Not all email is equally important to a recipient and so there is often a gap between email a recipient is happy receiving and email a recipient both wants and is expecting enough to complain about not receiving.

To ensure that your email deliverability is the best it can be follow these 7 steps

1. Verification

The number one step in the battle for deliverability is confirming that the people who ask for your information have actually requested to be on your list. You can do this by using a process called confirmed opt-in or verified opt-in to send a unique link to the subscriber. They must click that unique link verifying that they own the email address and did actually request to subscribe.

2. Email Addresses

When asking visitors to subscribe, you should be asking for their “primary” email address instead of a free email address like Google or Hotmail. Free email accounts tend to be used far less.

3. Bounce Backs

Always remove undeliverable addresses as soon as possible. An address that consistently  bounces should be removed from the list. ISP’s track what percentage of your newsletters bounce and will block them if you attempt to continually deliver messages to closed subscriber mailboxes.

4. Format

Usage of HTML messages to allow for text formatting, multiple columns, images, and brand recognition is growing in popularity and is widely supported by most email client software. Most spam is also HTML formatted and the difference between the two can be hard to distinguish. Always consider plain text emails too as deliverability failure is around 1.2% compare to 2.5% with HTML.

5. Content

Many ISP’s filter based on the content that appears within the message text.

• Advertising

Research potential newsletter advertisers before allowing them to place ads in your newsletter issues. If they have used their website URL to send spam, just having their URL appear in your newsletter could cause the entire message to be filtered.

• Language

Choose your language carefully when crafting messages. Avoid topics often found in spam such as medication, mortgages, making money, and pornography.

• Images

Avoid creating messages that are entirely images. Use images sparingly. Commonly used open rate tracking technology uses images to calculate opens. You may choose to disable open rate tracking to avoid being filtered based on image content.

• Attachments

Avoid attachments where possible by including a web link instead- where complete avoidance is not feasible. Many people are still afraid of the spread of viruses through opening of attachments.

6. Relationships

Where possible contact the ISP and let them know about your email service. Many large providers such as AOL and Yahoo have specific whitelisting programs and postmaster website areas to ensure your email is delivered as long as you meet their policies and procedures in handling your opt-in list.

7. Legal Practice

There are a number of laws relating to email deliverability. It’s important to keep up to date with current legal practice and you must make sure you periodically review your current practice to ensure legal compliance. The two most important rules include having a valid postal mail address listed in all commercial messages and a working unsubscribe link to remove the subscriber from future messages (which must be swiftly tasked).

This month we’d like to showcase a great example newsletter created by http://www.dgm-uk.com/ - DGM, the UK’s most experienced  affiliate network.

We designed a custom template to promote the DGM brand and give a more professional look to all their newsletter mailings. With well written content, this is an excellent example of a newsletter designed for hundreds of subscribers.

DGM empower their customers with control over their affiliate and search marketing campaigns, deliver more performance, and ultimately… more return on investment.

Take a look at their website http://www.dgm-uk.com and you will immediately notice the newsletter subscription box on EVERY page. Using the WordPress Nourish plugin makes this incredibly simple. You are more than welcome to sign up!

Thanks to Chris here is some valuable feedback about DGM’s experience of Nourish:

Why did you want a newsletter in the first place? We wanted to be able to provide a weekly touch-point to for our current and prospective clients to keep us front of mind.

Why did you choose Nourish? I was keen to reuse content already written on our blog and site so RSS was the way forward.  The fact that Nourish can aggregate more than 1 feed was the decisive factor, plus all sites are built using WordPress.

How easy was it to get going with Nourish and would you recommend us to friends/ colleagues? Pretty easy, except the template, but Nourish did that for us. And there were a couple of glitches with links not working. Took about a month to get up and running smoothly. And yes, I would.

How much has your web traffic increased thanks to Nourish? Too early to tell, but the visitors that have come through have spent the longest time on the site and viewed more pages than average.

Have you noticed more engagement on your blog with returning visitors? Mildly but can’t attribute that to the newsletter yet.

How do you intend to promote your newsletter to increase subscribers? The sign up boxes are on both the blog and the main site for organic growth.  Sales team will be encouraging people to sign up and will promote via Twitter, Facebook etc. We’re also going to increase the scope of the blog to include more interest pieces.

Hope you liked today’s feature. Stay tuned for new Nourish features to make sure your newsletters are smart and powerful!

If you’d like to have your newsletter featured on our blog, please forward it to me at my[at]nouri.sh and we’ll showcase it in one of our next editions.

Here are some great tips for creating amazing email newsletters. And remember if you still need a little help getting your newsletter as bright as you want it, just drop me a line, I’ll be happy to help.

Mariana

Choose from nine stunning newsletter templates

Wow! Check out our newsletter templates, available now.

There is a simple formula to great newsletter design – keep it simple. Each template is similar in layout, but unique in imagery. Pick the template that suits you best & watch your open & click through rate soar!

There are nine distinct templates representing different sectors, demographics and industries. We’ve tried to include something for everyone. Login today to browse the new templates available.

We’ve tested them in a variety of email applications including mobile email and on the iPhone. Wherever used, your Newsletters will look great!

Example newsletter template for schools

You can even download & edit your preferred template, so you can add your branding or change the colors or fonts as you see fit.

Remember, if you want a custom template, we’ll do it free if you upgrade to any annual plan, or for just $99.

Let us know what you think…

Keep customers informed with an email newsletter

Do your customers know what’s going on in your business? How can you inform them of that press release or that award in a low cost way that’s non intrusive? Most businesses know they need to have an eNewsletter, indeed, many have attempted one, only to find that it doesn’t go out on schedule, the content isn’t quite perfect and it ends up taking ages to get right. This is where the free web service Nouri.sh really helps.

Here are our top tips to ensure you keepsubscribers subscribed and maximise open-rates and click-throughs:

1. Segment your subscribers: This is probably the best tip. Different readers want different information. Give some thought to your different groups of subscribers. For example you may want to use separate campaigns for: Customers, Prospects, Leads, Suppliers, Partners and Investors. With Nourish you can have multiple campaigns, each using a different feed category from your chosen blog(s).
2. Give subscribers multiple schedule options: You might have daily / weekly / monthly campaign options. Some people want to be in the know, while others want an occasional summary.
3. Use at least 1 image per article: Make it visually appealing, but not overly visual so that it reads like a promotional email. This can normally be achieved by adding images to your RSS feed. Put some effort into the image quality, photoshop images to enhance colors if needed.
4. Summarise everything: Instead of sending out whole articles in your newsletter, use the ‘read more’ tag to allow readers to get the gist of each article, then if they want to read it they are more inclined to click the link and before they know it customers are reading around your website to find out what’s new. Most blogs have the ‘read more’ tag built in.
5. Don’t send less than 3 items: If you don’t have any news, don’t bother your subscribers. It’s better that a campaign is skipped than sending a newsletter with 1 or 2 summarised items. If they don’t like either article there’s a high chance they’ll unsubscribe. If you don’t write a lot of content, it’s easy to syndicate someone else’s, just use the RSS feed from your trade association. Nouri.sh lets you use multiple RSS feeds for content in your newsletter.
6. Write good content! Sounds simple but in the haste to get news published it’s so easy to make mistakes. Always ensure your articles are proofed. Also too often we see over-optimised articles. Write for your audience with catchy headlines, don’t write for the search engine. Exclude optimised articles from your newsletter.
7. Encourage a debate and use Social Media:  If your readers post comments on your articles/posts/news get back to them, answer any questions show that you appreciate their readership. There’s nothing better than having someone else promote your news for you. Make it easy for readers to tweet your news, include links to your LinkedIn Group or Facebook Fan page for example.
8. Give something away Having a competition is a great way to get and keep subscribers. If you can afford to give away something good like an iPod or a case of champagne.
9. Use a neat template: A good template doesn’t need to be a work of art, it just needs to give the email a reliable structure, visible in a host of different email clients. Also use a text only version so Blackberry users can read you newsletter. Most good email syndication tools will take care of this.
10. Use a trusted server or service provider: It’s easy to get your server blacklisted if you try to do your own campaigns from Outlook. A web application like Nourish will mean your email comes from a white-listed server and that the email is trusted, thus avioding the junk filter.

We all know that we should be in front of our customers more. The chances are that you have great news, case studies and plenty going on, Nouri.sh makes sure that your customers know about it, best of all, it’s free!

Adding images to your feed might not be a standard feature of your blog or CMS. If you’re feeding off a WordPress blog, you’ll be glad to know its pretty simple. Just install the aptly named plug-in ‘WP RSS Images’ – written by Alain Gonzalez – and don’t worry about it being version 1.0; he got it right first time.

Once installed, you can configure the size of the thumbnail image to be used in your feed, which is automatically generated. Since only the first image can be taken, as my aussie friends say, make it a beauty.

Enjoy