Email Newsletters: Privacy and Unsubscribing

As you likely know from personal experience, the value of email has been greatly tarnished by spam, unsolicited messages, online junk mail. So, many subscribers and would-be subscribers care very much about the exposure of their email addresses.

Since this issue is so important, articulate a privacy policy for your newsletter. Will you rent, sell, or exchange the names of your subscribers to other organizations or persons? While most of us have no plans to do so when we are small, that opinion can change as we grow our list.

Quite frankly, once your list gets to a certain size, you may be able to earn quite a bit of money by renting it out. Many magazine and subscription publishers find that the difference between a profit and loss is list rental income.

If you do decide to keep the list names strictly to yourself, post a message to that effect somewhere, either in the email newsletter itself, at sites where you collect the names of subscribers, or both. By posting, and adhering to, a privacy policy, you will get more subscribers. To read an example, go my newsletter's web page at http:// www.abbottletter.com .

If you're not sure whether you will or will not sell or rent the addresses, then put a note to that effect instead. Many companies do this by saying something like this: ?Would you like to receive information messages by email from our valued partners?? To that, of course, you add a checkbox. The default position should be off, which is to say, subscribers have to click on the box to receive those mailings. And, needless to say, you must then respect the choice they make.

You must also make it quick and easy for subscribers to say good-bye. Each issue of your newsletter should contain information explaining how to unsubscribe or be removed from the mailing list. There are many forms this information can take. To choose one, go through the email newsletters you now receive, and decide which you like best. Then, prepare your own notice, using this one as a guide. Of course, you will not copy anything directly, which would be plagiarism.

On the flip side, add information to each newsletter that explains how to subscribe, and consider, too, putting in a line asking recipients to pass along your newsletter to someone else who would benefit from it. A simple reminder like that could help you build your list, painlessly. Recommendations from a trusted colleague or friend will boost your subscriber list quickly.

Summing up, develop a privacy policy and stick to it. In addition, give your subscribers an escape hatch they can access quickly and easily.

Robert F. Abbott, the author of A Manager's Guide to Newsletters: Communicating for Results, writes and publishes Abbott's Communication Letter. Read more articles about Internet communication, as well as email and printed newsletters at: http:// http://www.communication-newsletter.com/ic.html

More Ezine Publishing Articles

Delivering Your Email Newsletter
After creating your email newsletter, you face the challenge of delivery. With a printed newsletter, there's usually only one method of widespread distribution: the post office.

How to Format Your Email Newsletter
When subscribers' email readers (programs) receive your text newsletter, they will display it in all kinds of ways. Not only are there different programs, but each one has several customization options.

Email Newsletters: The Header
Managing Subscriber addresses: At the top of your email message you see the header, where you insert addresses and a subject heading. It all looks simple enough, but there are some tricks and tips you should know, and one very important warning.

Managing Internet Addresses in Your Email Newsletter
Web and email addresses pose a special challenge for writers and publishers of email newsletters and ezines.I don't know about you, but I find it frustrating when I have to copy and paste an address into a browser, or into a separate email window.

Email Newsletter Software
Should I create my newsletter in a word processor or email program? Which email program should I use?Those two questions came from a visitor to the Manager's Guide to Newsletters website. She planned to start an email newsletter that would go to parents of students at her school and wanted to know about the software she would need.

Secrets To Successful Publishing
Have you ever wondered what would it take to compete successfully with the ?big guys? like Simon & Schuster and even get to the top of the heap? If there is such thing as a magic formula for success, then the story of Geela, the author of the bestseller book THE AMERICAN DREAM can certainly make a believer out of you too. Mastering the art of the possible is at the heart of Geela?s brand new book where her message is that the possible always exceeds the impossible.

Publish Anything: The Saga of a PublishAmerica Author
My story is that an author who?d done online writing for such dot gones as Themestream, Written By Me, and The Vines, someone trying hard to have fiction, poetry and nonfiction in print for real, recommended PublishAmerica. She claimed it was a traditional book publisher.

PublishAmerica - Publishing Parasites
I have to admit to being readily impressed by company names. Maybe it's an age thing.

Want To Start a Publishing Revolution?
Calling all publishers, editors, journalists and freelance writers. It's time to breathe more life into your copy.

Why Do We Publish?
WHY DO WE DO THIS?A major "character" in Mark Salzman's first autobiography is his father. Sometimes his father paints.