Compiling all the information for a regular newsletter is only half the work. The other half is building and maintaining a subscription list and the actual sending of the newsletter. There are many ways to send your newsletter. The size of your subscription list is one of the main factors in choosing from the following.

Send it through your Email Program

If your list is small (a hundred email addresses or fewer), you should just be able to create a "group" in your email program and send it to the group. Some email programs do not allow you to create a group, but you can still keep all the email addresses in a text file and copy them into your email program. One of the reasons you shouldn't send a huge list through your email program is that your web host or ISP is always on the watch for spammers using their service. Also, their mail servers are not set up to send hundreds or thousands of messages at a time from one account. So, if you send large numbers of emals through your email account, you may find your account shut off!

If you do use your email program, do not just put everyone's email address in the To: field. That means that everyone on your list receives everyone else's email address. To protect the privacy of your subscribers, be sure to send the email to yourself and put everyone else in the BCC (blind carbon copy) field.

If you create your newsletter in HTML, like a web page, some of your readers' email programs may interpret the email correctly. They may even receive it as code. Sometimes that happens because of a setting in the receiver's email program (to prevent porn from popping up on the screen unexpectedly.) In other situations, your recipient may be using an email client that does not interpret HTML or show images. You may also find that your readers are receiving the newsletters with different spacing than what you sent. One way around this is to put your newsletter online and include a link to the web page above the newsletter. Browsers don't have as much variability as email clients.

Send it through Facebook or some other Social Networking Site

Another way to manage a small list is through a Facebook Friends List or other similar system, such as Ning. Some of these are set up for sending newsletters, but others will limit the number of messages that can be sent through a List. Again, they are trying to keep their service from being used as a spam machine. For example, Facebook will allow you to send to a List of up to 20 people. If you want to use Facebook for a longer List, you have to create multiple Lists. Then you have to send to each List separately.

Send it through a Service Designed for Newsletters

Newsletter services are the best long term solution. Their servers are set up to manage sending huge numbers of emails without crashing. Their programming and databases are set up to manage the email lists, including the addresses that are not valid (bounces.) They provide you with reports of how many readers opened the newsletter (before deleting it) and how many readers clicked on links in your newsletter.

Here are three services you may want to consider:

1. MailerMailer.com
   My first online newsletter in finding a newsletter service was with MailerMailer for the AdventureLife newsletter in about 2000. At that time, there weren’t many newsletter services beyond ListServ and other news group systems. MailerMailer was a brand new company (how I found them is a great story I tell in class,) and I couldn’t find any similar services through the search engines. I believe that AdventureLife still uses their service. You can sign up for an AdventureLife newsletter to see how it looks from a subscriber’s viewpoint.
   Example of Adventure Life newsletter - code was copied from the email I received to this web page.
   
   More recently, I tried to sign up for a MailerMailer account to prepare for the Social Networking for Business class. Their system gave me a strange error when I tried to set up the account, but their technical support responded to my voicemail very promptly and resolved the problem. Their online chat service also seems to be knowledgeable (not all online chat support systems are.)
   
   Price levels are based on how many newsletters you plan to send in a month. Up to 200 per month are free! Even the basic level of up to 20,000 emails is only $30.00/month, which is much cheaper than sending a mailed newsletter.

2. VerticalResponse.com
   This service has many ways that you can format your newsletter, including some newsletter templates. They have a nice reporting system, including a list of all the newsletters you have sent, how many were sent in each mailing, how many were viewed in each mailing, and how many people actually clicked a link to your website from your newsletter. As with MailerMailer, you can set subscriber categories in your account to send different mailings.
   
   Vertical Response has various pricing systems. However, if you send emails weekly to 5000 people, it will cost $72.00 per month.
   Screenshots from VerticalResponse

3. Constant Contact is another popular newsletter system.

For your own research, ask business people, you know, if they send out emailed newsletters and which service they use. Find out how easy it was for them to set up the system and how long it takes them to prepare a newsletter. Also, find out if they are tracking their results and whether they think it’s worth the effort!

This article is based on a discussion topic from the Social Networking for Business course
at Dickinson Lifelong Learning Center in Missoula, Montana

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