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Compton Communications"An Internet Communications Agency"
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Articles
List Management is Critical to eNewsletterPosted Saturday, April 30, 2005 Although content is king for building a quality newsletter, list software is critical for a maintaining the subscribers. There are 6 essential factors in deciding what software will work best for your enewsletter. First is cost. I like free but if you hope to grow your enewsletter into the thousands then finding a free software or online service is not likely. Mailermailer offers up to 200 free with its list management software, for example. If you are technically gifted you can get majordomo software and configure it for list management, but it lacks a lot of features available from paid services. Second factor is the subscription/unsubscribe capabilities of the software or service. You want to be able to have people subscribe and unsubscribe from the email or web site without a lot of effort on your part. Handling subscribers is one of the main factors driving enewsletter editors to use list management software. If you have ever tried to run an email list manually, you know how much time and effort it takes to enter and delete email newsletter subscribers by hand. Bounce tracking is the third factor. Within a year as much as 20 percent of your subscribers will change email address, exceed their mail storage limit, or simple abandon an email address. An editor needs to be able to handle those emails as they bounce back. Imagine if 10 percent of you list of 10,000 bounce, for example. Your email box or your corporate server could face 1,000 emails bouncing around the system. At one company where I worked, I remember a novice email editor brought down the whole corporate email server trying to send to a 5,000 email list. The IT department was not pleased. Personalization is another important factor in selecting the right vendor or software. You want to be able to build relationship and the more individual subscriber information your can gain, the more you can target the message and the enewsletter. Archiving your newsletter or linking to previous enewsletter editions via the Web should be simple and direct. Automatic archiving on the Web is the sign of quality list management software. If you are just starting an enewsletter and you have a big email list to upload you want list software that allows list import and export in a variety of formats. Entering long lists of email addresses manually is a non–starter. Better vendors like Cooleremail.com allow interface on lists with Outlook, Goldmine and other major Customer Relationship Management software. Easy administration is critical to both the list and the enewsletter. You should not have to read an extensive manual to create or manage a list. If the manual is too long avoid the system or hire a service. Finally, you want a system that you can test. By sending the finished enewsletter to a test list before publishing to the world. It helps to catch errors and big mistakes. It can also show you when certain types of email systems have problems with your enewsletter. I send my enewsletter to a POP email server and AOL account prior to publication. I then schedule the enewsletter for release on the publication date and time of my choosing - a truly nice feature. So look for these factors in selecting your list management software: cost, subscription system, bounce tracking, personalization, archiving, email list importing, system administration, and testing or scheduling release of the enewsletter. Good publishing. Vendors mentioned: Cooleremail.com - http://www.cooleremail.com Mailermailer – http://www.mailermailer.com Majordomo - http://www.greatcircle.com |