- Category: March - April 2010
There are certain rules for good e-newsletters however, many tend to overlook them. Bearing these tips in mind though will make your e-newsletter stand out and push you further ahead of your competition.
Log-in and log-out- Dispatch of e-mails without consent
- Web: Registration form is hidden
- Too complex registration pages
- Unnecessary data request
- No indicator or anonymous references
- No index of the expected contents
- No reference to the frequency of publication
- No information about data protection
- No note on data processing
- No special consent for analysis of personally identifiable information
- No acknowledgment message on the Web
- Bad confirmation (for example " System OK, ")
- No logging of the approval (confirmation mail)
- No welcome e-mail
- Complicated log-in process
- No right of objection indicator (i.e. “cancel")
- Intricate change of e-mail address process
- Belated change of registration data not possible
- Absence of marking duty (imprint)
Sender
- As sender there is only "newsletter"
- As sender there is only "John Smith"
- As sender there is only info@company.com
- Ensure everything is personalized.
Reference
- Subject is meaningless or always the same ("newsletter ")
- Dull subject matter without reference to actuality or value
Introduction
- No individual address
- Unclear subject
- Not clear what advantage/benefits the reader / buyer gets
- Oversized logo at the beginning
- A lot of empty space at the beginning
- Long text blocks at the beginning
- No incentive to read on
- The first message of the newsletter is immediately advertisement
- The editorial at the beginning is signed by "your newsletter team " instead of " Yours, Peter Miller”
- First announcement is the imprint
- Introduction is too long and/or without structure
Arrangement
- No clear structure
- Single announcements are inadequately separated from each other
- Unstructured and overloaded text page
- Waste of free space
- Weird subject mix
- Too much continuous text
- No table of contents or it appears at the end
- Single announcements have no link back to the above table of contents
Hyperlinks
- Blue writing is used which is usually associated with hyperlinks
- No hyperlinks on detailed information
- Hyperlinks are not recognizable as those (i.e. they should be the common blue, everyone is used to)
- Hyperlinks only on homepage instead of leading to special sites
- Not all is "linked": heading, picture and keywords at the end of text
Pictures
- There are no relevant pictures
- Unnecessary pictures
- Order button is too small
- Weighting: too much picture not enough text
Presentation
- Dispatch of the virtual newsletter as appendix of an e-mail
- Writing in capitals which make it indistinct
- Content does not fit to the reference line
- Content too ornate
- Reader / buyer advantage not or only hardly identifiable
- Long winded wording
- Misspelling