Introduction

The e-mail newsletter has emerged as the heavy hitter of online marketing tools, and the future looks brighter for this terrific tactic than for any of the dozen or so current alternatives. To immediately begin taking advantage of e-mail newsletter promotion, you can buy space in existing newsletters that are increasing in number like mushrooms on a rainy fall morning. (see The Essential Guide to Web Strategy for Entrepreneurs CD for a list of vendors who offer thousands of email newsletter advertising opportunities.)

But, if you are ready to move to the next level and create your own email newsletter, this tutorial will give you a hand getting started. Together we will walk through the process, using one of my favorite tools: Microsoft ® FrontPage® . No, Microsoft does not pay me. I became an advocate of this particular tool, because it simply is the best Web development tool I have found. I have used FrontPage as my primary development tool since 1996. Before that I coded HTML using a plain text editor. I can safely tell you: FrontPage is better.

Now, before we get started, let me list a number of essential elements that will need to be in place before you begin to develop a newsletter.

• List of qualified addresses
• Purpose of your newsletter
• Communicating with Customers
• Sketch of your newsletter layout
• Content Copy  

Qualified address list 

The rule is: no spam. Here is my suggestion for staying out of trouble: begin with your current customers. You have an established business relationship with these folks, which is generally accepted as a legitimate reason for including them in your newsletter mailing.

Get into the habit of asking for the email address every time anyone comes into contact with your company; on your Web site, in your store, via telephone, at trade shows and exhibits- in short, anywhere. Then you can send them your next newsletter issue and if they do not request that you remove them, assume they do not object (this is the opt-out approach.) If you want to be squeaky clean, always send new contacts an invitation to subscribe and add only those who respond positively, to your list (opt in).

Purpose

Determine what you want your newsletter recipients to do as a result of reading your newsletter. Here are a few common purposes you might consider. Certainly there are others as well.

• Enjoy it enough to continue accepting the next edition
• Call or email you or visit your Web site for more information
• Call or email you or visit your Web site to sign up for a service
• Call or email you or visit your Web site to order a product
• Call or email you or visit your Web site to find out where is the closest location
• Call or email you or visit your Web site to register for a contest
• Call or email you or visit your Web site to subscribe to another newsletter

Make sure you know explicitly what it is you want your newsletter readers to do.

Method for Receiving Customer Contacts

Nothing is sadder than a promotional effort that succeeds in making the phone ring, but when it does, the person who answers has no idea what they are supposed to do!

If your purpose is to make the phone ring, make sure somebody is ready to answer it and that somebody knows the details of your offer and how to respond.

If you are trying to stimulate email, make sure somebody answers the email right away. The goal is to respond before the sender turns off her computer and leaves to do other things.

If you are trying to stimulate visits to your Web site, create a special welcome page so that your visitors have a sense that you expected them to come and are ready to serve them. Such special pages will also help you better measure the results you get. The usage analysis reports in FrontPage can help you determine what pages in your Web site are most popular, how visitors use your Web site, where they come from and even what Web browsers they are using.

Make a Sketch and Write the Copy

You can, of course jump right onto the computer and start working on your newsletter, but from personal experience, I will tell you that the creative process will proceed much faster if you first work out on paper what you want in your newsletter before you start using FrontPage to render the design. I will show you what I mean in just a bit. Do not write the newsletter copy on paper, though. That is just a waste of time. Write the copy using a word processor such as Microsoft® Word®. That way you can simply cut and paste the text into your newsletter when you get ready.

I wish I had room here to tell you more about the strategy of newsletter promotion, but the brief discussion here will get you started. If you are really serious about squeezing all the juice out of this powerful promotional technique, do take a look at the The Essential Guide to Web Strategy for Entrepreneurs. There I spent a lot of time and effort building a really good primer on using email newsletters as a promotional tool.

Build Your Newsletter

Now, on with the task of building an HTML email newsletter using Microsoft FrontPage.

Here are the steps we will follow: 

1. Sketch the layout of the newsletter
        a. Header
        b. Content section breaks
        c. Footer

2. Write the text
        a. Subject line
        b. Header message
        c. Content sections
        d. Footer message

3. Select the graphics and edit them to size
        a. Resize to fit newsletter
        b. Minimize file size to facilitate download

4. Build the newsletter template
        a. Build a template page
        b. Build a header
        c. Build a footer

5. Add content

6. Create a plain text version

7. Archive the newsletter

8. Send the newsletter

Let's get started.

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