E-newsletter essentials checklist
Posted by Dominic Yeadon 06 Jan 2010
This week's Masterclass is all about how to avoid driving yourself nuts this year with your e-newsletter. Not that I am suggesting you might, but here's how to avoid getting too complicated.
I love that old maxim 'Keep It Simple Stupid'. In the year TMB rolls out its 2010 KISS programme.  The focus for our UK and European clients is on e-marketing essentials, because that's what works. (Complex = BAD, simple = GOOD. We like simple.)
<- In 1913 that clever Professor E Rutherford worked out how to measure the size of a nucleus with this easy-peasy (not) formula.  But as most of us e-marketers are not blessed with this type of mental faculty, but instead have the usual family, work, home, money, fitness, car, bla bla, bla worries, we avoid such complexity like a curse. Doh!
Sorry Prof but, having done this for 15 years now, there are only 3 items on my e-newsletter essentials checklist:
1. get issues out on time (time and tide etc...)
2. make links look like links (stop 'uber-cool' design disguising links)
3. measure your results (know what works and do more of that!)
1. Getting issues out on time ensures continuity - in a world riddled with uncertainty, make sure your brand stands up and gets counted.
2. User testing keeps telling us that customers click links that look like links - clicks are king, so why disguise any links with uber-cool 'discover me' design?
3. Marketers love reports that show graphs that show success - they travel into meetings in PowerPoint and create marketing heroes - go on - we all crave our daily fix of praise from on high!
 Simple is good. This year's e-newsletter campaigns will bring you success if you can keep it simple. (After a certain point the extra cost of being clever with your e-newsletter is simply a waste of budget.) TIP: your e-newsletter sits in each customer's in-box alongside 200+ other e-mails today, so what can you do to be truly remarkable? Seth knows.
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