Tips for Uploading Your Newsletter

I hope you’ve got some good ideas for your free newsletter in the last post. Now we’re ready to upload it to your autoresponder so it can be sent out to your list.

This is really simple ~ it’s no different actually than the first message we put in our series with the link to our freebie.

When to send:

You’ll log into your autoresponder.  You, by now, have decided on how often you want your newsletter to go out. Depending on your autoresponder you make this happen by sending it out so many days AFTER they first subscribed or it may ask you how many days since your LAST message. VERY DIFFERENT so make sure you check your autoresponder to see which one it uses.

In Get Response we’re going to “add a follow up” ~ remember the newsletter feature will send it out immediately ~ you want this to go in your series so it will go out at a certain time no matter when the person joins your list ~ whether it was yesterday or a year from now.

Make sure you’re working on the correct list ~ there’s a drop down menu in Getresponse you can choose from.

So if you’re doing a weekly newsletter you’d choose 7 in the box (in get response) because it goes out so many days after sign up. I want them to get this email a week after they subscribed to my list.

Subject line:

Subject line: This can go one of two ways and you’ll have to make the decision for yourself.

1. Brand your newsletter so when people see it they know it’s you and open it.

2. Create a catchy title that is based on the content of the newsletter that week.

If you’re going to brand your newsletter you would use the same title configuration each time.

ex: **Everyday Life Balance For Busy Women**

ex. Internet Marketing Tutorials: Squidoo (or whatever the weekly topic is)

You can mix up including the title of your newsletter and the topic as you can see in the second example.

The second way you can do this is to just come up with a catchy subject line you think will get people curious enough to open the email.  It should be something relevant to the topic you wrote about for that newsletter edition.

You might also use the name of your newsletter and the edition number ~ so they will stay in order in people’s email box if they create a rule/folder for your newsletter.

Date:

If  you want the date to show up current on your newsletter you can use the code: [[date_med]] (including the outside brackets and everything) That’s in Getresponse.  That code will show the current date on your newsletter no matter when it is sent out.

Content:

Now if you’ve written your content somewhere else already go ahead and copy and paste it in. If you’ve done your writing in a word document, make sure you paste it into a text document and then copy from the text doc into your autoresponder. Word does some weird things ~ it adds extra code you can’t see and then it comes out as weird characters in your final product. This is true for everywhere ~ so if you’re using word to write always make sure to paste it into a text doc before you use it in your final setting.

You can also just write right in the autoresponder content creation area. That’s where I usually do it.

Tracking:

Depending on what format you use you can track different elements. At the very least try to track your link click throughs ~ that way you can see if people are clicking the links in your newsletter. When you check the click through tracking box it will make get response change your link so you won’t be able to see where it goes. They will change it to a tracking code.

If there’s a link you don’t want cloaked in your email leave off the http:// then it will just show up as www.whatever.com

I do this for my site address under my name for my emails, so people can see the url.

Send:

When you’ve chosen  your tracking elements you’ll just click save. This will add your follow up to the series. You will be brought to a manage follow up screen. This will show you all the follow up messages you have done for this email list. Double check your send out numbers and make sure they’re going out when you want them to.

Edit:

If you need to change/add to a message you can do it from this screen as well. Just go to the message you want to edit and click the edit link next to it. It will open the edit screen and you can change whatever you need.

Spam:

If your autoresponder offers it, check the spam level. This will tell you how likely your email is to get through to people’s in boxes. When you do the spam test it will show you words that are likely to get your newsletter stuck in a spam filter. Change those words. Doing this for a while in the beginning will give you some great experience and learning on how to write in a way that gets your messages delivered. There are certain words like FREE that will set off the spam alert ~ so check that if you can, until you get used to writing in email.

You’ll find the spam check next to the action: options right under your text area in Get response.  I’m sure it’s fairly similar in Aweber.

Test:

When you complete the newsletter edition it’s nice to run a test. That way you can see exactly what your newsletter is going to look like for your people ~ it’s when I check spelling and all that stuff is in the test ~ in my own email box. I find it easier to see mistakes that way for some reason.

Next Newsletter:

You can create another newsletter right now and post it for 7 days later or you can come in any time in the next 7 days and do it.

Just remember if you do it after 7 days your subscribers will not receive it because it will be out of line. So this is one thing you have to pay attention to. I like to do 2 newsletters up front so I have a little lee way to get in there and get it done. Doing two up front gives me 14 days to get in there and do the next one and still keep it in line.

Questions?

Feel free to ask if you’ve got them. Keep taking action and let us know when you’ve gotten your newsletter done!