A letter from Managing Editor, Alexis Gutzman
Back in mid-2001 -- what seems like a million years ago to me now -- I wrote a 12-part column on "Publishing Your Own Newsletter" as part of a weekly column I was doing for another publisher that you've probably have heard of (hint: they own Jupiter and ClickZ).
Then I was offered the chance to become MarketingSherpa's Managing Editor of Reports, so I left the other company to join Sherpa.
In the intervening time, two things happened that could affect you:
- My old company gathered up all of those old columns I wrote about email newsletters and published them as a Special Report with my name on the cover. You may have even purchased it. I didn't have anything more to do with the report either editorially or financially, but I was pleased to see it published because email newsletters are such an important tactic for marketers to get right.
- But... email newsletter publishing had changed in the meantime. In some ways radically. Tactics that were best practices over a year ago (in particular regarding seeding your list and growing your opt-in list) are completely wrong today - and may even harm your results.
So, for the last six months, I've worked together with experts Marcia Yudkin and Anne Holland to write an all-new report on Best Practices. You won't find any reprinted articles or columns in it as such.
Instead, it's designed to be a true step-by-step guidebook on best practices.
Where did we get the Best Practices from?
From marketers themselves. We examined more than 400 email newsletters (in fact we have a special email in-box just for them here at the office.) Then we contacted more than 100 marketers, consultants, tech experts, metrics researchers, you name it, to ask for their advice.
Finally, we took all of this knowledge and created this step-by-step guide for the professional marketer. It took us six months of hard work, but it was worth it.
How is this report different from the many others on the market?
In my experience, most are written for the (very) small business. They focus more on finding and implementing the desk-top technology -- heck, that's the climax of my old 12-part series.
If you're an entrepreneur, the process of sending is critical, but MarketingSherpa serves a different audience: professional marketers.
You'll find this Guide is specifically designed to meet the needs of a busy professional marketer at a mid-sized company or an agency serving them. Between Anne, Marcia, myself and all the working marketers we interviewed, I think we hit all the major things you need to know about publishing a newsletter.
Click here to take a look at the Table of Contents, and see if the questions on your mind aren't answered there.
Professional marketers needed an up-to-date hands-on Guide for newsletter publishing -- and I'm proud to have been the Managing Editor to bring it to them.
Alexis D. Gutzman
Managing Editor, Reports
MarketingSherpa
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Best Practices in Marketing with Email Newsletters
