Alice Designs - Does your e-newsletter measure up?

It’s fashionable to send e-newsletters. It’s common-place to receive several in your in-box every week. But what are their purpose and are they working?

You probably have a newsletter to communicate to your subscribers as a process of keeping in contact with your clients, past, present and prospective. It provides a medium for you to write articles about your business, advertise an event, explore a new concept and explain a benefit or feature of your product or service.

But how do you know these e-newsletters are looked forward to? Which readers welcome them on a regular basis, and worry about late issues or missed publications? Do you have a readership following and can you track a regular rise in your subscription rate? Do you offer a RSS feed to allow your readers to keep an eye on past issues?

Can you track who receives, opens and reads your e-newsletters? How important is this to you? Do you have a strategy in place to maintain or increase your subscription levels? Can you measure your readership rate? Do any of your readers respond? Is there a method in which they can do so?

How regularly are you sending your e-newsletters? Is this frequency appropriate? Do you have a particular concept with which your newsletter is based around? Does your subject matter have a long-term objective? Is the content material relevant to your readership? Do you consider your readership or are you boring them ranting on about your business?

Does each issue have a direct purpose? Do they contain a call to action? Do they include an incentive to encourage a response? Are your contact details clear? Do you rely on links for signing up to an event, finding further information, pay for a course or project, or even to read more of the newsletter on another website?

If you use links to divert your readers elsewhere, can you track whether they have been used? Does your readership regularly click on them? Are they working correctly? Is the location of these links within the e-newsletter relevant? Does repeating them make a difference? How are they presented and are they contextual?

And your final thought: after you’ve tracked, measured, recorded, collated, linked and serialised your e-newsletters, what difference is it making towards your business? Do you think they are a suitable media for maintaining your business’s presence or could there be something better?

To be continued...

Related stories:
	Alice's newsletters page
	The Trials and Tribulations of the E-Newsletter