Improve News Letter Delivery with These Four Tips

A good news letter is just as ineffective as a bad one if it does not get delivered to your readers.  You may assume that because people signed up for your publication, that they will automatically receive it with no problems.  Unfortunately, this is not always how it goes.  There are many factors that could prevent your email from reaching the subscriber, and all of them spell bad news for your campaign.  No need to get down.  There are also quite a few ways to increase delivery and make sure your email reaches its intended destination.  Here are four practices we recommend:

Marketing an opt-in news letter is perhaps the most effective way to ensure your email gets delivered.  For added insurance, you can provide step by step instructions that tell subscribers exactly what they need to do to ensure they receive your messages.  This includes making sure they sign up correctly the first time in addition to a providing a double opt-in link in your follow-up confirmation email.  It would also be a good idea to let subscribers know they should add your email address to their address books.  If your newsletter is properly constructed, taking note of this should guarantee that it gets delivered. 

If you are publishing an HTML news letter, there is a possibility that your email will not display properly to the reader.  This has a lot to do with the program they use to view their mail.  Some of these programs block HTML features by default and others do not support them at all.  You should also consider that some of your subscribers may actually prefer to read their mail without the presence of such features.  If the graphics or images are stripped from your newsletter for whatever reason, having a strong foundation of text content will ensure that subscribers can still read the important information with little to no distraction

If you have been distributing a news letter for a while, there is a good chance that members of your audience view as an expert in the field.  However, that expert status can be lost in the blink of an eye if you do not respond promptly respond to your readers and leave them hanging.  If readers like your content, they could have questions or simply want to know more.  Don’t let them down by taking forever to respond.  While using an auto responder makes this much easier, you must still follow up with a genuine response that lets them know they are dealing with a real person who cares about the business.    


You can improve news letter delivery and keep those rates high by adopting a discipline testing regime.  Set up test accounts on everything from local mail programs to webmail clients.  This is the best way to stay one step ahead of spam filters, HTML coding issues and all the other aspects that could act as roadblocks and prevent your email from getting through.