Small business owners frequently ask me why their e-mail newsletters seem to be read by fewer subscribers as their mailing lists grow. If you've been managing your own e-mail newsletter by sending to multiple recipients in Outlook, you're probably being flagged as a spammer. Likewise, if you send more than a hundred outbound e-mails in an hour, your own ISP is probably passing your mailing list to a spam queue instead of to your recipients' inbox. I've got three suggestions to help you overcome the challenges of getting your e-mail newsletters out on schedule.
As the name suggests, an e-mail newsletter blaster is a specialized piece of software that can send the same message to your entire list quickly, right from your desktop. By customizing each outgoing message with a mail merge function, you can make your newsletter more appealing to your customers. In addition, customized messages are far less likely to be flagged as spam by ISPs. However, you must still adhere to your own Internet provider's cap on outbound mail. Therefore, quality e-mail newsletter blasters parse outbox batches to avoid these restrictions.
SendBlaster for Windows and
Direct Mail for Mac offer some of the most robust feature sets of all desktop mailing list tools.
If you only infrequently send e-mail newsletters to customers, but your list has grown beyond the efficiency range of a desktop mailing list blaster, consider hiring a one-time newsletter host. These dedicated providers offer high delivery rates by ensuring that spammers and hackers cannot access their systems. Most newsletter hosts offer a fixed price per transmission, either per subscriber or per delivery.
Campaign Monitor offers advanced tracking tools and allows consultants and marketing professionals to easily manage newsletters for multiple clients.
Home businesses that thrive on regular communication with customers should invest in a monthly-rate newsletter service. Services like
iContact and
AWeber take the hassle out of managing large lists by automating signups and unsubscription requests. Both services also feature autoresponders and other advanced marketing tools that can help increase sales. Monthly fees vary, depending on the number of lists and/or subscribers. Typical business owners can usually find quality newsletter hosting for under $25 per month.