April 05, 2007

Newsletters-Then and Now

11 years ago or so, my first Internet job involved a weekly newsletter. This took a serious amount of time each week.

People would email me and ask to be added to the newsletter mailing list. I added their names manually into the address group. I would write the newsletter. Then send it. That is when the fun would start. Email would bounce-back. People would email me and ask why they got my newsletter. Many wouldn’t be nice about it. They would ask why they weren’t dropped when I had obviously seen their message on a message board saying they were leaving the community. Then there were more adds, drops, and it was time to send out another one.

Of course there were also people who would write to me asking me to send it to their daughter, cousin, as a “surprise” because they needed to read my newsletter. Explaining to them that I couldn’t do that, never fun.

1. Writing the newsletter-wonderful, wonderful experience.

2. Mailing it: not so much

Times have changed a great deal. I try not to subscribe to any newsletters by email. I read most everything in my aggregator and love it. The rest of the world is slow to come to love aggregators and some people just never will. Email marketing works. It works well. If it didn’t work well, you wouldn’t get that stack of email. As a blogger, you may be reluctant to start sending out email newsletters with your blog content. You imagine all the problems. But, if you go look at Zookoda-you will see that you avoid all the problems of email newsletters and you will get all the benefits.

Non-aggregator people will get your information fast, professionally in the place where they want it-their email. Subscribers will visit your site because an email came to tell them personally to check out your new content. Whether you are just tired of copying and pasting your blog post into email so Aunt Edna knows about your family or you are ready to take your blog to a more professional level with expanded reach-Zookoda has the hassle free (and free to use) tools you need.

I am pretty impressed, even though not many new tools knock my socks off and what could be new and exciting about newsletters after all this time? Well…this…and I truly liked it better than similar tools I have seen and used.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

I want to say how much I enjoy your newsletter. The reader interaction is a great concept, and I get so much out of the Q & A section.