Writing Newsletters - Just Do It

I really need to send out a new e-mail newsletter to my distribution list...it's been months and months - August to be precise. It's about time I started back up again.

Someone recently signed up for my newsletter (Thank you!) and it reminded me that I really should get back into the habit of sending those. Of course, I don't want to nag people, but sending e-mails is an important part of marketing...even if it's just a reminder "Hello...I'm still here." type of a message. I get several different newsletters from artisans and, while I don't always read them, getting them reminds me that they are there and available if I need (or want) something. Without those e-mails I might just forget (especially with my post-pregnancy brain full of holes!).

My goal is to actually start a brand new list and clean up the distribution list so that I'm not "wasting" e-mails. Only 6.9% of my total list opened the last e-mail I sent, which isn't so great. It's still 120 people who opened the e-mail (and it wasn't exactly jewelry related entirely - it was a notice about the Saving Shelter Pets fundraiser I was part of), which to me is a lot. But it could be better.

So one of my goals for this year (Dana - you inspired me!) is to ask people to re-sign up for the mailing list so that I can clean it up. Then hopefully only people who WANT to hear from me will get my newsletter. I'm not quite sure how to do this technically speaking but eventually I will sit down and figure it out.

I think that MailChimp is fairly easy to use, compared to other systems I've tried (including Constant Contact). It's also much easier on the wallet - Constant Contact required a monthly fee even if I never sent out a newsletter in the month. It didn't matter how many subscribers I had, up to a point, and after that point I got charged extra.

MailChimp only charges based on the total e-mails that get sent out. So if I send out a newsletter to 500 subscribers, I get charged for 500 credits. Plus, if someone signs up through my link I can bonus credits (and the person who signs up also gets a bonus!). You can click the monkey link below to sign up.

And I'm not recommending MailChimp just to get bonus credits. I really do love their service. It's fairly priced and convenient to use. Plus they (as an entity) have really great senses of humor. Who names a business MailChimp??!! =) I wouldn't recommend it if I wasn't using it and happy with it - I've been using them for a couple of years now.

Do you send out newsletters? What service do you use and why?

We'll chat about what to include in newsletters in a few days.