While more and more small businesses are catching on to the importance of writing an email newsletter and using it as part of their overall marketing strategy, they often forget to take one of the most crucial steps before publishing. They forget to test the message.
OK, I’ll admit it doesn’t sound very exciting! But it can mean the difference between your prospects and clients receiving a professional looking newsletter – and not being able to read it at all.
Rarely will they take the trouble to let you know there’s a problem, so you’ll never know. You’ll have lost an opportunity to keep in touch, and if you were hoping to promote a new product or special event, you may have lost a potential sale.
When you put together an email newsletter or promotion, it’s worth having a checklist beside you of all the steps you need to take before hitting ‘Send’, because while most providers are pretty good at ensuring your message is checked for spam and spelling, they can’t check for other basic human errors.
Another advantage of sending a test message to yourself is you get the chance to read through it again for typos and to check all the links work.
Don’t forget to send a text only test message to yourself so you can check what it will look like for those people who prefer to receive text versions of emails. Also remember when you use a lot of pictures in your newsletter; that they’ll appear as blank boxes if the recipient hasn’t enabled images in their email package.
If you’d like to find out how to avoid some other common email newsletter mistakes, here’s a previous post on the subject.
