Basics of Email Newsletter Subscription

• There are so called bad bots on the web register with junk email ids without a real human user behind it.
• Sometime site owner itself adds random email ids to send out a newsletter. This could be reason that you may receive many newsletters though you did not subscribe to them. This is straight forward a black hat SEO technique which will be penalized by search engines over the period of time.
• Single opt-in is useful especially when you migrate from one email newsletter provider to other. You can add all your existing subscribers without the need of asking for their confirmation again.

Double opt-in is the decent way of offering email subscription in which user first submits the email id and then confirm the subscription by clicking on the confirmation link sent their email id. This helps to avoid spamming and ensure the traffic quality only from interested real users.

Newsletter Service Providers

There are popular newsletter service providers like MailChimp, Constant Contact, AWeber, etc. in general all companies offer the basic services for free with an option to upgrade to premium plans when the subscribers grow beyond the free limit.

All service providers offer embeddable code which can be pasted wherever you want in your site. If you have WordPress site – there are plenty of free and premium plugins offering newsletter service.    

Categorizing Newsletter Subscription

If your site covers vast topics categorized under many categories, a user may be interested in receiving topics belongs to particular category and not the whole content update. In this case there is a possibility of offering  category-wise subscription which helps user to subscribe to only the interested categories.

Designing Newsletter Content

There are simple and easy ways to design the layout for your newsletter.

• Choose the layouts from word processing programs like Microsoft Word or Apple Pages.

Newsletter Layouts in Microsoft Word for Mac

• Newsletter companies offer beautiful layouts which you can choose.
• If you have plugins, they offer default layouts.
• Design your own layout.

Besides the actual newsletter it is also important to place the subscription box in appropriate place on a page. There are also paid email opt-in services offering attractive widgets and splash pop-ups for email subscription which you can integrate with the newsletter company.

Newsletter Subscription with Categories

Email Subscription Widget

Summary:

• Building traffic to a site will take long time even with the tools like newsletter.
• Do not spam other’s email by sending unwanted newsletter content.
• Do not add emails on your own, this is legally prohibited and some companies not allow you to do this.
• Avoid single opt-in to stop receiving subscription from bots which is of no use for receiving quality traffic.
• Ensure to follow double opt-in process with user confirming the subscription.
• Ensure the privacy of emails received through subscription.
• Send the quality newsletter content based on the categorized subscribers, if you have categories.
• Add social links in the newsletter layout making easy for the users to follow your regular updates in social media instead of waiting for periodic newsletter.