, ultimately you have to keep it up and running. You may have some tech support, but it’s up to you to report any problems and get them fixed. A service, on the other hand, means other people are constantly reporting any anomalies back to the support team. They have to keep it up and running for hundreds of people, not just you.

Services are constantly being improved.

Most major email service providers are rolling out improvements fairly frequently. They look at how all their subscribers are using their service, and make updates accordingly. They add new features and new options as capabilities change. And unlike major upgrades to desktop software, typically no extra payment is needed.

They take care of legal compliance.

If you aren’t aware, the U.S. has anti-spam laws. These service providers guide you through any decisions you have to make to stay compliant. In fact, when no specific decision is needed, they just take care of the compliance for you.

They track your subscribers.

Third party services have the capability to track who is opening your emails, and who is clicking on them. You can compare your campaigns to see which ones are more successful. And they even track when the emails are undeliverable, with some providers cleaning up your email list automatically if emails are bouncing back.

You can schedule emails.

With software like Outlook, you have to manually send the emails. Even if your desktop software is more advanced and will let you schedule the emails, your computer still has to be on. Any of the major email providers will let you schedule your email newsletters. You can write out the whole week or month ahead of time, and schedule them to go out while you’re working on something else.

You save time.

One client of T&S’s was spending 2-3 hours a week prepping and sending out his emails each week. After we set up an account for him on MailChimp and designed a great newsletter for him, he now only spends 1 hour a week on it. That means he saves around 8 hours a month!

We’ve helped multiple clients set up accounts on MailChimp, designed newsletters for them, and helped them learn how to use it. All of them that were doing it manually before said we save them hours each month.

Want to save even more time?

One of our clients was spending about six hours a week preparing and sending out his email newsletter. When he contacted us, he was frustrated with how much time it was taking to get it just right. After discussing the options, we designed a new newsletter for him, and took over managing that newsletter. We interview him each month, and create the content for his newsletter based on our conversations.

He now spends about a half hour each month reviewing what we’ve put together for him, versus the 24 hours a month he was spending before!