Sending Newsletters Is Fun

Should that be "are" fun? No...I think is is right. *grin*

I finally sent a new newsletter out today, after being MIA for several months. I think my last one went out all the way back in MARCH. Oh the shame.

Sending a newsletter is stressful and nerve wracking, but ultimately a lot of fun. It's the one chance I get to communicate with everyone who has signed up or purchased something in the past.

This latest newsletter announced and explained all the new changes regarding my website and my Etsy shop. I'm sure some folks will not want to purchase via Etsy, but hopefully the positives will outweigh the negatives for people.

Have you thought about sending a newsletter before? At one point in time I used Constant Contact but for someone as small as me the cost was insane. It's a monthly fee even if you don't send out a single newsletter. And the fee goes up if you want to send more than a certain number of e-mails (It was 200 for my small account) - which may not sound like a big deal but you'd be surprised how fast you can build up a 200-300 member newsletter list.

So last year I switched to Mail Chimp. I LOVE IT! They've gone through a lot of growing and changes but their communication is excellent. So is their pricing structure! I don't pay a dime unless I actually SEND an e-mail. Imagine that!

Instead of a monthly fee, you pay for credits - each credit represents an e-mail address. So if I have 500 members on my list I will need 500 credits to send an e-mail to them. Prices range from $0.03 a credit down to $0.01 a credit. I go with the in between because I don't have a ton of e-mail addresses - so each person "costs" me $0.02 to contact. My last newsletter cost just over $10 to send out.

Think about that...It's a lot cheaper than the mail service. And the layout is a lot nicer looking than just a regular text e-mail. And for about $10 I was able to communicate with over 500 people! And I'm not going to be charged another $15 monthly fee or anything like that.

Plus isn't the monkey cute??? *grin* Their monkey mascot cracks me up.

You can use Mail Chimp for all kinds of newsletters, not just for business. If you have tons of family and don't want to shell out the big bucks for fancy holiday cards or announcements, Mail Chimp is a great option. Or just to keep in touch.

The Monkey lets you sign up for a free trial account too. So you can try it out at no risk and if you decide to sign up (and you do so from my link here) you will earn $30 in credit! Woohoo! And so do I! Woohoo again! Win Win.

I'm not loving on the Monkey (so to speak) just to get credit though. I really do love their service. Any time I've had any issues (only twice...and trust me it was user error) the staff has been more than helpful. Plus they've done a bunch of upgrades lately and their site is even easier to use than it was before (and it was easy to use before!).

So let's all keep in touch, k? =) Feel free to sign up for my newsletter ... I'm going to try to be better at sending one out at least once a month...maybe once every six weeks.

Oh...I forgot to mention that it's really easy for people to sign up for your distribution list too. There are all kinds of tutorials on how to build a sign up page - although I had my web lady do it because I'm too dumb for that kind of thing. hahahaha

You can also manually enter e-mail addresses (and I think you can upload them too) as long as you have permission.

Spread some monkey love today! =)