Newsletter management software is used by newsletter publisher to control and manage the publishing of their newsletters. This sort of software is excellent as it helps the publisher automate most of the tasks involved in newsletter publishing such as the subscription and sending processes of the newsletter. By automating these tasks, the publisher can devote fully to the creation of quality content for their newsletter. This software is also commonly called autoresponder, newsletter manager, email newsletter system and automatic responder. All these designations are attributions to the same thing.
There are plenty of newsletter software programs on the market. This abundance is both good and bad. It is good because it gives the publisher plenty of services to choose from. And it is bad because it makes it quite difficult to choose one newsletter service over the other. Professional newsletter publishers know exactly how to choose the right service because they have their own criteria on which they base their choices. Knowing what to look for in a newsletter manager enables you to make an informed choice. Choosing arbitrarily will make you problems down the road so choose carefully and diligently.
In the following paragraphs, I am going to list some of the features that you should look for in an autoresponder. If you find one that provides all the features listed here, then, this is a good sign it is a perfect choice. A good autoresponder should enable you to automate the subscription process. This means that people can subscribe and unsubscribe without you intervening in the process because the newsletter software handle the whole thing. Most autoresponders provide this feature. Your autoresponder should also automate the subscription confirmation process. When a person subscribes to your newsletter, they should be shown a message that asks them to confirm their subscription. It precisely asks them to click a confirmation link which they should receive in the email they submitted in the signup form. When the subscriber clicks that link, they become eligible for receiving the subsequent newsletter issues.
Another important process that autoresponders are supposed to take care of is the sending of the newsletter. As a publisher, you do not want to spend your day sitting at your desk busy sending your newsletter issues to subscribers. This is not your task; this is the task of your newsletter manager or autoresponder. The sending of the newsletter involves more than sending it. It involves dealing with email clients’ anti-spam filters, resolving display issues which may occur due to email clients’ settings, etc. professional autoresponders are usually capable of resolving such issues. Some autoresponders always require you to create an extra text verion of your newsletter in addition to the HTML one. This procedure is used to deal with email clients which do not support HTML.
Being able to track your newsletter performance is a great advantage. An autoresponder should give you statistics on how your newsletter is doing. You should know the number of subscribers, the number of nonconfirmed subscribers, the number of confirmed subscribers, how many subscribers cancelled their subscription and the open rate of your newsletter. Some email newsletter management software programs gives you data on the countries and states from which your subscribers come. These data helps evaluate and improve the performance of your newsletter.