Edgy E-mail Newsletters
A hands-on guide to creating online
By Joe Dysart

"Newsletters feel personal because they arrive in your inbox--you have an ongoing relationship with them," says Jakob Nielsen, a principal at Nielsen Norman Group (NNG; www.nngroup.com), based in Freemont, Calif. "They can create much more of a bond between a user and a professional or a company than a Website."

Another recently released report by DoubleClick (www.doubleclick.com), an Internet market research firm, found that consumers are much more likely to respond positively to E-mail than traditional advertising, such as hard copy direct mail.

Specifically, DoubleClick found that 37.3 percent of all promotional E-mail in the third quarter of 2002 was opened by recipients.

E-mail messages about business products and services had the highest open rate (47.3 percent), followed by travel and consumer products and services (42.5 percent).

TIPS FROM THE PROS

Here are some highlights of what NNG's researchers recommend when planning a newsletter.

Make it user friendly. E-newsletters can create a strong bond. But, according to the study, newsletters lost 22 percent of potential subscribers simply due to ill-conceived sign-up pages. "Usability problems have strong impact on the customer relationship," the report states.

Keep sign-up simple. Too often, subscribing becomes a convoluted process. NNG recommends the online subscribing process for a free newsletter from a eyecare practice should take less than 60 seconds.

Signing up for the newsletter at Eye Associates of New Mexico (www.eyenm.com/newsletter_03.html), for example, takes little more than typing in an E-mail address.

Eyeglasses.com (www.eyeglasses.com) incorporates subscribing to its newsletter with registering at its Website.

Include privacy policy. Be honest and up-front by including a brief, one- or two-sentence summary of your Website's privacy policy.

For example, theyedoctor.com (www.theyedoctor.com) posts a link to its privacy info at the bottom of its home page.

CONTENT CONTENTMENT

When everything is ready to go, don't forget the following points should be covered with each and every issue.

Deliver what you promise. Even though company E-mail newsletters are free, they must deliver on the content promises made to the subscriber. Essentially, the right to space in a subscriber's E-mail box has to be earned with each issue. "The cost in clutter must be paid for by being helpful and relevant to users--and by communicating these benefits in a few characters in the subject line," Nielsen reports.

Make it readable. While you'd think the simplicity maxim would be obvious, NNG researchers found that only 23 percent of the newsletters studied were read thoroughly. The majority were skimmed or read partly, and 27 percent were not even opened.

Publish regularly. "A predictable publication frequency that is not too aggressive is usually best," Nielsen says. "That also reduces the probability that it will
be deleted."

Design for all readers. "Our test users were almost evenly distributed between AOL, Hotmail, Netscape Mail, Outlook, and Yahoo," Nielsen says. "It's also common to find people using Eudora, Lotus Notes, and a broad variety of mainframe systems."

Given that each of these E-mail readers has a different way of displaying content, and filtering spam, as well as other idiosyncrasies, the safest bet is to preview a newsletter design on each, Nielsen says.

Offer a sample. Post a hotlink to a sample or archive of your newsletter and you're bound to get more subscribers, Jennings says. For example, Beach Eye Care (www.beacheyecare.com/patient_newsletter.html) sports a newsletter sample on its site.

Make unsubscribing easy. "Users are substantially more critical of a slow unsubscribe process," reports Nielsen. "Once they want out, they want out quickly."

At Vision Works (www.visionworksusa.com/newsletter.asp), unsubscribing is a snap because the option is located right next to the subscribe function.

It's also easy to unsubscribe with a few clicks at University Vision Clinic's site (www.universityvision.com/newsletter.htm).

While all of this may seem complicated, it's worth considering if you're starting up a newsletter for either current patients or new prospects.

Joe Dysart, a business consultant based in Thousand Oaks, Calif., can be reached at www.joedysart.com.

Signing up for the newsletter at Eye Associates of New Mexico takes little more than an E-mail address	Potential subscribers have a single-step sign up process to receive www.eyeglasses.com's newsletter	The Website theyedoctor.com includes a link to its brief and simple privacy policy at its home page
It's important to make unsubscribing to a newsletter easy. Shown above, www.universityvision.com	Beach Eye Care sports a sample of its newsletter at its site	Vision Works makes unsubscribing a snap, placing the function right next to the newsletter's subscribe function