E-mail Newsletters

E-mail newsletters are the electronic equivalent of what you might otherwise send through normal mail. The chief differences are:

They arrive faster.
You don’t pay a penny for printing or postage.

Newsletters work best if they link to your store’s website

E-mail newsletters work best if they link to your store’s website. In fact, a good model on which to base your e-mail newsletters is to first make a round of additions and updates to your website, then use your e-mail newsletter to direct customers to the new or updated pages.

One benefit of using this approach is that, if you are committed to sending out an e-mail newsletter on, say, a monthly basis, this approach will also commit you to updating your website at least as often.

Below are links that will take you to samples of a typical dive store e-mail newsletter. Note that it is available in two versions:

There is a plain text version for customers with dial-up Internet connections or whose e-mail software or service does not enable them to e-mail with heavily formatted text and graphics. (Opens in a window.)
For customers with broadband (high-speed) Internet connections, and who use Microsoft Outlook/Outlook Express or later versions of AOL, there is also HTML version designed to mimic the appearance of a page from the store's website. (Opens in a new window)

Later in this article we will discuss the pros and cons of both types of newsletters, and help you decide whether you should send more than just a plain text version (we’ll also tell you how it is done). In the meantime, some general rules that apply to all e-mail newsletters:

Keep Them Short No more than a single, two- or three-sentence paragraph per item, and no more than six to eight paragraphs per newsletter. Any longer than this and your customers won’t read them.
Link to Your Website If you can’t cover a news item thoroughly in a short paragraph, provide a link to a page on your website that covers it in detail. In fact, among your chief goals in sending out an e-mail newsletter is to increase traffic to your website.

There are some additional rules that apply to all forms of e-mail promotion that we will address later on in this article.

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Can E-Mail Replace Direct Mail?

Can e-mail replace the need to mail out printed newsletters, sale flyers and other information? Given that e-mail can save you hundreds (or thousands) of dollars in printing and postage, it is certainly tempting to think so. Before you do away with your printed newsletter and other direct-mail marketing, there are some things you should bear in mind:

Not all your customers have e-mail, nor do all of your customers who have e-mail have their e-mail addresses listed in your database.
Not everyone who has an e-mail address checks it regularly.
Despite your efforts to differentiate your e-mail messages from the mountain of Spam to which so many of us are subjected, there are still customers who will delete your e-mail right along with countless invitations for discount Viagra, investment opportunities in sunny Nigeria and the chance to chat live, on line, with inflatable love dolls. (Just as there are customers who will routinely throw your printed newsletters and sale flyers out with the supermarket circulars and mail-order catalogs that clog their snail mail boxes.)

The bottom line is, you can never rely solely on a single means of advertising and promotion. At best, e-mail will reduce the amount of direct-mail you must do, and make it affordable to reach out to customers more often. But it can never entirely replace the need for printed materials, just as your website, by itself, cannot eliminate the need for ink and paper.

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