Much of what I and a former student put in “Writing Effective E-Mail: Top 10 Tips” also applies to e-newsletters, but people are much more likely to scan (or trash) newsletters that seem irrelevant.
I like e-mail newsletters because they are self-contained — I can print them out and read them offline, or I can download them to my digital organizer (which doesn’t have internet access) knowing that I can read it while standing in line at the grocery store or during my son’s piano lesson, and I won’t feel disenfranchised by the fact that I can’t click a link.
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Chris Pirillo's book, Poor Richard's Guide to E-mail Publishing, really helped me give a shape and purpose to my electronic newsletter, The Goreletter (which I still can't believe won the Bram Stoker Award in "Alternative Forms" this summer! Click my name below to check it out). Although some of Pirillo's links and recommendations are a little outdated, the essays in the book cover every angle and really help the would-be newsletter writer have the foresight they need to make the e-letter one that people won't auto-delete or unsubscribe from. (Pirillo, by the way, is also the head honcho at Lockergnome, a computer geek's treasure trove of info...you might find a discounted e-book version of Poor Richard's guide there).
The big problems with sending e-letters, in my view, is improperly administered spam filters, users who are unconsciously over quota in the inbox, and users who don't bother to properly unsubscribe once they've abandoned an e-mail account. Every time I send out a Goreletter, I get thirty or forty bounced messages sent back to me. It's a real pain. But worse, I know that some of those lost readers would still want to read the eletter. So to make sure that folks could subscribe without problems, I set up an RSS feed for the newsletter, and post the various articles and departments that will appear in the e-letter a bit early, as I complete them. It covers all the bases.
Thanks for yet another useful comment, Mike. I did link to the Goreletter on today's agenda as an example.