The creation of a newsletter goes through several stages. Once you reach the stage at which you need to send the newsletter to readers and get people to subscribe to it, you will feel the need for using a newsletter manager. Newsletter management software helps you stay in control of all aspects of your newsletter such as subscription, unsubscribing, sending the newsletter and overall performance. This way you want spend most of your time checking and regulating these things. Instead, you devote yourself fully to creating quality newsletter content which is the backbone of your newsletter.
The market abounds with newsletter management services which are frequently referred to as autoresponders, newsletter managers, newsletter management software programs, newsletter system and so on. In order to choose the right newsletter manager, you should first know what to look for in a newsletter manager. What are the features that I should consider when considering a newsletter system? Most autoresponder services charge on a monthly basis, that is you have to pay fees every month. Some of them offer you the option to pay a whole year in advance at a discount.
Whatever the procedure is, the cost is around $19. If you find a newsletter manager that charge significantly higher than this, you had better stay away from it. The autoresponder service should also provide you with readymade sign up forms that you can place on you website. These forms enable people to subscribe to your newsletter by giving their details in the available fields. You can customize the fields from your admin panel and add as many fields as you wish. Usually, you want need more than first name and email. Unless you are going to ship them something, you will not need their address. The subscription process is fully automated.
Some autoresponder services provide you with readymade templates for your newsletter. This is a good addition. The sending of the newsletter should also be automated. You first need to upload your newsletter articles to your autoresponder or just cut and paste them. Then, you set the rate and interval at which they should be sent, for example once a week or twice or so. You also need to set the order in which they are to be sent. You may add a welcome message as the first thing new subscribers receive.
The autoresponder should also provide you with detailed statistics on the performance of your newsletter. It gives you details on the number of subscribers you have, the number of unsubscribes, the open rate of your newsletter, and number of confirmed and non-confirmed subscribers. Some auto-responder services, such as Aweber, go as far to show the regions from which your subscribers come.
Most importantly, your newsletter manager should conform to the standards required by email clients so that your newsletter emails do not get blocked or flagged as spam. You can always use spam-filter checkers to find out if any issue of your newsletter meets the email client anti-spam filter requirements. Aweber, ConstantContact, iContact, and MailChimp are some of the best email newsletter management services.