For ezine publishers, deliverability is always a top priorityand rightfully so as with any form of communication. Think about it, if your ezine is not easily delivered to your subscribers it won’t matter how great it is.
Just as your subscribers are responsible for providing accurate email addresses to ensure they receive your ezine, YOU are responsible for making sure the ezine is deliverable.
More often than not, most deliverability issues occur during the ezine preparation phase. Here are 7 tips to enhance your preparation efforts and guarantee deliverability every time.
1. Sign-up with an ezine marketing service that will deliver your ezines to your subscriber list. Three great resources are Aweber, Constant Contact & iContact. Here are a few advantages of each.
Aweber -offers unlimited autoreponders, provides templates
https://www.aweber.com [1]
Constant Contact -very user friendly system, provides great templates
https://www.constantcontact.com [2]
iContact -inexpensive
https://www.icontact.com [3]
NOTE: Do not send ezines directly from your email client. This creates a huge potential for both your ezine and email address to be flagged as spam and could possibly get you blacklisted with your Internet service provider.
2. Prepare both an html & text version of your ezine for distribution. If you MUST choose only one version, stick with the text version. It’s readable across most platforms and easier to deliver due to the absence of html code.
3. Set the character width of your text ezine to 43 characters per line. This ensures it is readable in most email readers and on most cell phones. A great tool to use to quickly set the character width for your text ezine is formatit.com. https://www.formatit.com [4]
4. Use a template, customized or provided in your ezine package, instead of none at all for your html version. This helps keeps things properly aligned and formatted. If you don’t want to use an html template, be sure to set character width to 43 characters per line using formatit.com. https://www.formatit.com [4]
5. After you’ve prepared your ezine be sure to check the spam score and address any issues that may arise. You should be able to check your spam score using your ezine marketing service.
6. Test, test & re-test links, formatting and display properties prior to distribution. It’s best to test both the html & text versions of your ezine in several email clients such as AOL, Hotmail, Yahoo & ISP email accounts. You also want to be sure to run a spell-check and proof the ezine for clarity and punctuation.
7. Sometimes mistakes and misspellings will not readily stick out to you. Prior to distribution, send a test of your ezine (html & text versions) to someone else for review. Based on the feedback, determine if you need to make any final revisions. Once any necessary revisions have been made you can send your ezine with confidence.
About the Author:
Katrina Chesney is Founder & President of Portable Hands [5], a Virtual Assistance firm that provides leverage for small businesses.