Why PDF’s Can Sabotage Your Newsletters
By now, many of you realise the benefits of sending newsletters to your existing customers:
- You can keep in touch frequently
- You can inform them about things that may affect them
- You can tell them about changes you are making
But are you doing it properly?
For example, did you know that in Australia we have the Spam Act 2003? The Spam Act essentially prevents you from adding people to your database that you have never had any prior dealings with.
In order to add someone to your newsletter subscription database, you must have
- previously done business with them,
- previously met them and asked for their permission, or
- they have subscribed via your online or offline marketing endeavours
And that’s just the legal implications!
There are also some logistical problems…
For example, one client has a massive database and came to us because they were having trouble sending out their newsletter to just a small portion of their database. It turned out that they created a beautiful newsletter using Photoshop and then turned it into a PDF. Next, one of their staff would create an email, attach the PDF and then send it to part of their database. One day, Outlook took its bat and ball and went home. It refused to send any more emails this way.
The reason: the Sent Items folder had reached capacity. In order to send more emails they had to archive or delete older newsletter campaigns.
Another reason that Outlook may not be the best choice is less to do with Outlook and more to do with attachments. Did you know that many business firewalls strip attachments indiscriminately? So if your entire marketing message and promotion is contained in your PDF and there is nothing in the email, it looks like you sent a blank email.
And then there’s the people issue: busy people value their time so expecting them to spend time opening your PDF when they’re already swamped with work is a big ask. But if they could see the headline or offer at the top of your email, well…
Finally, there’s the reporting – Outlook doesn’t have any!
In the old days, “read receipts” could be turned on and you’d get an email automatically whenever someone opened your email. In these days of personal liberties, read receipts are now optional. Outlook asks me if I want to allow the read receipt and I always say “No”. Why? Because your email is important to you but may not be my highest priority. The only thing you can count on are “bounced emails” when the email address no longer works for one reason or another.
So how do you track :
- the successful delivery of your email newsletter campaign
- how many people have opened it, and
- what articles they found of interest and clicked on the related links?
Well, in Outlook you simply can’t.
But there are other ways to do this. There are several world-class newsletter services that can deliver all this and more – and some are even here in Australia!
