Find newsletter content in a flash

June 8, 2012

Drew’s note:  Here’s a guest post by Patrick Carver on a relevant topic — how do you create and sustain the creation of an enewsletter.

Don’t you just hate writing newsletters?  We all know the feeling. It’s Saturday afternoon and you realize the company newsletter is due to go out on Monday.  You can feel the blood start to boil when you remember how long it ACTUALLY takes to write all that content.  Don’t you just wish your newsletter would just write itself?

A great option is creating a ‘hybrid’ newsletter using a mix of original and curated content. Curation is a fancy name for finding relevant content (articles, videos, white papers, etc.), qualifying it, and then sharing it with your audience.

Using curated material is a great way to complement your own message and save a lot of time ‘thinking of what to say’.  You can use the outside content as a jumping-off point and establish yourself as a thought leader in your niche at the same time.

The first place to look for free content is through one of the these tools.  Google Reader let’s you add your favorite websites to a list and then view all their most recent posts in one place. A great way to monitor your sites without having to bounce around.  Google Alerts is another free tool that lets you add specific keywords to a list and then will email once a day with relevant links and stories.

There are a handful of social bookmarking sites out there like DeliciousReddit, and Digg  that will help you find material but these aren’t always terribly useful.  Without a human curation element, there is way too much automated/aggregated content on there to really find what you’re looking for.

One of the best options for finding free content is using a ‘personal newspaper’ service.  The gist is that you add some topics that you’re interested in and then the software produces a personalized digest of the ‘best’ stories on that subject for you.  Some of the more popular products are paper.liscoop.it , and Flipboard  but there are lots of these sites out there.  AllTop  is a great resource that will list all of the relevant blogs on a topic and display their latest 5 posts.

Now you just have to incorporate all that great content with your newsletter template. People often use an email marketing tool like Constant Contact, MailChimp or InfusionSoft for this. But, if you don’t like messing around with templates, you might consider trying FlashIssue  (it’s Free).

Newsletters can be a lot of work but it’s definitely worth the effort.  Don’t get deterred if your first try doesn’t come out amazing and go viral.  Stick with a core theme but experiment as much possible with different story-lines until you find something that really sticks.  If you can figure out how to speak to your customers in a way that makes them want to listen, you’re on to something big.

Patrick Carver is the Director of Marketing for FlashIssue, the newsletter solution.  You can follow him @FlashIssue or read more of his stuff on the FlashIssue Blog.

Enhanced by Zemanta
More

Oops — can’t say THAT in an email! (stupid SPAM filters)

June 3, 2012

I’m working on our weekly e-newsletter (always different content than here at the blog — gotta keep it fresh!) and I’m writing about email marketing mistakes.

One of the mistakes I’m talking about is using phrases or words that trigger spam filters.

I’m in the middle of making the list and realize…”duh, Drew, you’re going to email this out to the subscriber list and basically, by demonstrating all the criteria that trigger spam filters…you are going to trigger spam filters!

Sooooo, I am going to list them here and then invite the email subscribers to come check out the list in this safe environment. You, my blog readers, are the lucky recipients of this little technology work around, because now you too can see the list of stuff you shouldn’t include in your emails if you want them to actually reach the recipient.

Start reading here…newsletter subscribers:

As I was saying….every email software has built in spam filters and most companies add another one of top of that. Every email that is sent through their server – on it’s way to your target audience – gets screened by the spam filters. If your email matches one or more of the criteria they set as likely to be spam – your email will never get delivered.

What are some of those common filters?

  • Excessive use of exclamation points or other punctuation!!!
  • Using ALL CAPS (especially in the subject line)
  • Bad code (copying a word document directly into your email software will often do this)
  • Colored fonts
  • An email that is just an image and very little actual text
  • The phrase “you registered with a partner” (in other words…we got your name from someone else)
  • The salutation “Dear” before the recipient’s name
  • Attachments

(Newsletter subscribers…you can head back to the newsletter to read the rest of the email marketing mistakes or you can hang out here..but don’t miss the rest of those tips!)

To you, my blog readers — thanks for letting me bring the newsletter readers into your space. If you have an interest in checking out the newsletter content — you are welcome to sign up by clicking here.

 

Photo courtesy of www.BigStockPhoto.com

Enhanced by Zemanta
More